three years
I wrote this Tuesday but it didn’t get posted.
Three years ago yesterday, Nic and I were married on a beautiful St Lucian beach. We swore we’d remember that happy day forever.
Forever was just slightly shorter than we expected. Forever was two years.
Yesterday began as any Monday. Will woke up, he joined us in bed, Nic woke up, and the two boys woke me up. We went downstairs, waved goodbye to Nic, read Chugga Chugga Choo Choo eight hundred thousand times, had breakfast, second breakfast, played outside, etc.
I found Nic’s wedding ring sitting on the computer desk, so I wrote him a harassing email asking “why don’t you want to be married to me today?” he said it was hot last night and his finger was swelling up. I told him clearly his vows should have said “to death do us part…or it gets hot and my hands swells.”
We were talking about our wedding vows, we knew what the date was…and it didn’t occur to us once that we were missing something.
I checked my email at 3:00 and saw I had an email from my dad. Gmail always gives you a sneak peek of the first few words, and I saw “happy three year…” I wondered what on earth wishing me a happy, so I opened it up.
He was wishing me a happy three year anniversary. And I had to read that sentence twice before I understood. It was our wedding anniversary. And I’d plum forgot. Without my dad, we probably would have gotten well into the fall before we’d remember.
I was in the middle of calling a babysitter for some last minute dinner plans when I realized that it wouldn’t work—Nic has longstanding video game plans Monday and Tuesday nights. So Will and I ran off to Safeway to figure out what we’d do for a special dinner. I decided to try and recreate our latest favorite place with a little fondue. We had two types of bread, apples, melon, and grapes with our cheese fondue, and cherries, grapes, apples, chocolate cookies, melon, bananas, marshmallows, and graham crackers with our “almond joy” chocolate fondue. I tried to replicate the almond joy fondue at The Mona Lisa and did a darned good job! I picked up port and white wine at the liquor store, dashed off to Target to get the fondue pot (which doubled as both Nic’s present and a crucial element to dinner), hired the girl next door to play with Will for an hour while I cleaned up the house so it looked more like the kind of house you’d want to have an anniversary dinner at and less like Sid’s house in Toy Story…and got it all done just in time for Nic to walk in the door.
I’d called Nic in the middle of our errands to give him the head’s up, and he said he’d just been thinking of our anniversary the previous night, but couldn’t remember if it was in June or July.
Will, in an effort to help our last minute anniversary plans, was incredibly tired and went to bed at 6:00, allowing us time for dinner, lighting a fire in the backyard, Nic’s video game playing, dessert, and a lifetime movie network special.
Not bad for last minute planning!
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the latest on will
I’m 95% sure that he has roseola. He has a rash on his trunk that appeared a couple of days after his mysterious high fever. The rash doesn’t bother him, his symptoms all fit roseola, but there’s no need to worry if that’s the case, because he’s through with the worst of it (the fever).
Have I mentioned his love of dumpster diving? He loves going through the kitchen garbage, and manages to get to it even though we keep it in the laundry room (most of the time with the door closed) in the closet. The kid loves garbage.
He’s got a new naptime routine that is very very cool. I don’t have to wait for him to show “signs of the tireds” anymore…at naptime I nurse him, put him in his crib completely awake (not even a little tired), read him a story, and leave him there listening to his Laurie cds with his mp3 player (that has been my saving grace for the last few months at bed/naptime) but the new addition are the books in his crib. I read him one, then walk out, and he reads for a while and then pulls up the blanket around himself and falls asleep. I love it, because it buys me more time!! (I mean, every moment I spend with Will is a precious gift.)
Right now he’s sitting in the dishwasher playing with his musical drum from Koko. That’s his other favorite game right now. The “empty the dishwasher then pull out the bottom rack and sit inside the dishwasher” game.
He wants to be read to constantly. I am beginning to regret wishing that he’d discover a love of books. 
Last week was really miserably hot and Will was waking up a lot at night…but we got central air conditioning on Tuesday (another story) and combined with the fact that it cooled down dramatically that night (depressing since I wanna use my new a/c) Will’s sleep instantly improved–he slept straight through to 5am (an hour later than normal, even). That alone will make the $3k worth it!
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another three hour nap
no wake-up in the middle, even!
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weekend additions to will’s vocabulary
“mop” and “ni-night.”
Actually, I realized that he’s been saying “ni-night” for a couple of weeks now, but since it sounded more like “nana” I just didn’t get it until he perfected it.
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three hour nap
Will took a three hour nap today. I couldn’t believe it. He woke up after an hour, but seemed to want to go back to sleep…so I put him back in his crib and voila! Two hours later…a very happy boy woke up! I guess it means he’s still sick…but a mommy’s allowed to hope that this will be a regular occurance in her life, right?
