Check it out. Any of those photos look familiar? Feel free to vote for…ME this time!!!
This afternoon we had another epic plains hailstorm. Hail an inch and a half across. Hail that destroys plants.
The minute it started, I thought of poor Nic and all the hard work he’s put into the garden. So, remembering something someone said, I began running around the house like a crazy person grabbing blankets and towels, and then dashing outside and throwing them on the plants.
Will watched me dash in the house and out, throwing towels and blankets and tablecloths and whatever else I could find over our plants. I was getting nailed by the hail. I had welts on my back that are now turning into bruises. It hurt so badly.
I was out in the backyard, throwing Nic’s favorite blanket over Nic’s favorite lambs ear plants, when over the sound of the hail, I heard a scream behind me. It was Will. He was holding the floormat from the backdoor and trying to scramble back inside.
The poor guy took a HUGE piece of hail to the back of the head (from the look of the wet spot in his hair and his frantic “pain” signing). He had seen me running around throwing fabric on plants, so he grabbed the floor mat and came out to help me. It was so sweet I almost cried…I took a tiny break from my frantic dashing around to bring Will around to the front porch where he could help me put the mat over my lavendar bush…while staying out of danger!
I’m not even sure if covering everything up was the right thing to do, but it felt good to be doing something. Trying to beat Colorado weather at its own game. Even if my baby and I got a little beat up in the process.
I meant to write this yesterday, but oh well.
Spirit: Oh my goodness this child has spirit. He’s an independent guy, who is not above unlocking the sliding glass door and going outside by himself into the backyard while his mother is upstairs. He throws at least one tantrum every day. He is always on the go and looking for adventure
Loves: William loves The Wiggles. He asks to watch them all the time, and it’s so sad to have to say no. He loves his neighbors Tori and Jameson. He has a special dinosaur squeal that he does when he sees her or wants to refer to her. He is always running to either Tori or Jameson’s front door, and if I let him, he’ll knock, expecting them to come out and play. He loves dogs. He loves dogs SO MUCH. If he’s throwing a tantrum you can say “hey Will–is there a dog over there?” and he’ll immediately stop crying/shouting to look for a dog. Just remembering that there are dogs in this world is enough to calm him down. Starting this weekend, he’s adoring his swing again. He could swing and swing and swing for hours. He loves his playset and is always up to new and more dangerous activities on it.
Books: Will loves his books. We’re doing bedtime stories now (a few months ago we weren’t, because books got him worked up as opposed to calmed down). He loves Jamberry and Chugga Chugga Choo Choo the best. He says “choo choo?” when he wants to read it (or play with his trains).
Baths: Will still loves his bath. We got him some bath crayons, so that’s added even more fun. He insists on a trickle of water running from the faucet for the entire bath, and he loves to put his belly under it and then laugh as we both sign “cold.”
Sleep: He is still waking up 1-2 times a night. It had gotten better, but then we went to Seattle and it got worse again. He takes one nap a day most of the time (he’ll take a second nap if we happen to be in the car around 3 or 4). It’s about an hour and a half in length.
Size: He’s still tall. Everyone still thinks he’s much older than he really is.
Language: He has about a dozen words, but at least 30 signs, and probably more. His sign language has just exploded in the last month or two. Here is a rundown of his words and signs (I’ll try to add to these as I remember ones I’ve forgotten):
WORDS: choo choo, zoom zoom, da, mom, dits (ferrets), hi, dum (food – I finally figured out that he’s calling it “dum” because I always say “yum”), dat (that), dites (lights), shoes, Nan-nan-nan (Heather), I-eee-yah (I see you), cheese (cause he loves it so), “durse” (nurse), blubs (bubbles), blalls (balls), dis (this)
SIGNS: rabbit, elephant, gorilla, bird, cat, dog, owl, cow, more, no, all done, nurse, food, hot, cold, water, milk, light, car, hairbrush, hair, rain, hat, chicken, poop, goat, “where did it go?”, thank you, airplane, flowers, ferrets, swing,
Cuddles: Will is one of the most lovey babies I’ve ever seen. He loves to give hugs, kisses, and pats. (even to strangers–especially other kids he sees) He is so affectionate and I love that part of him to pieces!
Food: He is still a very good eater. He’ll eat anything, but his favorites are salmon, yogurt, blueberries, zucchini, green beans, turkey, and jelly bellies to name a few. And he still loves nursing. He loves to be in charge of his own spoon/fork, then gets frustrated and just wants THE FOOD IN HIS MOUTH. We love taking him out to eat because it’s so amazing how far we’ve come in the last year…we can set him up with his own food and he’s good to go–we get to actually enjoy our meals! I just order his stuff as soon as they take our drink order, and then he’s almost always happy as a clam until it’s time to go.
Funny: Will loves to laugh. He has a fake laugh that is particularly amusing, and he loves to do things for a laugh. His latest trick is putting on my sunglasses. We were out shopping for wedding photog clothes the other day and when I wheeled him into the changing room I set him up in front of the mirror with my sunglasses, and he amused himself while I changed.
Will things: He swings his arms back and forth when he walks around in a happy/content/bored way. He sticks out his tongue when he’s concentrating (he gets this from Nic). He likes to climb up on big people chairs and sit there for a minute, thinking about how grown up he is. He loves to help unload the dishes from the dishwasher. He still wants to always play in the trash. He loves opening and closing doors so that he’s on the other side than you are. Strangers still tell us how adorable he is. He’s finally wearing mostly age appropriate clothing–18-24 month stuff and a just few 2T items.
There’s more to say, but I have to get back to work…
That Will also knows the sign for “poop.”
He uses it properly…although he has often been known to abuse it at bedtime as a stalling technique. “Oh look at me! You can’t go–you have to change my poopy diaper.”
Little liar. 
PS–Will is officially 18 months old tomorrow. I’m gonna make him cupcakes and then get his little footprint–just like I used to do!
In the past week or two, Will has learned:
– to jump (this, if I am not mistaken, is pretty amazing for his age). He loves it. He does it all the time. He loves to hold onto the railing of his crib or our bed and jump–but the truly amazing thing is that he can jump without holding onto anything, either. Sometimes he over does it and falls on his butt
– even more animal signs – elephant and rabbit are two of the ones to be added to dog, bird, gorilla, owl, and kitty. he also made up a sign for nursing that is much more polite than sticking his hand down my shirt–he puts his fist up to his cheek. Nic was the one to figure out what it meant.
– yesterday he did a somersault. all by himself. I’d never even shown him how!
– the word “cheese” as in the delicious dairy snack
– he is really into his trainset right now. It’s the first thing we play with him the morning. He takes me over to it saying “choo choo” and then we play. He loves to push the button to collapse the bridge, and he’s getting pretty good at pushing the trains around. Mostly he likes to watch me do it, though…but he loves to provide the sound effects!
Yesterday Nic and Will were playing in the bathtub and Nic was saying “I see you!”
And Will started saying it, too: “I eee ya!”
This, for the record Uncle Erik, is a complete sentence. ;P
I am going to be assisting an incredibly talented wedding photographer starting in TWO WEEKS!!!!!
This is a HUGE opportunity and I am so excited it’s ridiculous. I emailed her last week asking if she might be interested in having me assist her at weddings. I didn’t realize that she gets about three emails a WEEK from people asking that very thing. But she called me back, told me that she liked my stuff (a huge compliment) and that she’d like to get together with me and chat!
I drove up to Denver to meet with her tonight (I was so nervous) and I’ll start working with her on the 31st of this month! It’s better than I’d even hoped–she wants me to assist her with all of her weddings!
The experience is going to be invaluable and I can’t wait to learn a ton! This is big for our family and I am in full celebratory mood…only it’s 9pm and pretty much only the ferrets will dance around the room with me at this hour!
as the day William was finally tall/coordinated/strong enough to open doors.
His first act? To barge in on me in the bathroom.
His second? Pull down the gate outside the ferret’s room then open the door. The ferrets say “thank you for our freedom, ferret king. we are proud of you.” Then the whisper to each other “what the heck took him so long?!”
If you’re not in the habit of checking out my photog blog, I have mucho exciting news. The website I bought while in Seattle went live today. I love it. Very funky and fun. Check it out at by following the old link to some Colorado Springs portrait photography goodness.
Will wants these. I’m going to try hard not to order him one. But I’ll probably give in tomorrow and get him the earth one. They remind me of the little boy that lived two doors down from us in England who was seldom without a cape. Or hat. Or crazy shoes. Or all of the above.
I feel like in the blur of the last month or so I’ve completely lost tons of great Will things–never to be remembered or recorded. The photography business (and illness this last week) has made things more than a little crazy around here. I’m always behind, the house is always a mess, and Will has been watching entirely too much tv.
Here are a few things about Will this week:
– Tonight he pooped on a pile of my clean clothes. And then stepped in it because Nic and I were laughing too hard to prevent him from stepping in it. And then he cried and cried and cried and kept trying to cling onto me even as I was trying to dump him into the bathtub.
– He makes up signs all the time and it’s our job to keep up. So far there’s rain and telephone and nursing and others I’ve already forgotten. Nic is much better at catching their meaning than I am.
– He is still obsessed with the photo of the extended Turchin clan. The day after my last post, he grabbed the photo off the wall, hugged it to his body, and then walked around with it the whole day, giving the picture kisses and bringing it to me so I’d tell him all about what he did with each person. Today, he wanted to talk about Manu a lot.
