Conversations With Lincoln

Yesterday we were out running errands and Lincoln was in an especially happy and talkative mood.  I was sitting in the backseat of the truck with the boys and leaned forward to give Ricky a quick kiss.

Me to Rick: "I love you."
Rick to Me: "I love you, babe."
(I leaned over and gave Lincoln a kiss.)
Me to Lincoln: "I love you."
Lincoln to me; "I love you too, babe!"

On the car ride home from Costco Lincoln wanted to practice words.  We hadn't really done this before so we just made it up as we went.  I said a word and then he would copy me.  I was selecting words of objects around us like, cars, signs, road, stores, lights, etc.
I said cactus. Lincoln immediately repeated the word as he had done with the others and then interjected - "eww, pokey!"
He also decided that he wanted to come up with some words on his own.  The first word he said was dark. It doesn't seem like a big deal but I was impressed.  I had only been saying objects.  He started using adjectives.
Later Logan started to get fussy. I then said words like, Logan, grumpy, crying, mad, tired and then Lincoln again interjected (trying to copy my same tone) and said, "go to bed."  It was so cute that he caught onto the fact that I was using words to describe Logan and he knew all of those things meant that Logan needed to go to bed.
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A couple weeks ago I went into the downstairs bathroom.  I heard Logan's little feet following me but my thought was to quickly get to the bathroom and close the door before he could catch up. Next thing I hear is Lincoln yelling, "Mom, incoming!"  I just busted up laughing.  Ricky and I say that to each other about Logan because he insists on being right in the middle of everything.  We often prepare for his arrival so most of the time it means, hurry put up whatever he will destroy, close the door so he doesn't go out, etc. It didn't take Lincoln long to pick up on that.
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Lincoln loves stories at bedtime.  Normally I tell him a couple stories and then we sing songs.  Recently he's been wanting to tell me the stories.  We picked Noah's Ark - one of his favorites.  We get through the story and I mention that after it stopped raining the ark landed on a mountain.  Lincoln quickly responds, "no mom, not a mountain.  It was a volcano!"
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I'm always amazed and how quickly Lincoln puts things together.  He can quickly pick up on what we say and he relates objects and ideas to other things.  String cheese is normally an on the go snack for us.  It's something we grab on our way out of the house before school or errands.  One night, I was listing off options for bed snack.  It consisted of the usual wheat thins, gold fish cracks, popcorn and then I added string cheese.  He looked at me with such a confused look and said, "String cheese?  That's a wake up and eat it now snack.  Not a bed snack."  Ricky and I laughed.  It was adorable. He understood that string cheese was typically a breakfast food for him and he was doing his best to explain it.