oldie but goodie

i meant to post this months ago. cracks me up.

merry christmas from the tayloe emerys!

if i were the kind of person who wrote those my family is better than your family christmas letters, this would be my section on little tayloe for 2009:
not only is he very handsome and charming, a gifted singer and athlete, he's also the most independent child in charlottesville! he barely needed any toilet training at all - just one day of soggy pants and that was it, he was ready to be a big kid!!! and big kid he is - each day at summer camp he said goodbye to us with a huge smile and greeted us when we picked him up with an inventive craft worthy of art gallery walls (image left). we're so proud of our 'little man' and tell everyone we know how outstanding and remarkable he is. we've already alerted Harvard to make room in the class of 2025 because the next Emery is on his way!!! kidding, of course! (not really)
barf. hiccup.
the truth of course is that t's eaten enough gummy life savers to send rocket fueled only by sugar into space, had one memorable (embarrassing) accident on the preschool director's office floor and i'm about to have to make good on purchasing a garage for his thomas trains. and he is independent and doesn't have trouble being left places or with other people, but he doesn't really have a choice. preschool also has about a zillion toys he's never seen before, so there's that.
of course i'm proud. there have been plenty of times in his young life when i most certainly haven't been. a recent meltdown in the 20 people deep Bodo's line where he yanked and pulled on me so much my skirt came down comes to mind.
so i'll spare you the christmas letter and just take this moment to gloat. my kid has been easy to toilet train and is happy to go by himself to preschool camp alone for 3 hours. no poop issues, no tears, no long goodbyes. just a happy confident kid who can pee in a pot.

growing up boys

tayloe took little t on his first ever fishing trip today. i thought the child was going to jump out of his skin he was so excited. he couldn't even sleep during his nap time. he helped his dad pack up the cooler with snacks and get his rod ready. he went and got his shoes, his hat and put on sunscreen so quickly and with so much joy i almost wondered if he was my child. off they went. tayloe didn't even take his rod so intent he was on showing little tayloe the ropes. it made me so happy and proud. even more so when he came home and told me he'd caught 2 bluegill. i asked t2 how big his was and he held his arms out as wide as he could. 'THIS BIG, MAMA!' for a kid that's been imaginary fishing for the last 8 months with anything that could remotely pass for a fishing pole, it was a total triumph.
thomas and i stayed home and had a rare afternoon just the two of us. we hung some things up in his room (9 months old and the only thing i ever got around to hanging was his mobile) then we read and sang and took pictures. since thomas didn't make regular practice of rolling over and hasn't even begun to show interest in crawling, there hasn't been much documentation of his major milestones. he's been sitting up now for about 2 months and while forward movement still seems a ways off, the kid can reach and stretch with the best of them. if he wants something beyond his grasp, he hurls himself toward it. if he misses, he takes a breath and bends, bends, bends as far as he can on the exhale. he gets lots of A+'s for effort.
looking at these pictures of tayloe makes me realize it's time to kiss the diapers goodbye. potty training hasn't really been on my radar since i bought one of those kiddie toilets last summer. it's probably because my pediatrician put it this way : you can potty train a boy at 2 1/2 and he'll be potty trained by 3. or you can just wait until he's 3. so i just put it out of my mind, knowing it'd get around to it eventually.
eventually starts on monday. everyone's home. we don't have any major plans to go anywhere.it gives me enough time to get to the bookstore and get some instructions on this type of thing. it's warm outside so a few pantsless days in the yard won't do any harm. plus he starts summer camp at his preschool in two weeks and they said they'd be more than happy to help.
perked ears. help did you say? was there ever a better motivational word?