– We got locked out of the house today because the garage keypad stopped working sometime between the time I used it to close the garage door and the time I returned home from the grocery store. We went next door to play with the neighbors and discovered that Will (who will be 18 months in about two weeks) is significantly taller and bigger than the two year old next door.
– He is the master of stalling at bedtime (walking in the footsteps of his Aunt Kelly). He discovered that if he’s cute, it’s much harder for Nic to walk away. For a few days Will would just keep handing Nic books…and if Nic walked away, Will would stand at the corner of the crib and wave a book at him. Nic couldn’t resist. And then came the hugs. He would just stand and hug you for the longest time without wiggling. He realized that the longer the hug lasted, the longer he could delay us leaving. And then the most pathetic of all–the kiss pucker. Shortly after getting home from Seattle, Will started making the puckering noise of air kisses to say that he wanted a kiss. He would make that little noise and we would come give him another kiss. Well…he brought that into bedtime. And the first night it was so cute that he got three or four rounds of kisses. Now it’s just pathetic–he’ll stand at the corner of the crib and scream at us and pucker up. And the only thing that keeps us from feeling totally guilty is the fact that if you actually go back in to give him a kiss, he refuses to let you kiss him.
– One nap. In Seattle, Will was sleep deprived enough to be back to two naps a day. Here, he’s a one nap jack. It sucks, because he gets really tired around 4:00. So now I take him to the grocery store every day around that time and he zones out in the stroller and I peruse the magazine aisle.
– A 7am baby. It seems that our Seattle trip may have cured Will from his “it’s 5am and I’m ready to go” ways. He is reliably up between 6:30 and 7:00 now. He’s not back to sleeping through the night, but the cold really set us all back, so I’m praying that with diligence on Nic and my part, he’ll be sleeping well by the end of the month.
– Will is all about pulling the toy wagon that Koko got for him. He loves to pull it around the yard. Yesterday I caught him trying to take it up the ladder with him. And I’m pretty sure he would have done it–he was halfway up when I took the handle from his hand!
– We found a pacifier or two while cleaning out the kitchen cupboards, and Will, who never liked pacifiers as a baby, has discovered a fondness for them. He likes to put it in his mouth for a minute or two, climb up onto the end table, throw the pacifier down on the sofa, jump down after it, pop it in his mouth as a prize, and the cycle begins again. Since it’s acting as a toy rather than a pacifier, I figure it’s harmless. (this will be fun to read in the future when he has a full-blown pacifier addiction and I’m trying to figure out how that possibly could have started)
– Berries. He ate a TON of blueberries at Joan’s house–both from the bush and from a carton. You know what his favorite book is now? Jamberry. A book full of tons and tons of pictures of blueberries. I felt so guilty, because on one of our first nights home, Nic was reading it to Will at bedtime and Will started signing “food” and wouldn’t stop. He wanted blueberries, and I didn’t have any for him!
– He’s doing some really cute lounging in the bathtub lately. He likes to lie on his back and have the water come all the way up on the sides of his face. As long as he can breathe, he’s a happy camper.
– He loves to smell smelly candles. A few months ago I taught him about smelling the lids of candles while we were at a Yankee Candle store, and he hasn’t stopped since.
– He can do two Wiggles songs now. I bought one of their cds on iTunes so that he can have The Wiggles whenever he asks–even if not on tv. We do the dances in the kitchen and put on our own wiggles show. He’s very good at “Rock-a-bye Your Bear” (he loves the “shh-shh-shh” and rocking from side to side parts the most) and “quack-quack-quack-quack-quack cocka-doodle-do.” Of course, I’m better at them, but it’s not a competition or anything.
– He understands SO much. I’m always amazed when I’ll say something to him in the mindless narrative of our day that I’ve gotten used to providing in his year and a half of life…and he’ll respond appropriately. Just this week I realized that I can no longer ask the up-until-now rhetorical questions about what we’re going to do next that I have for the last 18 months. I can no longer say “do you want to go upstairs?” because he’ll shake his head no. And “how about a diaper change?” is out…because he shakes his head AS HE RUNS AWAY.
We’re home!
Will and I spent two weeks in Seattle, and Nic joined us for the second week. So many fun memories. Some of the highlights:
– Will playing in the lake almost every day. Joan set up the slide that goes from the pier into the water, and he loved to go down it. He was forever inventing new ways of doing so! Belly first, head first, arms and legs flailing…
– Seeing family and friends at Kelly’s wedding reception. It was very cool to see people I hadn’t seen in five or more years!
– Dinner at The Purple Cafe. Joan gave us the treat of a gift certificate (and most importantly, babysitting) the night after Nic flew in. We went to the downtown restaurant (each has a different menu) so that we could order from their tasting menu–little snacks and desserts paired with wines. It was incredible food and a beautifully romantic evening. At the end of the evening we even got to stop by Heather and Erik’s (partly just to confirm that they were still alive after the bachelor/bachelorette parties).
– Will as ring bearer. He was so. stinking. cute. At the rehearsal, he FLEW down the aisle so fast he frequently dropped whatever we had given him to act as a ring pillow, and then there was one time when he cried and refused to go down the aisle…so we weren’t quite sure what would happen. Heather and I had faith that whatever did happen would be adorable…and Will of course delivered. We didn’t trust him with the rings, so Nic and I tied our own wedding bands onto the pillow as decoys. Nic and I moved to the center of the alter when it was Will’s turn to walk down, and Will was told to “go see Mommy and Daddy.” He actually walked (instead of running) at first, which shocked me…then he broke into a run, the rings jangling on the pillow…and then he stopped short about three feet from the alter. Unsure what to do next, he went for the money move: he through the pillow the rest of the way down the aisle. Everyone laughed and cheered and applauded for him, Nic scooped him up and gave him the pillow…and then he threw it again. It was way cute.
– Having Koko at the wedding! My Koko saved the day by being our nanny. She arrived to watch Will during the photo shoot before the wedding, then took him from Nic after Will walked down the aisle and pushed him around outside in his stroller during the ceremony. She helped us keep him semi-happy at the beginning of the reception, and then babysat him at Heather and Erik’s condo so Nic and I could enjoy the second half of the reception and then the after party! A thousand thanks to you, Koko–you made the day so much more enjoyable, not only for me and Nic, but for Heather, Erik, and Joan as well! And I don’t know what I would have done without you when Will POOPED ten minutes before we needed to walk down the aisle! Great timing, Will!
– Heather and Erik’s unofficial first dance. Months ago, when I posted the videos of Will dancing to “Suddenly I See” and explained that it is his favorite song, Heather made a request to the DJ that he have it ready to go at the reception so that Will could dance. Will needed to go home before the dancing began, though, so we made a special request that it play early, and Will and Heather got to dance. As cranky and tired after the long day as he was, he perked up immediately, and seeing him dance with Heather and Erik was so special. Arguably one of the sweetest moments of the night was when the dance ended, he looked up at Heather and signed “more.”
– The after party. As one of the designated drivers, I got to enjoy it from a particularly privileged point of view. Not only was I treated to dancing in “a Webb sandwich” (when I protested that maybe it wasn’t entirely appropriate for a married woman to dance in between twins, Nic shrugged his shoulders and pushed me onto the dance floor as Heather pulled), but I got to see Nic demand high fives from a gang of men in the street, and then got to see Heather run after them outraged and shouting “You’re not going to high-five THE BRIDE?!!!!” I also got to see what onlookers called “the coolest f-ing thing they’ve ever seen.” I saw Erik’s brother JUMP OVER a guy. Not a short guy, either–he’s got to be six feet tall himself. Not sort of jump over him by kicking a leg up over his head, not guy-who-is-getting-jumped-over-kneels down (though I will admit that he did bow his head slightly)…but JUMPED OVER as in crotched-cleared-his-head. The bars had just closed, there were plenty of people watching…and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it. There’s a video out there of it…so when it gets online I’ll share the link. It was awesome. Ridiculously immature and dangerous, but totally awesome none the less.
– The flight home. In direct comparison to the flight to Seattle, it was heavenly. On the flight to Seattle I was on my own. We took off at 7pm–Will’s bedtime…and yet he didn’t fall asleep on the first flight. Or the second flight. One hour layover, two two hour flights…and the whole time he SQUIRMED while I tried to keep him contained in my seat. Everyone around us would stand up at the end of the flight and say how good he was, so the fact that I was completely and totally exhausted by the end of it was okay…since at least we’d kept his craziness to the guy next to us and the person immediately in front of us (who probably got kicked in the back a couple of times). But the whole time I consoled myself with the fact that at least he would be awake when we got to Seattle–awake and perky to see his aunt, uncle, and grandpa. Except AS WE FLEW OVER DOWNTOWN SEATTLE (I’m serious–downtown was in my window) less than three minutes away from landing, he suddenly and unexpectedly put his head on my elbow, stopped wiggling, and fell into what can only be described as a coma. Little butt.
– New signs. When we returned home, Will suddenly started using two signs that we’ve been teaching him for months and months and months. “Eating”–what was actually the very first sign we attempted to teach him, and one he never used until now (a year later) and “pain.” While on the trip, he started says “mom” again regularly (previously I could go a week without hearing it)–he says it “mom-mom-mom” and it is precious.
