In the last two weeks he has begun screaming, and occasionally having full blown tantrums, when he doesn't get his way. Staying calm and trying to acknowledge his feelings and redirecting his attention is definitely a challenge. His older brothers look at me and ask, "What's up with Luke?" To which I always answer, "It's just a phase. Don't worry, he will out grow it." The best thing about having other kids is that you have experienced that "This too shall pass." And, in this case, I can say, "This two shall pass!" Sorry, bad pun...I live with lots of "punny" people in this house!
Luke loves trucks. I mean, Luke really, really, really LOVES trucks! Last summer, we had to have our septic system redone and we put a garage onto our house. So there were quite a few weeks when Luke had the pleasure of watching trucks right in his own backyard. That is when his love of trucks began.
Luke would play at night and on the weekends with his smaller versions of the "big trucks" digging in our yard, which resembled a giant sand box. When the major work was finished, Jay built Luke a large sand box to play in. Luke loves it and is outside playing in it whenever it isn't too cold or rainy.
When we drive in the car, Luke is always looking for trucks. His high pitched voices gets even squeakier when he sees them and he is always so in awe, as if he's seeing them for the very first time! His favorite truck is an excavator....or as Luke says it an "esafator". He loves looking at pictures of excavators on the computer and on Jay's iphone. He can look at a dozen different pictures and each one will draw the same response, "Wow, an esafator."...."Wow, an esafator." It's really completely adorable!
Last week I was looking online for excavator videos for him to watch. A website came up offering a package deal with a video of trucks, a video with truck songs, a cd with truck songs and a tshirt for only $19.99. I thought he would love it! It arrived on Saturday morning and he wanted to wear the shirt and watch the video and he did love it. He loved it so much that on Sunday morning he threw a tantrum because he wanted to wear the truck shirt again but it needed to be washed. So, daddy threw in a load of colors so that Luke could see it getting clean. Luke wasn't thrilled but he was very distracted because we were at his cousin's house most of the day at her Baptism party.
That night after his bath, Luke was tired and grumpy. Guess what the first thing was he said after his bath? "The truck shirt is clean!!! I wear it?" And he ran into the laundry room to find it. He was so happy to have it on again. And in the morning, there was no getting him to take it off. So he wore it all day. And after his bath last night? You guessed it. Another huge temper tantrum because he wanted to wear his dirty truck shirt. So back in the laundry it went.(Good thing I always have laundry to do!:)
The first thing he asked for this morning? "I wear my truck shirt? It's all clean?"
None of my other kids, with the exception of Peter who is obsessed with things for other reasons, have ever been this attached to an item of clothing.(See, even after having 8 kids you can still have a new experience!)
I'm not sure how to handle the shirt obsession yet? Hopefully this will be short lived! All I can think about are the cute summer outfits I got for him at Gymboree with the Gymboree bucks I had gotten from spending too much money on his little sister!
All I can say is it's a good thing he's so darn cute!
