"Ba!"

Luke has an obsession. He loves balls. He sees them everywhere. When my Dad took me and Luke to the airport Luke noticed the ball on the ceiling that held the cameras and smoke detectors. When my Mom was feeding Luke peas ("Somebody has to teach him to like peas!" says she), Luke took one look at them and shouted, "BA!", which of course means "Good lord! And all this time I thought balls were just for bouncing!"

Luke loves to play with Derek's tennis ball, and loves his green Nubby ball from Neal and Cheri (all the other kids love it too, and fight over it when they come over). He has a book with little flippy doors over some of the pictures. One of the pictures is of a ball and when you open the door it says, "BALL". Luke knew the answer way before he opened the door.

Luke was given a balloon from the bank teller the other day and calls to it, "BA!" whenever he sees it still in the car. This morning I took Luke out in his new bike cruiser (baby trailer), and as we passed a big parked car he pointed at the tires and said, "BA!". And when we were in the garden Luke pointed at my hydrangea bloom and named it, "BA!" It's pretty amazing that he is associating all of these round things, even if they are not three dimensional.