– The bachlorette party and related pampering. I loved the bridal party. The bridesmaids were wonderful, Heather’s friend are awesome, and luckily we had several opportunities to bond and hang out. From the bachlorette party (we spent most of the evening at a gay bar) to Go-Kart racing, to having pedicures and manicures the day before the wedding, to the after party. It was a lot of fun without any babies. I got to go out and have fun without Will, and as much as I love him, I sure did enjoy having fun without him! 
– Will missing Nic. A week is a long time to go without seeing your “Da!” and every morning Will would wake up and point to the picture of Nic that was on top of our nightstand. He would wave and say “Da!” It broke my heart.
– Getting home. Will was visibly happy to be home. The first morning (we snuck him home while he slept) he woke up and excitedly ran around the living room, touching everything, opening up his toy chest, shouting about all of his favorite toys. He was so excited to be home–I hadn’t expected that. But then later I found him staring at the photo of the extended Turchin clan–the people he’d seen every day for the last two weeks (Joan, Chris, Manu, Heather, and Erik). I picked him up so he could look at it more closely and he pointed at it and then waved to everyone. Like “hey! I know who those people are!” As excited as he is to be home, I can tell he misses you guys!
It was raining last night, and, not having an appropriate sign, Will made up his own. He patted the top of his head, then signed “water.”
Nic kept telling him “that’s right, buddy–that’s rain. It’s water that falls on your head.”
There is a very strong chance that at some point in our visit, you will find yourself babysitting Will. This is because it is quite likely that Nic and I will arrive in town, dump him on the nearest willing family member, and go off cavorting around town. Should you find yourself in that situation, here are a few things that you might find useful.
Food
Will is a very good eater. It is probably my one success as a mother. He will eat almost anything. In fact, I can’t think of anything that he won’t eat. You might have to offer it to him two or three times, but he’ll eat it.
There are, however, some things that he particularly enjoys eating. This is a fun thing to know, because foods that Will likes usually get a happy food dance out of him. It’s adorable. And there are some foods that he loves so much that he’ll eat them long past the point of being full, and it’s hilarious to watch the faces he makes as he tried to fit one more bite of salmon in his stomach.
Foods that warrant a happy food dance:
salmon, mac’n’cheese, grilled cheese, pasta, basically any food that involves cheese, fruit salad, eggo waffles with peanut butter, cheezits, swedish fish (yes, the candy…yes, I’m a bad mom), Milano cookies, and a bunch of other things that I have forgotten to list.
Will is big on using his own fork/spoon lately…but he has limited success. He’s not a bib wearer, so it’s easier to strip him down before a meal or to have another outfit at the ready.
Observing
Will loves to tell you all about the things he sees. A lot of the time this involves signs, so if you don’t understand what he’s signing, just very enthusiastically say “yeah, buddy–I see it! great signing!” Sometimes he will be shouting “bla!” “bla!” and I will be all “hmm–no balloons or balls around here, buddy–I don’t know what you’re talking about” only to see it a second later. He’s almost always right, so now I try to look very hard for what he’s talking or signing about. Last night, for example, Nic was giving Will animal crackers, and Will started signing what Nic thought was chicken. Nic laughed and said, “no chickens here, buddy” only to realize a minute later that Will had been signing “gorilla” (they’re very close) and talking about the pictures of the gorilla he’d seen on the animal cracker package.
Consider yourself warned
If you tell Will no, there is a chance that he might pull your hair or bite you. This is a recent development and one we’re working to correct. If he does, say “no” and put him in The Naughty Corner. Any corner will do. Say “naughty corner” in a stern voice, and place him in the corner. If he’s really worked up, he might fight it. Hold him in the corner until he accepts that he’s going to stay in there for the rest of his life. Once he gives signs of having his will broken, you can say “you can come out now.” He then has to give a hug to say sorry. If he keeps shouting/biting/hitting/pulling hair, he probably needs some quiet time. Sometimes he gets a little worked up and needs some time to decompress. You can put him in his pack’n’play with his books and he might holler at you for a minute or two, but odds are good that he’ll just read his books happily and quietly for a while before shouting that it’s time to come out.
Will loves to unload dishwashers, and doesn’t understand the difference between clean dishes and dirty dishes. He knows how to unlock and open the lever style dishwasher doors…so prepare to say “no” and stick him in the naughty corner if he discovers yours.
Books…Will loves books! He loves to look at books, loves to be read to…but he still loves to destroy books. Don’t trust him alone with anything other than a board book.
Will is a climber. He’ll climb on top of tables, sofas, endtables, chairs…if he can get up onto it, he will. We find the best way to keep him off of a surface is to keep everything off of it. If there’s something up there, he’s going to want to check it out. Watch him like a hawk…he’s good at getting up, but he’ll generally shout to have someone get him down.
The Wiggles
Will loves The Wiggles. We’ll probably buy a DVD before we come for any babysitting emergencies. If Will gets worked up, you can sit with him on the sofa and watch The Wiggles for a while. When I’m working, Nic sometimes calls on “wiggly naps”–he and Will watch The Wiggles, snuggle on the sofa, and fall asleep. Will is pretty routine oriented, and is very good about taking naps by just going into his crib at naptime fully awake for me, but a change of location/caregiver could easily upset the precious balance. You are welcome to do whatever you like in that situation (letting him cry in his crib is always an option), but if you want to, you can always call on a “wiggly nap” to ease him into sleep.
Music
Will loves music! Play some good music and you’ll find a happy dancer on your hands!
Helper
Will loves to sweep and mop. He also likes to help by taking everything in your garbage out of your garbage. Probably a good idea to move your garbage under the sink or behind a closed door (hint: he can open closet doors).
Diaper Changes
These have the potential to be an epic battle. Lately, though, they’ve been turning around. We find that singing “if you’re happy and you know it” or “pat-a-cake” turns a diaper change into a pleasant experience with a willing subject. Otherwise, it’s a good idea to have two people–one to hold him down and watch those hands–he loves to grab his willy…even if it’s covered in poo.
Sunscreen
Will has a good tan going (and you’ll see how blonde he’s become), but we are COMPLETELY ANAL about putting sunscreen on the scars on his face. The one near his eye and the one on his forehead MUST have sunscreen on them if he’s going to go outside. Even if it’s just to walk to the mailbox at 6pm, he’s gotta have sunscreen on his scars if he goes outdoors. I have a little chapstick sunscreen thing that makes it easy…and he knows the routine, so he’s very good about having it applied.
Injury
Will falls down all the time. We don’t make a big deal about it. We always say “crash!” “boom!” or something positive, and so he only cries when it really hurts (or if he’s embarrassed). Don’t feel badly if he scrapes his knees–he does that all the time. And if he really gets injured, don’t worry. God knows we’ve already taken him to the ER twice. He’s a tough kid to keep out of harm’s way. We won’t be mad if you break him a little. That said, you gotta watch him like a hawk. He’s sneaky and smart and hell-bent on killing himself.
Licky Face
One of Will’s most favorite of games is to lick you in the face. It means you’re part of the tribe. It’s sick, but it comes with love. He loves it if you squeal and act like his licks are as gross as they are. He’ll probably do it again and then you’ll be playing Licky Face forever.
That’s it for now…I’ll add more as I think of it.
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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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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no wake-up in the middle, even!
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“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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Buy me this for my birthday, k?
(it was worth a try)
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(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 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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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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Will has spent the last five minutes trying to lint roll our ferret.
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Check this out. Nic won’t stop talking about it.
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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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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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(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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(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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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.
I gained 5 lbs last month. No one said starting a business would be easy, but they didn’t say I’d have trouble fitting into my favorite pants! Looks like Will and I will be headed to the gym this month…Heather fires any bridesmaids that turn into fatties, right? It’s a good thing my dress is a little big…after all of my camera problems this week (a huge thanks to Kelly and Brian for coming to my rescue and loaning me their rebel camera body) I’ll probably need all the extra room I can get.
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Will wouldn’t stop saying his new (as of today) word “shoes” while I put his sandals on him this afternoon. It’s so cute when he says it “shoosss.”
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One of the things that I like most about baby signing is that it gives little ones the tools they need to communicate, and even find their own ways of doing it. On two occassions, Will has made up his own signs to talk about whatever it was he wanted to say. I can’t remember what the first one was, but this weekend he made up a new sign: “telephone” is now putting your hand up to your ear.
And when he wants something and you’re just not getting it, he’ll always just take you by the hand, drag you near it, and say “dis?!” (this)
Yesterday he added a new word to his vocal vocabulary: “bubbles” (say it as fast as you can, and that’s a pretty good idea of how it sounds when Will says it)
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We went to The Mona Lisa in Manitou Springs last night. It’s a local version of The Melting Pot.
Yum. So good.
A four course meal that started with a delicious salad, then cheese fondue with bread, fruit, and veggies (the grapes were our favorite), then meat and seafood (which reminded us of Chris and Manu, since we used the same type of raclette grill at their house in Germany), then dessert…which was crazy cool. We got “the turtle”–milk chocolate and caramel fondue (with walnuts) that they poured flaming alcohol over and we got to roast our marshmallows over the flame for a minute before dunking them in the chocolate! We also had wine and port, and even though I’d been fasting for much of the afternoon in anticipation of the two hour meal, I was so full I thought I might die. Nic kept reaching over and taking swigs of my port to hurry me along. (It was so yummy, but by the time we got to dessert our motto was “just take a tiny bite of everything.”)
