Nice people

This story both flatters our egos and illustrates how far Luke's language has progressed.

Daddy often tells mommy that she's a "nice lady". The other day, when she and Luke were playing and having a mess of fun, he stopped and used the phrase himself: "Nice lady, mama."

Tonight mama had yet another night meeting so Luke and Daddy were on our own. He started out the evening pretty upset, partly because of mommy's absence and partly just because the first day back to school after a big weekend takes a lot out of a boy. But we cooked dinner together and he got pretty in to it. (Among other things, we learned about mincing garlic into a paste, opening cans of tomatoes, and how pasta starts out hard and crunchy but gets soft when we put it in boiling water.) He was in a good mood by dinnertime and we had a lot of fun at the dinner table making silly noises at each other.

Eventually Luke stopped and told me: "Nice man, dada."

It was both (a) really sweet, and (b) pretty impressive, since as far as I can remember mama has never used that phrase to describe me (though of course she says lots of other nice things about me! it's just that "nice lady" is daddy's thing to say). To come up with it by himself he'd presumably have to know that there are "men" and "women", that daddy is a "man", that "lady" means the same thing as "woman", that you can mix and match all these words in bigger sentences, and that "nice lady" is a term of endearment.

Plus, to repeat, he's really sweet.