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all better
Will slept well last night, woke up this morning without a fever, and has been completely himself for the last several hours.
Hurray!
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where everybody knows your name
We took a trip to the ER again tonight at good old Memorial North.
Will fell on our back steps yesterday and scratched up his head. Last night he had a fever, and this morning when we took his temperature it was 102. I figured he had a virus and spent the day cuddling him on the sofa. All he wanted to do was fuss and sleep, but his sleep was fitful, and he wouldn’t do it unless his head was on my belly. Probably didn’t help matters that our air conditioning won’t be installed until next week, so it was 85 degrees in the house.
We had to go to the post office, though, to send Kelly’s camera back to her (I’ve been borrowing it while mine was being repaired–thanks Kelly), so I packed Will up and off we went. The lady at the post office remarked on Will’s scraped up head (it does look pretty gnarly) and I said that he was having a rough couple of days–he fell last night and all today he’d had a fever. (The post office lady and I are good pals–we see each other at least twice a week and she knows my name, Will’s name, our most frequently used addresses to send to, etc.)
She asked if I’d taken him to the doctor, and I said no because his fever had never been near 104–the magic hospital fever number. She said that with head injuries and concussions there can be a fever…so I went home to do some google research.
I wasn’t able to look it up, though, since Will was being so clingy, so I called Nic and had him do the research. We were both pretty sure that it was just a coincidence that he had a fever soon after hitting his head…but all the same I was a little concerned that perhaps my child had been bleeding from his brain for 24 hours. We found a couple of references about fevers and head injuries, called Tricare and the nurse’s hotline, and both told us to head on over to our nearest urgent care clinic.
Which is trusty Memorial Health North, the prettiest friendly hospital in the world.
So we had Nic come pick us up and off we went. A little worried that with two visits in one month they would assume we were child abusers…but we went. Thinking that it’s a good thing they’re opening another new hospital near to us so that we can alternate our all-too-frequent ER trips between the two.
The doctor saw us very quickly, had us stay for observation (after giving Will both Tylenol and Motrin for his fever–we’d just been giving Tylenol), Nic went out to get us some take-out Chinese for dinner, Will and I laid down on the bed and watched tv and then he slept for most of the rest of our visit. The doctor came back, confirmed that he thought the fever and head-bonking were independent of one another, and sent us back home.
Not a bad hospital visit at all. Two hours, good tv reruns, good food, and a good sleeping baby snuggled next to me. Not a bad family outing, actually.
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moo.
My breast pump from the International Breastmilk Project came today. It’s very exciting. I hooked myself up, flipped it on, all the doing my best to be within FDA regulations. It’s the FDA regulations part that really makes me feel like a dairy cow. I’d like to $5 a gallon cow–you know, like the prized cows that we get our Royal Crest Dairy milk from–but instead of being one of those organic hormone free cows, I’m more like a cow that’s been grazing in a field of candy and preservatives all week. The sleep deprived cow that’s developing a tick.
Gotta start being healthy again. The preemies, sick babies, and African orphans are counting on me. Saving the world one bottle of breastmilk at a time. Go booby-juice, go!
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new words, new signs
Will now knows the sign for “hot,” “pig,” “chicken,” “owl,” and “truck.” He has also made up signs for “hairbrush” (touching his hair) and “pizza” (opening his mouth wide and hitting his tongue with the palm of his hand with incredible urgency).
He now says “stairs” and “hot” (“ha” while signing “hot”).
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little experimenter
Will lives his entire life asking and answering the question:
“What happens if I do ___________?”
The day before yesterday we were playing in the backyard, and Will put one of his giant balls (the kind they keep in cages at Target) in the bottom of his slide. It’s almost exactly the same width as the slide, so it stuck there. Will knew this because he’s done it before.
Then he toddled over to the ladder, climbed up, and started arranging himself at the top of the slide.
“Here you go, buddy” I said, and moved the ball so he could slide down.
He gave me a funny look, slid down, walked over, picked up the ball, stuck it back in the slide, and ran over to the ladder again.
“Oh.” I said. He’d done it on purpose.
He climbed up the ladder, rearranged himself at the top of the slide, and started giggling.
You could just hear him thinking “this is gonna be awesome.”
He slid down, hit the ball, and he and the ball came popping out the bottom of the slide.
It must have been just what he was hoping for, because when he stopped laughing, he put the ball back on the slide and ran over to the ladder to do it again.