We discovered their wine tasting bar on the way out and decided that we’ll definitely be back with friends to check that out…but this time we’ll stick to just the cheese and dessert. No need to kill yourself trying to pack 5000 calories into one meal.
Apparently The Mona Lisa is a big celebration spot, because everyone (from the time we made reservations to the time we paid the check) kept asking if we were celebrating anything…our answer? “Having a babysitter.”
And what a celebration it was!
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It was a ton of work, but my website is live!
I knew that starting a business would be time consuming, but dude. Couple that with being a mom to Will and trying to keep the ants from invading our downstairs, and it’s…well…a lot. But good. Because I’m really happy with the website. I feel like it’s really me. I had huge angst over the logo–I hired a super talented designer, but wasn’t sure that any were any me. So I took one and played with it, and I’m really happy with it. I love that it was a collaboration–it means that it’s really…me.
If you see any mistakes, let me know! (except for the sound icon–there’s a sound icon in the upper right corner but no actual sound…I’m working removing that little icon.)
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A few days ago I gave Will an empty DVD case to play with. He opened it up (which takes some strength), looked inside it for a little while, then walked over to the dvd player, turned it on, pressed the open button, grabbed the DVD from inside of it, carried it back to the DVD case, and tried to put it inside.
Dude. The kid’s a genius. We don’t even watch DVDs around him very often! (probably twice a month)
He loves the disc drives on our computers upstairs. Figured out how to turn on the computer, push the button to open it up, and push it back in months ago…and lately he’s been trying to stick the cds he finds on Nic’s desk in their proper position.
Yesterday I got a new memory card in the mail and it came with a photo recovery software cd (which is hilarious, since it is exactly four days too late–I had to purchase photo recovery software on Saturday)…anyway, Will took this little mini disc in its sleeve from me, spent a few minutes ripping open the packaging, and then took it over to the dvd player and tried to put it in.
In other Will stuff, he’s been walking around with his hands behind his back lately, or just standing around with his hands behind his back. We don’t know what it’s about, but it’s very cute.
He loves to drag me around places. For about two weeks he’s been coming over, grabbing my hand, and leading me to wherever he wants to go. If I don’t come willingly, he puts his whole weight into dragging me there.
He is obsessed with the outdoors. It’s nothing new, but it’s really sucking these last few days because it’s been too cold and rainy (last night it snowed and even stuck a tiny bit) to go outside. Will does not accept this. The first day I took him outside and he cried because it was cold…then cried when I took him inside because he was inside. Yesterday he just threw giant fits about it.
He’s been super cute signing old things in new contexts…he signed “lights” at lightning, “water” at the rain…and he’s learned some new signs, too. I made up one for gorilla, and he does it by waving his arms around in front of his chest. Yesterday we were reading one of his animal books and he got very angry with me for not giving signs to EVERY animal. Dude! Gimme a break! So I made up ones for elephant, owl, and chicken. He was very intent on getting one for chickens. I need an animal ASL dictionary!
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Things should be a little bit louder around here now. The laptop keyboard has been broken ever since I spilled cream soda all over it, so I haven’t been able to post while Will plays downstairs. But we’re back. And I am a friggin’ genius.
It’s true.
You’re probably thinking that Nic orchestrated and implemented the whole fix. But no. His idea was to buy an external keyboard attachment or even a new laptop. But genius that I am, I figured that I could probably buy a new keyboard part on Ebay. After all, my lappy is pretty old as far as lappies go (2-3 years), so probably most of its brothers and sisters are being sold for scrap parts by now.
I figured out the model number I needed, researched the part and best prices, ordered it, and signed for it–all by myself.
After pestering Nic to install it for a few days I took matters into my own hands…which means, yes, I am responsible for all of its genius, goodness, and general awesomeness from start to finish.
I would write some stuff about Will right now, but I’m too busy congratulating myself.
Off to crack open a beer to celebrate….at 7:30am on a Sunday. Maybe I should switch that to orange juice.
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Sometimes my appliances feel badly that they can’t help out more. They see the chores I do, they see the chores I want to do but barely have time for…and so sometimes they think “hey–maybe I could help.”
Today, for example, my dishwasher decided to help by washing the kitchen floor. It knew that my nana is coming tomorrow, and it knew that I was going to mop…so it thought it would get things started.
I have no idea why we had bubble monsters taking over the kitchen. I know for a fact that I used the regular dishwashing powder–the same powder I used last night. Maybe I was soaking a pot in dishwashing liquid and forgot to rinse it? Maybe my dishwasher just really does want cleaner, more sparkely floors?
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One of Will’s latest cute things is patting us. When he gives us a hug, he sometimes accompanies it with a little pat on the back. It’s hilariously cute.
Tonight we were playing outside while Nic put the last touches on his repairs to the sprinkler system. Nic made some kind of frustrated noise, and Will toddled over, patted him on the back, and then walked away again. As if to say, “There, there. It will be okay, Daddy.”
So. Freaking. Cute.
He’s also very into helping. Not only does he help me move the clothes from the washer into the dryer, and the silverware from the dishwasher into their little pots, he’s very good about wiping up messes. I wrote about how he “helped” clean up the Cheezits by rubbing a babywipe over them, and that continues. If he comes across something that he’s spilled, he’ll get a baby wipe or a towel and wipe at it. But our favorite happened this weekend when he went over to the baby wipes, grabbed a few, and started wiping the seat of his pants with them.
“Do you need a diaper change, buddy?” Nic asked, mostly joking.
But when we went to check, sure enough, he’d pooped. And was now trying to wipe himself.
Love of Jelly Bellies is now a shared part of our lives. I picked up a 2lb bag while I was at Office Max yesterday, and while I was making dinner last night, I turned around to see Will standing on the dining room chair, bag of Jelly Bellies in front of him (which he’d brought toward him from their original position in the middle of the table), eating them with both hands.
The kid has good taste. He can sniff out candy a mile away. He’s like his mother in that way.
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We had wanted to make William’s first haircut super special…we planned to get it in Disney World. Only William didn’t have enough hair to warrant a haircut when we were in Disney World in September, so I changed the plan. We would wait until we are in Seattle in July to get his hair cut, and he could go to the woman who cuts my hair (whom I’m kind of a fanatic about).
But the mullet got the best of me. For a while I was able to just smooth down the curls at the nape of his neck, but for the last couple of weeks they’ve been a little out of control. So today we went off to the children’s hair salon!
Will fell asleep in the car, so I worked on my knitting in the parking lot and waited for him to wake up. I was hoping that he’d wake up in a really good mood…because I knew that if my child screamed and cried during a hair cut I would consider myself a total failure as a mother and give him up for adoption on the spot. But I knew it was a little risky…he could also wake up cranky and ready for blood.
As it turned out, it worked out better than I could ever have imagined. He woke up sleepy. He clearly wasn’t finished with his sleep cycle, which looked really bad at first. He was clingy when we walked in, and cried when I sat him in the fire truck chair.
Not like my Will at all.
They said he might do better if I held him in my lap, but I asked if we could just have a minute for him to wake up instead. The receptionist broke out the bubbles, and the stylist popped in a Wiggles DVD (dude–there’s DANCING on Wiggles DVDs–anyone know any babies that like dancing?). The next time I put Will in the chair, he was cool with it.
And for the rest of the haircut, he behaved like a tiny little angel.
Seriously. In fact, he almost fell asleep several times–he spent most of the haircut listing to one side or leaning his head on the stylist’s arm. She broke out the little baby clippers last, and said “this always makes them mad” except that it didn’t. Will just kept on chillin’ as he let her shave the nape of his neck and temples.
The stylist couldn’t stop talking about how good he was. I couldn’t stop thinking about how crazy awesome the timing was. I mean, I knew he wouldn’t cry…but I didn’t expect him not to wiggle and squirm! Where was my active Will?
He woke up just in time for me to pay, and then ran around the front of the store trying to knock all the styling products off their shelves.
The mullet is gone and he looks like a little boy even more now. I was prepared for him to look more grown up, but I wasn’t prepared for his hair to feel differently…and it does. Not so soft any whispy anymore. I rubbed my hand on his head shortly after the haircut (as I do about a thousand times a day) and was shocked that it felt differently. Made me a little sad.
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Since that last post is kind of a downer, I thought I’d say this, too:
If you ask Will “give momma a kiss?” or just “momma kiss?” he gives me kisses.
And if you say, “do you want a hug?” He’ll come over and give you one.
And if you look at the back of his head, he has a curly little mullet going on. (We’re getting his hair cut this week. Hopefully he’ll be a little less Billy Ray Cyrus at the end of it.)
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Will is not yet 15 months old. Keep this in mind as you read the following.
Last night Will woke up at 11:30 (as usual–even when he sleeps through the night I can still hear him tossing and turning and talking in his sleep around 11:00). Because he’s been sick, I went into his room, nursed him, and lay him back down. At first he was buying it…then he decided he wanted out.
I closed his door, went back to our room and listened to him protest as I lay in semi-sleep and wondered when we’d once again have him sleeping through the night.
Then, twenty minutes later, I was completely awake. I’d heard three loud bangs–like someone hitting something. I knew it was probably just Will throwing toys out of the crib or ripping apart the walls…but for some reason it had me totally freaked. I woke Nic up, and made him go into the hall first.
