The Plane, The plane, Mom!

This was a draft created by MAC on May 29th:
Linus is still carrying his blanket ("Bun") and speaks more words every day. A recent favorite is his version of "airplane", or "eh puhn". He is also at a point where he likes to identify things for us and tell us the word for what he is pointing toward.

We live near Sikorsky's main helicopter manufacturing facility, and there are regular test flights up near our house. We also see many higher altitude commercial aircraft flights, some with easily spotted contrails, due to our proximity to NYC. So, at certain times of day, it is very easy to observe 10-20 airplanes and helicopters crossing the sky above us within a short time.

We were outside recently during one of these heavy flying periods when Linus heard the engine sounds and looked up. Showing that he knew what it was, he started pointing up and exclaiming, "eh puhn! eh puhn!". He settled down for a few minutes after the airplane passed, then looking up again, saw another, and started pointing and excitedly saying again, "eh puhn! eh puhn!" This repeated over and over as the sky filled with aircraft for a period and then it was time to head in. All he needed was a white jacket and gloves...(are you old enough to get the reference?)

Linus doesn't always have to be outside to identify things as airplanes though. He understands that helicopters and airplanes make a certain type of noise, but he doesn't get that it's different from a lawnmower. So, he recently ran around the house inside shouting "eh puhn!" as lawnmowers were operating outside, depsite Kd's attempts to explain to him that the sound was not an airplane.

Needless to say, we're a little scared to take him to an actual airport right now - he might not stop pointing out the airplanes.