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embarrassing emails
The other morning I noticed while changing Will’s diaper that his butt was sweaty. This amused me, since Nic always refused to bounce Will on the yoga ball (back in the olden days when he was a pain in the butt baby) because it “made his butt sweaty.”
So I got on the computer and sent an email with the subject line: like fathers, like son. The body of the email said (and this was all it said): “you’ll be glad to know Will’s ass is sweaty.”
When Nic got home I asked him if he’d liked the email I sent him. He said I hadn’t sent him any emails…so I described it, and he said no, he didn’t get that email.
I scratched my head, and began to wonder who I’d sent it to, if not Nic. We had a really good long laugh about it…praying to God it wasn’t one of my photography clients.
As it turned out, I actually had sent it to Nic…but we had such a good time laughing about it…pondering all the people whose names or email addresses start with “t” that I might have sent it to, that it was kind of disappointing that it all turned out okay.
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We are gearing up for a weekend of Father’s Day Weekend festivities. We decided to turn it into an entire weekend, not just a day. We will be surprising Nic with gifts and other surprises all weekend long. I won’t say more, just in case he happens to read this…just that it’s gonna be awesome.
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if you happen to have 1.8k laying around…
Buy me this for my birthday, k?
(it was worth a try)
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hungry
(wow–lots of posts from me this morning)
Usually after Will has a nap I take him to get some food, but today we got playing with ferrets, and I forgot. Well…Will didn’t forget, because a few minutes ago I turned and saw him sitting in his high chair, signing “more.” Guess the dude was hungry. 
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new photos
New photos are up. Also make sure to go back to the beginning of the gallery, because I posted some photos of our horrible hail storm from a week or two ago.
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weiner
When Will wants to know the name of something, he points to it and says “dis?” (which translates to “this?” in Will language).
As you all know, he is a willy holder. And for the last few days, he has been running around holding his willy and saying “dis?” “dis?” “dis?”
So last night Nic told him that it was his “weiner”….calling it his willy might be a little confusing. And now when you say “weiner” to Will he either points to his crotch or grabs his balls. It’s pretty amusing.
I love being an immature parent.
In less disturbing language development news, Will can now say “truck.” Which is good, because it compliments “zoom zoom” nicely.
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futile efforts
Will has spent the last five minutes trying to lint roll our ferret.
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public service announcement
Check this out. Nic won’t stop talking about it.
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kiss goodbye
When I left today, Will and Nic stood at the door waving to me as usual…but this time, totally unprompted, Will blew air kisses at me.
It made my day.
He leaned way forward and puckered up his lips and made kissing noises at me–just like Nic and I do!
Of course I returned the kisses…so he did it again.
Which made my week.
It’s probably the cutest thing ever.
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all done!
I quit being a garden girl at 2peas last night. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while, so I finally just did it. I’m going to miss my friends, though–the garden girls have their own special message board–probably the biggest plus of the job–and once you leave, you lose touch. It was the reason I stayed longer than I really wanted. When I was booted from the message board this morning I had a momentary panic of “oh god–what have I done?!” but I know it’s the right decision, so I’m happy. No more “professional” scrapping for me. The industry got so nasty this last year (and really has been all along)–that I am excited to have nothing to do with it. I’m actually thrilled about using up all of my old stuff–supplies I haven’t been able to use because 2peas doesn’t carry them anymore, or I know I won’t use well, etc. I could scrapbook Will’s first decade and not run out of paper…though I will need to buy cardstock and adhesive. I’m looking forward to walking into a scrapbook store 6 months from now and seeing all the products with fresh eyes–not having watched the pre-release hype.
I booked a large group session for late June–14 people! I’ve been doing a lot of research trying to find creative ways to pose large groups, but as you can imagine, it’s not so easy.
Tomorrow is going to be crazy–I have four shoots and it’s the neighborhood garage sale extravaganza, and we’re signed up for it, too. We don’t have any signs, anything ready, and I’m leaving at 9am tomorrow. If we weren’t so desperate to get rid of all the big pieces of furniture, and too lazy to go to Good Will, I’d say forget it!
Will is getting really good at saying ball. He says “blall” now.
And I think that’s it for big news at the Turchin household!
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broken hearts
(and before you read this, Heather, keep in mind you’re not allowed to whoop a three year old’s butt)
In the past, Will has been very assertive at playgroups. I didn’t have to worry about him…I knew he’d hold his own. But today, my little guy had his feelings hurt. And it killed me.
There were two three year olds at our play group today–and you all know how Will feels about three to four year old boys. Hero. Worship.
There wasn’t anyone Will’s age at the playgroup, and because he is tall, and because he can run just as well as any of them, the two boys let him play with them. They played chasing games, and car games, and “put a box over your head and be an oger” games. Will was in heaven.