We opened Will’s door and saw…
Will.
Standing there. Out of his crib.
He’d climbed out of his crib and banged on the door to be let out (Nic taught him to bang on the door while I’m in the bathroom…which I’m still trying to find a way to get back at him for).
I freaked out. I’m still freaking out. When you put a 14 month old baby into a crib, you expect him to be safe. You don’t expect to see him wandering around his bedroom twenty minutes later.
It sucks a lot. I don’t feel safe with him in his crib anymore. I don’t know how we’re going to be able to continue to work with him on sleeping through the night (every few weeks he’ll get sick or get teeth or something will happen to throw him off and we’ll have to work with him on sleeping through the night all. over. again.).
He didn’t seem hurt, so I would still love to see how he managed it–if it was a fall from the top railing or just a controlled climb down. But after such adventure we were both super awake, and I wasn’t about to put him back in his death trap crib, so I took him downstairs in the middle of the night. Two and a half hours later, we were both back in our respective beds. Though I kept his door open and slept on alert.
I won’t whine and complain about the lack of sleep since Friday…except that I will. Friday night Will kept up our entire household–including poor visiting Koko–by crying and crying and crying no matter what we did [nursing, holding, rocking, laying down with him] and only sleeping in five-ten minutes spurts…Saturday we had another up-in-the-middle-of-the-night for two hours party…and then yesterday we had the crib/midnight party fiasco.
Now, it would be one thing if he was waking up at night but catching up on that sleep by sleeping in. But no–the kid is still up at 0630, if not earlier. Or if he took some extra or just extra long naps. But no–the kid fights his nap harder than ever and it’s still just an hour. This weekend we’ve had to resort to “walking naps”–taking him in the stroller to get him to fall asleep. Which, if anyone’s keeping track, does me zero good, since I will get neither free time nor a nap by being his personal walker during a nap.
And all of this would be one thing, if he was an easy toddler to look after when he was awake. But no. The child is go-go-go. All. Of. The. Time.
And it’s hard as a mother of just the one, because you’re pretty sure that this isn’t normal, even for boys. Pretty sure that one child should not be this much work or this exhausting or this BUSY. But you don’t want to be like those people that are sure they’re special when really they’re just like everyone else, so you walk around trying to convince yourself that everyone else is going through the same thing.
My cousin JJ is an active little dude. He’s pretty much my only frame of reference, and he’s a good kid. So when my Koko was visiting here this week, I asked if Will reminded her of JJ. And she said no.
My grandmother is the mother of four boys and grandmother/greatgrandmother of three boys. I would say she’s got enough experience under her belt to be an expert on normal toddler boy behavior.
And you know what she said? She said the only one that reminded her of Will was my uncle Kent.
Validation.
Uncle Kent was her fourth boy, and she actually took him to a doctor when he was Will’s age to make sure that it wasn’t just her–that he really was crazy active/into everything. And you know what the doctor said? He offered to put him on medication.
More validation.
I love Will so much. But he is very difficult. Loving, smart, affectionate, hilarious…but insanely curious, active, and determined. It feels good to know that it’s not me. That he really is not normal. That mothering him really is tougher than mothering other children. That all the thoughts I have every day about me deserving a Congressional Medal of Honor if we both make it through the next 17 years without killing each other or turning into delinquent criminals are totally legit. That sometimes letting him lick the crusty gunk off the top of lotion bottles just so I can have five minutes where he’s happily occupied and not climbing the furniture like a deranged monkey is probably not the worst parenting crime ever commited.
Nic said this morning as he left for the sanctuary of work away from his sleep-deprived and unstable family that when Jesus was handing out babies he said “Oh my. This one’s gonna be tough. We’ll give him to Traci. She’s the only person that can make sure he turns out to be a loving productive member of society.”
This is a very nice way of looking at it, and I appreciate the sentiment very much. It’s much nicer than the “what did I ever do to you, God?!” train of thought that I was running. So I think I’ll look at it that way. As an honor.
And when I forget to look at it that way, Will and his cute face are right there–ready to and waiting give me kisses and hugs.
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Sometimes I get to do things for the first time. Like walk or sign “water” or say “ferret”…today I got to go to the hospital!
Koko flew into town yesterday, so I thought long and hard about things we could do with her. Mommy thought we should go to the park, or the zoo, or Old Colorado City…she went to a yarn class today, and while she was gone I got to play with Koko. Koko is FUN. So much fun that I thought the park or zoo or Old Colorado City just wouldn’t be exciting enough. So once Mommy got home I bonked my head on my toy box in just the perfect place near my eye!
I screamed for a minute, but I’m so brave that it only took a minute or two to calm me down. Then Koko and Mommy had to decide whether to take me to a doctor. They then called Daddy to talk about where exactly we could go. Our normal doctor’s office on base doesn’t have an ER, and the nearest military ERs were pretty far, so Mommy called Tricare and they said we could go anywhere we wanted.
Well, I know Mommy, so I knew exactly where we were going to go: the brand new hospital near our house that Mommy hasn’t shut up about. It’s beautiful from the outside–the coolest hospital you’ve ever seen. They’re building another hospital even nearer to our house, but Mommy always jokes that she would drive straight past it on the way to the PRETTY hospital in the even of an emergency. Lucky for her it isn’t finished yet, so off to Memorial North we went!
I didn’t cry at all while Mommy and Koko decided what to do, and not at all while we drove or checked in or waited. The nurses there were so nice–everyone wanted to be my friend, and everyone said I was cute and a doll and adorable. That’s probably because I was so brave about my cut! We had to wait a very long time, which made Mommy a little irritated, but I used that time to explore everywhere and everything…and my nurse Matt was my best buddy in the whole world! He gave me a bear, and crackers, and picked me up and took me all over the ER on little mini tours.
Eventually Daddy came home from work and got to wait with us…and that was pretty good.
Finally after what Mommy said was more than two hours, the doctor came. Matt was not my friend for a minute. He rolled me up tight in a blanket and held me still while that slowbee doctor glued my face to make it better! I really hated that. A lot. I screamed my best screams and cried my best cries, but Mommy didn’t even help me, and Koko didn’t even help me, and Daddy just stood there, too! I was very very angry.
But then Matt let me go and brought me a popsicle and then we were best pals again. I’m forgiving like that.
And then Mommy and Daddy and Koko took me to Panera Bread for my favorite broccoli cheddar soup, so I forgave them, too.
I was pretty tuckered our after my day of adventures, so I fell asleep on the way home and let Daddy carry me up to bed. Tomorrow Mommy will take a picture for you, though, so you can see my awesome wound.
Mommy was a little worried that the potential scar might ruin my otherwise adorable face, but then she remembered:
Chicks dig scars.
She thinks it will turn out all right in the end.
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Sometimes I get to do things for the first time. Like walk or sign “water” or say “ferret”…today I got to go to the hospital!
Koko flew into town yesterday, so I thought long and hard about things we could do with her. Mommy thought we should go to the park, or the zoo, or Old Colorado City…she went to a yarn class today, and while she was gone I got to play with Koko. Koko is FUN. So much fun that I thought the park or zoo or Old Colorado City just wouldn’t be exciting enough. So once Mommy got home I bonked my head on my toy box in just the perfect place near my eye!
I screamed for a minute, but I’m so brave that it only took a minute or two to calm me down. Then Koko and Mommy had to decide whether to take me to a doctor. They then called Daddy to talk about where exactly we could go. Our normal doctor’s office on base doesn’t have an ER, and the nearest military ERs were pretty far, so Mommy called Tricare and they said we could go anywhere we wanted.
Well, I know Mommy, so I knew exactly where we were going to go: the brand new hospital near our house that Mommy hasn’t shut up about. It’s beautiful from the outside–the coolest hospital you’ve ever seen. They’re building another hospital even nearer to our house, but Mommy always jokes that she would drive straight past it on the way to the PRETTY hospital in the even of an emergency. Lucky for her it isn’t finished yet, so off to Memorial North we went!
I didn’t cry at all while Mommy and Koko decided what to do, and not at all while we drove or checked in or waited. The nurses there were so nice–everyone wanted to be my friend, and everyone said I was cute and a doll and adorable. That’s probably because I was so brave about my cut! We had to wait a very long time, which made Mommy a little irritated, but I used that time to explore everywhere and everything…and my nurse Matt was my best buddy in the whole world! He gave me a bear, and crackers, and picked me up and took me all over the ER on little mini tours.
Eventually Daddy came home from work and got to wait with us…and that was pretty good.
Finally after what Mommy said was more than two hours, the doctor came. Matt was not my friend for a minute. He rolled me up tight in a blanket and held me still while that slowbee doctor glued my face to make it better! I really hated that. A lot. I screamed my best screams and cried my best cries, but Mommy didn’t even help me, and Koko didn’t even help me, and Daddy just stood there, too! I was very very angry.
But then Matt let me go and brought me a popsicle and then we were best pals again. I’m forgiving like that.
And then Mommy and Daddy and Koko took me to Panera Bread for my favorite broccoli cheddar soup, so I forgave them, too.
I was pretty tucked our after my day of adventures, so I fell asleep on the way home and let Daddy carry me up to bed. Tomorrow Mommy will take a picture for you, though, so you can see my awesome wound.
