love you and more language

Davis is really conversing now. He chatters all day long and makes long and thoughtful comments on the world. Last week, for the very first time he crawled in my lap, gave me a big hug and said, "I love you, Mommy". He's said I love you with prompting before, but never out of the blue. It was awesome.
He also echoes anything you say so be careful! He always listens and you'll hear exactly what you said one minute later.
He's also thinking in a much more complex way. One of Davis' friends threw a ball over the gate at the bottom of the stairs the other day and Davis told him he would help him get it. He reached through the bars of the gate and grabbed the ball, but the ball was too wide to fit through. He thought about it and then pulled his hand up to the top of the gate, reached his other hand over and handed the ball to himself. I was so impressed!
And yesterday, he was playing with Sam's rattle. I put a picture of it above. He threw it across the room. I told him, "Don't throw toys!". He listened and went and picked up the rattle and held it for a minute. Then he came to me and said, "No throw toys." "That's right", I said. "Only throw balls", he said. "That's right", I agreed. Then he triumphantly held the rattle up showed me the end and said, "There's a ball RIGHT HERE!". I think we have a budding lawyer on our hands.