The Evolution of "Lucas"

It is no surprise that my kids like to talk. They do a great job of asserting and communicating their needs and wants. This is usually done loudly and continuously until the need is met. They also learned very quickly how to refer to themselves so that there would be no confusion about WHO wanted to play with the requested toy, for example. Both boys did a great job early on referring to Ethan - he has been, and still remains "E-ten." The difficulty came with their efforts to refer to Lucas. This was apparently a tough one for new talkers.

There were several weeks where Ethan's was the only name uttered. We would ask them who wanted crackers. The answer would be "E-ten" and some King Kong-like pounding on Lucas's chest. They had no idea how to begin to say "Lucas" and they didn't have the vocabulary to come up with any other way to refer to him. That changed after a while. The boys developed ways to refer to objects and applied these to Lucas. Therefore, Ethan remained "E-ten" and Lucas pathetically became "Other." Seriously, both boys would use Ethan's name and call Lucas "Other." Only with twins...

"Other" finally earned an identity just a few months ago. Somehow he came to be known as "Wee-wee." Let me just clarify that neither Noah nor I ever referred to our son as "other" or "wee-wee." However, some things just develop as a byproduct of the boys' best efforts to talk. It was actually really cute to see Lucas still emphatically pat his chest when he wanted something and add "Wee-wee, Wee-wee!" Nevertheless, no one wants to have their son called "wee-wee" for too long.

Things really started to come along just a few weeks ago, when Ethan took a huge leap and managed to say "wee-key." He was definitely mimicking Noah and I, who call Lucas "Lukey." We had a couple of good weeks of "wee-key" before it was transformed to "woo-kie" (think Chewbacca). Lucas stuck with "wee-key" until just this week, when magically and mercifully, he started to call himself "wucas." Actually, he really seemed to realize that this was finally in fact his correct name. He even corrected Noah a few times when he called him "Lukey." He looked right at him and said "WUCAS."

Now Lucas is committed to calling everyone by their proper name. He is a big fan of "Noah" and "Jessica" and especially of calling the dog "Lucille."