Mommy was a little worried that the potential scar might ruin my otherwise adorable face, but then she remembered:
Chicks dig scars.
She thinks it will turn out all right in the end.
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Will has been super cute lately on the love front. He has taken to coming over and hugging my back whenever I bend down to do something. And yesterday I said “do you want to kiss mommy?” not expecting him to understand at all, but he opened his mouth and gave me a kiss! (Will isn’t a pucker up kind of guy–his latest idea of kissing is opening his mouth wide and then touching his lips to your face. Super cute and not sloppy or gross like his Aunt Kelly’s kisses were when she was little!
My friend Erin came over for lunch today and let me practice for my photography sessions this week by photographing her little one. Sarah is super super cute and absolutely bribe-able with Craisins. If you have Craisins and Cheez-Its, you can pretty much rule the world.
Will got two shots at Peterson today and was very brave (because of some Cheez-Its). Then we went to the commissary which was a big mistake. He was already tired and cranky and the commissary did not put him in a good mood. He bit me, I said “no” so he slapped me in the face.
Yeah.
In public.
At the commissary.
With my cart overflowing with frozen dinners.
Yeah.
I was that mom today.
We’re going for sushi tomorrow night with Erin’s husband and daughter and another couple friend of theirs. After we clean the garage and hang pictures. And after I jump around all gloat-y like because I finished another slideshow tonight. It’s Will’s whole first year and it took me three days to do. I whittled down 10,000 pictures to 480. (Yes, 480 is a lot, but it’s a lot less than 10,000.) And it’s for me. And anyone else who happens to be crazy enough about Will to watch an entire year of his life set to pretty rockin’ music.
We will also tackle the weed monsters again. I’ve urged Nic not to use chemicals in our yard, but I’m thinking there’s only so many more hours he can pull dandelions before he cracks and hoses Will directly with some weed killer and then sets the lawn on fire, dandelions and all.
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I made this slideshow today. It’s ginormous (108mb) and will probably take about 12 mins to download, but I promise it’s worth it. It made me cry and I’m the one that made it!
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William had a rough afternoon. The kind of afternoon that drives me to such rants as that last one. He woke up from his nap mad, and never got over it.
I’d reached the end of my rope and I knew it would still be at least 45 minutes before Nic came home (because I called and asked), so I gave Will an open box of Cheezits, put the Dyson on standby, sat down with a magazined, and decided that any mess was worth it.
And it was. I had a few blissful minutes to peace and quiet while Will sprinkled the Cheezit crumbs all over the downstairs (it was a box of broken Cheezits–it came to us that way). Like he was sowing little Cheezit seeds to be harvested at a later date.
Since this was going to do nothing to help our ant problem, I only let him play his Cheezit games for a few minutes before I got up and started putting the larger pieces into a ziplock bag for later snacking. Will followed me around until I asked him “will you help Mommy clean up the Cheezits?”
And then something surprising happened–he understood me, and he did help me. He picked up the big pieces, just as I was doing, and dumped them into the bag.
When we had finished, I went to get the vaccuum. When I came back, that precious boy had gotten a baby wipe and was wiping up the crumbs on the carpet.
I’m not lying. He had gotten a baby wipe and was trying to clean up all the tiny pieces by rubbing the carpet with a baby wipe, because when he’s done with every meal, I get down on the kitchen floor and clean up all the crumbs with a wet washcloth.
Sweet, sweet boy. I picked him up, gave him a kiss, then let him hold onto the vaccuum while we pushed it around to really clean up all the crumbs.
We have instituted time outs with William. I am a student of the John Rosemond book of toddler-training, and he says that the “twos” often start at 18 months…but William is advanced. If he can figure out how to work the lever on the dishwasher, he can figure out time out. If he knows to push the power button on the washing machine and then to spin the dial and then to push play to make the washing machine start, he can understand time out. If he can make himself invisible to avoid diaper changes, he can understand time out.
I have resisted starting time outs because John Rosemond says that to start such methods before 18 months isn’t really advised. But then Will took his climbing to new heights. And when you play around with safety, Mommy doesn’t play around with you. I had a choice–get rid of all the furniture in our house, or get Will to absolutely, positively not climb on the chairs and entertainment center. Enter The Naughty Corner.
The Naughty Corner is going very well. As per John Rosemond, I put him there until just before he was about to move away, and then I said “you can come out now.” The first two times I had to hold him in the corner for a few minutes until he accepted that he was going to either (a) stop fighting me or (b) meet a nice girl and settle down for life in the naughty corner. He stopped fighting, I let him out. Now when you take him to the naughty corner he puts one hand on the wall, makes the pouty face, and stays for three seconds until I ask him to rejoin our fun. I couldn’t believe that he caught on so fast. And best of all–it’s working really well.
I’ll be interested to see at what age our future children meet The Naughty Corner. A prize to the one that holds out longest. A big, giant prize from a grateful exhausted mommy.
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When Heather was here, she took peekabo to a new level for us–Will had enjoyed playing it with blankets and towels before, but had never covered his own eyes…well, Heather taught him how to do that, and now I spend at least an hour every day playing “Where’s William?”
Nic and I are such good actors that Will is now convinced that when he covers his eyes, he actually disappears. How do I know this? Earlier this week, when I approached him after a meal for his traditional “squirm-while-mommy-tries-to-wipe-me-down,” he covered his eyes. Completely convinced that he had become invisible and was now impervious to my cleaning attempts.
He also does this trick as we attempt diaper changes…it is super cute, and a little bit sad that we have to break his illusion by wiping him down anyway.
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Nic has spent this week commenting on William’s “little boyness.” Will was a Hudge, then a Boober…and now he’s a little boy. Last night Nic looked at Will as Will puttered around the living room on his foot-powered car and said “Look at our little boy. I like the little person he’s turning into.” And it’s true–he is our little boy. Not much of a baby at all.
For Nic, this is infinitely better than the newborn/infant stage…which, truth be told, didn’t really float Nic’s boat. This–this little boy who wants to be read to, played with, taken places–this is Nic’s thing. As a newborn, Will loved me. Sure he loved Nic, but I was his true love. When Will was upset, I was the one with the magic boobies. Will and Mommy. It was a pretty solid duo. Now…Will still adores me, but he has plenty of room in his heart for his hero–Daddy. He throws a giant tantrum in the morning if he thinks Nic has left without a proper goodbye. Proper goodbyes in the Turchin household involve me holding Will and standing at the door while we wave to Nic until he pulls out of the driveway and closes the garage door.
Will then spends the rest of the day waiting for his favorite sound in the whole world–the sound of the garage door opening. He often hears it even when I don’t, but I know it’s happened because Will stops whatever he’s doing, stands up, and runs for me with his arms over his head while shouting “Da?!…Da?!”. This means “pick me up and take me to the laundry room and throw open the door so we can wave to Daddy as he drives in.”
It is virtually impossible to convince Nic that we ever have rough afternoons (and we have our fair share) because as soon as Will hears the garage door open, the crankies fade and he is all smiles. Poor Nic can’t even take off his hat or coat (and god forbid his shoes) because as soon as he nears us, Will throws himself at him for a giant hug. He usually then wants to read stories.
So I completely understand why Nic enjoys this stage ever-so-much more than the newborn blob phase.
Me? I’m missing the blob. The blob was awesome. The blob slept a ton during the day. My little boy just transitioned to one nap a day, but is still waking up at the crack of dawn (and usually before) and this one nap is only slightly longer than one hour. The blob could be tucked into a baby sling and worn for hours while I got stuff done. The little boy has serious opinions about how he wants to spend his time…and how I should spend mine. The blob couldn’t hold up his own head. The little boy touches, climbs, eats, and wants to destroy everything.
The blob was much easier than the little boy…and nobody told me this.
If they had told me this, I wouldn’t have gone balls-to-the-wall super mom for the first few months. I would have perhaps bought a basket, put Will in it, and went off in search of a river. I thought it was supposed to get easier, that the newborn and infant stuff was the hard part…and so I thought it was a piece of cake and I was gonna rock parenthood hard.
But now, 14 months, 18,000 hours of sleep debt, and countless loads of laundry later, I would like to trade my toddler in for a newborn for one week. A vacation.
One thought is getting me through…and that is preschool. Glorious, glorious preschool awaits Will in just three years. Nicolas (who did not go to preschool) is anti-preschool…calling it glorified day care. For years I fought this silly stance with opinions from actual kindergarten teachers…but now it no longer matters. I do not care if it is a thinly veiled attempt by mothers to pawn their toddlers off on someone else for a few hours each week, I want a piece of it.
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I haven’t posted in a while–I usually do it on the downstairs computer while Will is eating in the high chair, but I broke the keyboard, so it’s out of commission for a little while.
Heather came for a visit this weekend, and while she was here she taught Will to high five and to play peekabo by covering his own eyes. It’s super cute. And she taught him both of these things in the time it took to drive home from the airport!
She’s my favorite visitor ever because she cleaned out the pantry, organized under the kitchen sink, folded all the laundry monsters, planted our mail order plants and made us dinner. She wins. And sets a high bar for all future visitors. If you’re planning a trip, bring a sponge and a bucket of bleach. I’m gonna put you to work.
I made rhubarb pie this week, but it’s a good thing Nana is coming to visit soon because my pie sucked. It wasn’t SO bad, but it wasn’t Nana.