And then, one of his heroes let him down. The three boys were standing in the kitchen, and completely unprovoked, one of the boys took a step forward and shoved Will right onto his butt. Will falls all the time and is no stranger to injury. He’s super brave. He usually doesn’t even cry. But he is a stranger to being on the receiving end of violence, and he cried and cried and cried. And when he stopped crying, he thought about it for a minute, and then he cried some more.
I chastised the offender (apparently I’m a surfer mom, cause this is what I said as I ran over to pick up Will: “whoah, dude!! not cool!!”) and his mom chastised the offender, and eventually Will got an apology from the little boy and all was well in the toddler world of justice. But I couldn’t help feeling a little sad thinking about all the times when someone will metaphorically push Will down, and I won’t be around to tattle on the offender.
In other news, Will terrorized our poor babysitter this afternoon. I had a photo shoot at 5:00, so she was there to hold down the fort until Nic got home. She called me several times…and if you’ve seen The Incredibles, all you need to do is think of the scene where Mrs Incredible is checking her voicemail to accurately picture the increasing panic in her voice. Will was crying, and she didn’t know how to handle it. Unfortunately for her, I was trying to, you know, work. Her little sister is Will’s best friend who spends at least an hour over here every day. When I suggested asking her to come over to help, the poor babysitter could not have sounded more forlorn as she explained that her sister was at a friend’s house. During the last call Nic walked in the door, and the relief in her voice as she said “oh good–he’s home” is something I know well, since it’s usually my voice. This is a huge bummer for me, since I have another late afternoon shoot this week…and now we need a new daytime babysitter. I’m thinking it might be time to hire both big and little sister…one for safety, one for entertainment. Because unfortunately it’s proving impossible to go back in time to hire my own excellent babysitting self.
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broken hearts
(and before you read this, Heather, keep in mind you’re not allowed to whoop a three year old’s butt)
In the past, Will has been very assertive at playgroups. I didn’t have to worry about him…I knew he’d hold his own. But today, my little guy had his feelings hurt. And it killed me.
There were two three year olds at our play group today–and you all know how Will feels about three to four year old boys. Hero. Worship.
There wasn’t anyone Will’s age at the playgroup, and because he is tall, and because he can run just as well as any of them, the two boys let him play with them. They played chasing games, and car games, and “put a box over your head and be an oger” games. Will was in heaven.
And then, one of his heroes let him down. The three boys were standing in the kitchen, and completely unprovoked, one of the boys took a step forward and shoved Will right onto his butt. Will falls all the time and is no stranger to injury. He’s super brave. He usually doesn’t even cry. But he is a stranger to being on the receiving end of violence, and he cried and cried and cried. And when he stopped crying, he thought about it for a minute, and then he cried some more.
I chastised the offender (apparently I’m a surfer mom, cause this is what I said as I ran over to pick up Will: “whoah, dude!! not cool!!”) and his mom chastised the offender, and eventually Will got an apology from the little boy and all was well in the toddler world of justice. But I couldn’t help feeling a little sad thinking about all the times when someone will metaphorically push Will down, and I won’t be around to tattle on the offender.
In other news, Will terrorized our poor babysitter this afternoon. I had a photo shoot at 5:00, so she was there to hold down the fort until Nic got home. She called me several times…and if you’ve seen The Incredibles, all you need to do is think of the scene where Mrs Incredible is checking her voicemail to accurately picture the increasing panic in her voice. Will was crying, and she didn’t know how to handle it. Unfortunately for her, I was trying to, you know, work. Her little sister is Will’s best friend who spends at least an hour over here every day. When I suggested asking her to come over to help, the poor babysitter could not have sounded more forlorn as she explained that her sister was at a friend’s house. During the last call Nic walked in the door, and the relief in her voice as she said “oh good–he’s home” is something I know well, since it’s usually my voice. This is a huge bummer for me, since I have another last afternoon shoot this week…and now we need a new daytime babysitter. I’m thinking it might be time to hire both big and little sister…one for safety, one for entertainment. Because unfortunately it’s proving impossible to go back in time to hire my own excellent babysitting self.
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did I ever tell you about the time
that Will peed on the floor and then slipped on it and fell on his butt and cried?
I missed most of the show–I’m pretty sure it was Nic and Heather that got to witness it…all I saw was a crying baby and two adults laughing their butts off.
I thought of that today and thought I’d share.
Will has been saying balls and balloons a LOT lately. Balls are “bla” and balloons are “bulls.”
I’m really excited about my photography sessions this past weekend–if you haven’t seen them, you should really check out the photography blog, because I’m super proud of the photos.