for comparison sake

i just realized every picture i have to tayloe at this age (around 9 months) he's smiling huge. and every picture i've taken of thomas lately he has this 'whatchoo lookin at lady' look on his face. i'm wondering if that's because i took no less than 2 million pictures of tayloe a month and just saved all the smiley ones. my photos of thomas are mostly on my iphone.
the thing about telling the older brother that his job is to protect the younger brother is that the older brother takes the task pretty seriously. today thomas was on the floor and the puppies came tromping inside. before i could even think about it, tayloe ran screaming past me yelling 'NO NO NO PUPPIES' arms straight out in front of him, heading straight for thomas. 'I SAVE YOU' he yells as he plows into thomas, - lays him out flat. he's full-on smothering his brother yelling 'I SAVE YOU THOMAS. I SAVE YOU! SHOO PUPPIES, SHOO'
of course how could he have known he was hurting him? thomas's screams were so muffled he didn't even hear him. when i scolded him for being too rough he looked at me like i had 1,000 heads.
i know, kiddo. it's confusing.

kids and dogs

there isn't much difference really. both cute. both curious. both poop a lot.
so far so good with the puppies. they sleep outside, play outside, nap outside and mostly entertain each other. i'm a little afraid of how big johnny, the male, is going to be. he's such a lug right now he's nearly double the size of june. let's just hope he stays gentle and dumb.

tayloe cal ripkin emery

mad skills. this is the same kid who was blocking soccer balls at 5 months. at the time that didn't seem weird, but now that i have thomas - our child who never rolled over and is perfectly content to sit and watch the world go by without moving a single limb (thus his nickname, 'love lump') - it seems prodigal.

why

it's so weird how one day your kid is the way he has been for the last 6 months and the next day it's like your child was abducted and whoever did it left this complete stranger with a whole new rule book. the last 4 days or so, tayloe's had a burst of new words and along with it the inclination to ask why. at everything.
why do you put the milk in the fridge?
why do pretzels go here? why is the oven hot? why are you brushing my hair? why do you do this? why do you do that? what you doing now? why are you doing that?
i enjoy the curiosity, sure. and i'm happy to explain a thing or two when i know the answer. but ya gotta know i'm not a particularly chatty person. quiet doesn't make me uncomfortable. so this afternoon when i realized i'd been talking nonstop to a two year old for what felt like 100 years i felt an enormous amount of anxiety about how long this is going to last. especially because he's relentless. thomas is screaming and the phone is ringing and i'm clearly about to lose my #$it, but there he is - right at my heels looking for answers to life's larger questions. and not quietly or patiently, i might add.
i'll say that this new found chatter and the discovered ability to communicate beats the tantrums of the preverbal early twos, but only by a little bit.
thomas, meanwhile, is going through some kind of 8 month attachment thing. i can hardly put him down without him dissolving into a puddle of tears. it's the saddest thing you've ever seen.
so if you need me i'll be here. under a huge pile of laundry and dust with dishes piled up in the sink braving the t2 inquisition and with a little cherub clung to me like a staticky dark sock.

easter

we went to greensboro last weekend for easter and had a spectacular time. it's so much fun to get kids really really excited about holidays.
we went to an egg hunt on saturday morning, dyed eggs saturday afternoon and tayloe, mom, dad and i spent most of saturday night pretending to call the easter bunny to tell him various things - like where to find the eggs and what to leave for us (jack daniels!). little tayloe would stand there watching us with huge eyes, nearly wiggling out of his skin with excitement. he'd grab the phone, kiss it and say, 'i wub ewe feaster bunny' and we'd all fall apart with laughter.
the hide and seek game of sunday morning was right up t2s alley and we spent most of the day hiding then looking for eggs.
on the way home today, i decided it was time to start the search for a new puppy. maybe it seems a little hasty, but thomas will be crawling soon (that's ambitious since he doesn't really even roll over ... let's just say eventually) and i'd really love to house train a puppy before that happens. i don't need a baby sloshing through pee puddles and well, other stuff.
plus i can't stand not having a dog around and it breaks my heart to see t2 outside throwing tennis balls to himself (and fetching them. i wish i was kidding.)
a quick scan of the classifieds and i found an ad for chocolate lab puppies, what we've been talking about getting, ready on mother's day. i called and the family that has them lives 3 minutes from our house. 11 chocolates! 3 minutes away! how's that for serendipity?
so we went by - you know, just to look. 10 minutes later we had picked the one we wanted - the biggest male in the lot (just what a i need, right? another dude) - and were handing over the duckets.
and that was that.