Will has some sort of stomach bug again–he won’t stop pooping his pants. He’d been awake for three hours this morning and I’d already changed FIVE poopy diapers. Gross baby.
I’m starting a photography business. A friend of mine is moving away and referring her clients to me, so I hope I build a client base quickly! I bought back traciturchin.typepad.com to put all the photog-y stuff on. You might see your picture there if you’re super cute.
We had another blizzard this week. That means we’ve had seven months of snow. Once again wishing evil thoughts on all those people that told us it didn’t snow much in Colorado Springs!
William Francis has been napping for 1.7 hours. We were supposed to leave for a play group 30 minutes ago, but there’s no way I’m gonna wake that poop monster up–I wanna see how long he’ll go!
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You may remember that I made a pledge to spend more time trying to become A Real Writer this year. Two weeks ago I actually sat down and did something about it…I wrote a little essay and sent it to Mothering magazine.
Well guess what?! Tonight they emailed me and asked if they could have it, that’s what!
What is my article about, you ask? William Francis’s schmeckie.
And that is why having a boy rocks. You can write about his penis and become rich and famous.
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You may remember that the last play group Will and I attended did not go so well. The women were mean and I cried on the way home.
Today we went to a new play group and it was awesome. The women there were so nice, and pretty chill about the way the kiddos interacted with each other, and I was very happy about the whole thing.
So was Will, by the way. We went for lunch at a restaurant that has a play area right next to tables, so the kids play while the adults eat. We walked in, I set Will down in the play area, and he took off. No seperation anxiety whatsoever. No goodbye, either. I’m pretty sure I could have left, and two hours later Will would have sat down and thought “hmm. I used to have a mommy. Oh well.”
The other boys were all much older–3 and 4, but Will wasn’t phased…and enjoyed his parallel play alongside them. But what interested me the most was the way he stood up for himself.
One of the four year old boys was very interested in Will and managed to always be super close to him. At one point Will was standing on a little platform with a railing that came up to waist, and the four year old was standing on the floor, so they eye level with each other. The little boy just stood there right in Will’s face for a while. I might have missed something–the little boy might have been pinching Will or in some other way irritating him, or it might have just been that Will decided he’d had enough of this kid being all up in his face. Anyway, Will was done.
Did he run away? No.
Did he cry for mommy? No.
Did he decide to settle it himself, even though this kid was four times his age? Yes.
Will reached out with both hands and gently pushedthe boy away. Not a mean pushing, but just a “you need to be over here, now and get out of my face” pushing.
I was so proud of my independent little man.
So part of my brain was cheering “go, baby, go” and the other part was doing a little bit of physics at a very fast speed. As Will pushed, I thought “hmmm…if he keeps pushing, he’s going to lean over that little fence and then his center of gravity is going to be over the fence…and HOLYCRAPHE’SGONNAGOHEADFIRSTINTOTHECEMENT!”
I jumped out of my chair, sprinted across the room, reached down and grabbed Will’s shoulders as they were inches above the ground, flipped him up, around, and safely into a snuggle in my arms.
No crying from Will, just very giant eyes. And mad props from all the mommies.
Want to impress a group full of moms? Make a crazy awesome Baby Save move in record time. It was pretty awesome. I should get an Olympic Gold Medal for it, it rocked that hard. I wish someone had been video taping it, because I was so fast and graceful that you would have thought it was sped up for special effect. But no one was taping it, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say that you would have been seriously impressed and wanted my autograph afterward. (I’d like to donate that move to all the day care babies my mom looked after that I ever saved from injury. My mom started me in Baby Save training early.)
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I posted several photos today documenting Will’s love of Cheez-Its. It’s beyond love, though…it’s more like an obsession. He wants them with every meal, and for every snack. I’ve read that toddlers often develop food obsessions that disappear as quickly as they appear, and that the best thing to do is just ride them out and try to squeeze some other food into them whenever you can. Luckily, Will seems happy to eat everything else, as usual…just as long as he’s also given Cheez-Its.
Okay, dude.
You can thank Nic for this. I think it was actually just his secret ploy to ensure that we will always have Cheez-Its in the house.
I’ve taken to using them for bait in the car. Will doesn’t take to his car seat well after the second or third time he’s gone in-and-out of it. This does not work well when we’re running errands. The kid is strong, and he uses his head for leverage, and getting him strapped in becomes an epic battle that never ends without tears (usually mine). As I stand there in the parking lot using every ounce of strength in my biceps to pin my screaming and thrashing child into the seat, I know that I look like a terrible mother…or at the very least, a very stupid toddler-snatching stranger. So I’ve taken to using the box of Cheez-Its to distract Will. I give him the box, strap him in, and let him graze his way from one location to the other.
This doesn’t make as big of a mess as you might imagine…he is very careful about making sure that each one that leaves the box enters his mouth, but it does make for a lot of orange stained clothing and some grubby little fingers and a very grubby face.
Anyway, today as we ran errands, I would come around and take him out of the car, and inevitably he would have one or two crackers in his hands. I would let him keep them (because I’m cool like that), but each time he fed them to me. His last Cheezits for the time being, and he wanted me to have them.
That means one of two things:
1) He loves me so much that he wants to share the last of his most beloved snack with me.
2) During the course of our drive Will’s eaten so many that even he can’t stomach the thought of one or two more.
I prefer to think it’s the former.
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I was watching tv and knitting, and I’m so glad I was too lazy to fast forward through the ads, because I got to see this Clorox one…
”Your mother, her mother, they all did the laundry….maybe even a man or two.”
Grammar check your sentences, ad agencies. No reason for me to be thinking about great-grandmothers “doing a man or two” on top of the washing board.
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Three main things bringing me down today:
1) Laundry. I do laundry constantly, and yet the amount to be done would shock a person. A family of three should not generate this much laundry. Ever.
2) I break EVERYTHING. I spilled cream soda on my laptop yesterday, and in spite of my best efforts to prevent damage (ie–unplugging it immediately and turning it upside down so that all of the soda would drip out…the space bar doesn’t work. At all. Space bars are kinda important. I took it to Best Buy and they said it would be $200 if they could fix it…and I’m not spending $200 on a laptop that has two colored lines down the screen and is missing the down button.
3) Will’s inability to behave himself at Joann Fabrics today. Picture the frazzled woman with the out-of-control child that looks like such a hobo at Joann’s. Today that was me. I *hate* when it’s my turn to be the hobo mom.
Do military schools in Switzerland accept 14 month olds?
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I posted several new videos today…the last one is in questionable taste, so you should know the following before viewing it: no Boobers were harmed in the filming of said video and no Boobers even cried.
In other news, Will signed “thank you” to me after nursing today, which was the first time he’s used that sign…and Nic and I almost passed out from the adorableness of it.
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The Will we know and love is back. On Thursday he found his independence, happiness, and appetite again.
He’s back to being the Cheez-It loving, nap-fighting, house-destroying baby that keeps us on our toes.
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Sometimes in life you make a series of small mistakes that lead up to a really bad situation. And I imagine that while you’re standing there in the sum total of your bad decisions, looking at the heavens and screaming “Why, God?! WHY?!!” he looks down, says “idiot.” and sends you the list of exactly why you are sitting in a bathtub at 3am covered in feces.
My bad decisions began last night around 11:00. I’d just finished talking to Heather, and was supposed to go to bed. Will would be waking up in five hours, I’d slept for less than 8 hours in the past two nights combined, and a normal person would have gone to bed. I said “one more row” and picked up my knitting. One row turned into five, and then I noticed a mistake, and ripped back…and then of course I had to put it all back on the needles and fix it before I could even think about going to bed. Next thing I knew, it was 1am, and as we checked on Will before tucking ourselves into bed, we couldn’t help but notice the stink.
He’d pooped himself. We needed to change his diaper in as sneaky a way as possible to minimize the midnight waking. We took him out of his crib, and I nursed him while Nic dealt with the bottom half and then left for bed.
Not wanting to disturb Will further, I made mistake number two: I didn’t put his pants back on. I figured I’d stay with him on the futon and sleep there to make sure he fell back to sleep and so that maybe I’d catch him early enough in his 4am waking to stretch him out to 5:00 or 6:00.
But after a few minutes it was clear that Will didn’t want anything to do with me. He unlatched, scootched away, and turned himself so that his feet and head were the opposite of where they should have been. Clearly he wanted to be alone…and that was cool with me, so back in the crib he went. I had a niggling feeling that the lack of pants would make him cold and would wake him up early, but I pushed off this fear (mistake number 3) and covered him with a blanket.
At 3:30 (two hours after I went to bed), I woke up to crying. It took me a minute or two to get out of bed and stumble to Will’s crib. I had a feeling that I should check his diaper for poops before brining him back to bed with us, but decided that I’d have smelled it. This was serious mistake number 4.
Halfway back to our bedroom my nose woke up. Holy hell this kid stank. And then I realized that something didn’t seem right. His butt seemed less puffy than it should have been…and squishier.
Oh. God. No.
Upon waking and crapping, Will had taken off his disposable diaper (disposables seem like such a good idea when your baby has an intestinal issue…until you remember that they don’t have babyproof snaps, just flimsy little tape). Then I had picked his poopy body up and cuddled it all over me.
I was covered in poop. Will was covered in poop. It was 3am. Time to call for backup.
Nic came in and tried to clean up Will while I tried to clean up me. Not easy, since Will was now really angry that he wasn’t snuggling with mommy in some kind of poop party. Nothing makes a situation seem more desperate or more horrible or more impossible-to-think-your-way-out-of than a baby screaming at the top of his lungs and desperately trying to get to his mommy.
We took a bath, got back into pajamas, I sent Nic to clean up Will’s crib (which we’ve just had a towel at the bottom of for the last week), and then we all went back to our respective beds.
Of course, I catch myself complaining in my head about this little 3am poop fiasco and then I smack myself silly because it could have been so much worse. Will took his diaper off, slid it down his leg, put his foot in it…and that was it. I lifted him out of the crib before he’d put his foot anywhere else (apparently). He didn’t put his hands in it. He didn’t smear in on the walls or his hair or my hair. So really, instead of saying “Why me, God?!’ I should say “thank you for not making it worse.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I find it so hard to believe that in just one year we’ll be thinking about having another baby. We’ll be lucky if we survive that long with the one we have.
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I took him to the doctor today because I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t getting dehydrated. He’s not dehydrated, though, and just has rotavirus (which, I will have you know, is exactly what I thought he had…proving once again that google skills are almost as good as a medical degree).
Afterward, we did a very manly thing. We went to Lowes and bought a piece of particle board that was entirely too large for my car. So I took it back inside and had them cut part of it off. Then we wedged it into my civic where it acted like one of those partitians in cop cars…Will was my little prisoner. We both thought it was awesome.
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We talk a lot about how hard it is to be a mommy…but for the last two days, it’s been very tough to be a daddy around here. Let’s take a look:
0400 Monday morning: Will starts crying. Traci goes in to check on him and he has crapped himself so thoroughly that it’s leaked out of his disposable diaper and is now playing games inside his pajamas. She wakes Nic up with some of his least favorite words: “Nic! We have a poop situation in here!”
0405: Nic changes the horrible diaper while Will screams and Traci holds him down.
0415: The family climbs back into bed to try and nurse and snuggle their way to a reasonable hour.
0445: Will projectile vomits all over Traci and the sheets. Nic is again rudely awakened (if you can call what he was doing while getting kicked and punched repeated by Will sleep). He strips the bed and Will while Traci climbs into the shower.
0530: Nic gets ready for work.
0600: Nic helps Traci change another horrifying diarrhea diaper.
0700: Nic leaves for work.
While Nic is at work, Will and Traci make the most of their day by spending three hours in bed nursing and napping, nursing and napping. This is not an option for Nicolas, not only because his nipples are merely decorative, but also because they tend to frown upon napping at work.
1730: After a hard day’s work, Nic returns home. He is promptly sent out to get pizza for the family.
1800: Nic feeds William dinner.
1815: William throws up his dinner, and once again Nic cleans him up before taking him upstairs for a bath.
1825: Traci brings the pizza upstairs and the family has a bathtub pizza party.
1840: After drying Will off, Will turns around and poops on the carpet. Nic goes to get the carpet cleaner, and begins scrubbing.
1845: Traci nurses Will to sleepiness.
1900: Will throws up all over Traci…takes a deep breath, and does it again.
1901: Once again, Nic is called in with the carpet cleaner, and while Traci takes Will into the bathtub so they can get clean again, Nic cleans the vomit off the carpet and rocking chair.
1930: Nic and Traci put Will in his pajamas and into his crib. He poops. They take him out, change his diaper, put him back in the crib…and he poops again. Nic and Traci again change his diaper, put him back into pajamas, and stand over his crib until he’s asleep.
0400 Tuesday morning: Nic is woken up to the words “Nic! We have a poop situation!” again. He comes to the rescue, helps change a hysterical Will, then crawls back to bed.
0530: Nic wakes up, gets ready for work, and leaves for a ridiculous day of low-crawling through mud in the freezing cold.
William and I will understand if today’s 1730 entry goes something like this: Nic gets in his car, starts to drive, and just keeps going.
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Poor Will was throwing up over everyone and everything (okay, just me and the carpet, and then me and some towels after we realized that this was going to go on for longer than we had carpet cleaner for). He made a turn for the better about an hour ago and we put him down for bed. Hopefully he’ll have a good night. But you should be thinking good thoughts for us, because probably he won’t have a good night. Probably we’ll be dealing with with puke laundry at 2am.
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…but you’re just gonna have to take my word for it. I drove up to Denver, got lost, got found, got a parking space, got in line, got to hear her hilarious speech, got to have some books signed, got to have my picture taken with THE Traveling Sock (with THE Yarn Harlot holding MY sock)…but here’s the thing. It’s not so much a picture of me, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and our socks so much as it is a picture of two very scary monsters holding two very watercolory socks.
This is why you should always (a) double check your camera settings before you force someone to take a picture for you with your very intimidating camera and (b) check the picture before stuffing the camera in your bags and being on your way. When I got home and checked my photo, my biggest worry was that it would look like I had a double chin. It never occured to me that I might not have a chin…or any facial features at all, for that matter.
But I was there, Nic stayed home and watched Will for the entire evening, and it was awesome. Maybe she’ll come back to Denver at the launch of her next book and I can try again for a photo. Or maybe I could just stop being such a groupie.
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It happened overnight. Will went from book destroyer, to book lover. I can pinpoint the exact day that he discovered his newfound love of reading–last Friday.
Before Friday, when we read to him, it never kept his attention for more than a page. Now, he hasn’t stopped bringing me books for a week. All day long he toddles over to bring me a book. He has three favorites: a little taggies book from Joan (I think) that has the words to “if you’re happy and you know it”–this one delights him because there’s clapping involved. And if you ask him to point out the pig, he will. Then there’s his “Happy Baby Words” book from Laura and Boris that has photos of babies and typical objects that babies see. His third favorite is his interactive Sesame Street cloth book from my mom and dad. He loves to carry that around.
I was a little tired of reading these same three books at least fifty times a day, so I took him to Barnes and Noble to pick out some more favorites. He definitely likes the ones with photos the most, so he got a few “baby words” type books, and a book about tractors and trucks that he picked out all by himself. It’s a pretty awesome book for a baby boy.
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I do believe this might be in Will’s future.
PS–as if to prove the point, Will danced to that video just now–arms in the air and everything.
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I’ve written about Will’s love of farts and burps before. He thinks they’re so funny. Last week, though, he took it to a whole new level.
Nic burped, and Will laughed. And then he opened his mouth wide and tried to force himself to burp. I thought he was going to make himself throw up, or, at the very least, cough up an organ. But it was hilarious.
Last night Nic burped again and Will did the same thing…so for the next five minutes the two fake-burped and laughed at each other.
Nic said “I love having a boy baby.”
And it’s true–this right here is the upswing to the willy-holding and nose-picking. A free license to laugh at gas.
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I’m working on a layout about Will moving rocks and it reminded me of the other week when my parents were visiting:
I was working on something in the kitchen when Nic threw something at me. It hurt.
I turned around to see (a) why he was abusing his wife and (b) what in the heck he’d thrown.
A marshmallow was laying on the ground.
I started to laugh. Nic threw another one, this one landed at my feet with a “thud.”
“What was that?” my mom asked.
“A marshmallow.” we giggled…and then everyone had a good laugh.
It’s really a had-to-be-there story, but I want to remember it..because hearing that marshmallow THUD was pretty stinkin’ hilarious.
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It’s snowing here again!
I’m worried about my poor little seeds out there in the cold.
Will has been teething this week and I forgot how hard it is when he’s teething. The crankies, the wake-up-at-nights (after just getting back to sleeping through the night again), the terrible dirty diapers, the fever…I seriously find it hard to believe that this is harder on him than me.
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You can add those two to Will’s vocabulary. And “dight” is now “light” as of today!
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Have I told you about how Will likes to share his toys with the ferrets? He throws them into the ferret’s room, and at first I thought he was throwing things at them, and his toys just happened to be nearby. But then I realized he’s sharing. He’ll play with a favorite toy for a while, then take off toward the ferret room and drop it in there for him.
This morning while they were playing upstairs, Will took one of his trucks over to Fifi and tried to get her to play with it.
He’s a very nice baby.
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Dear sir or madam,
My mommy has asked that I write you this letter, because, she says, if she were to write it, it would be less of a letter and more of a pipe bomb.
I am a toddler. A spirited toddler. I keep my mommy going all the time. I keep her tired, stressed, forgetful, and a little on the edge of sanity. Her whole will to live rests on one thing: my nap time. This is the one time of day she gets to herself. Completely alone. She can do chores, she can knit, she can scrapbook…and, most importantly, she can store up some energy and happiness to get her through the rest of the day.
The problem? I am a light sleeper. Now, heavy sleepers (like my mom and dad) and the parents of heavy sleepers, believe that good sleepers are better people than light sleepers. They believe that it is a skill to sleep through jackhammers and barking dogs and ringing telephones. I am here to tell you that it is not. My mommy and daddy did everything they could do to ensure that I would sleep through such noises–as a baby they never shushed people while I was napping, they always carried on with life at whatever decibel they felt like. But, alas, I am a light sleeper anyway. And if something wakes me from my nap, I am up for the rest of the day.
What, indeed, does this have to do with you? Well, dear friend, you have created a telephone that wakes me up. You say this is not your problem. That it is the fault of either (a) the telemarketers who take sick pleasure in calling during naptime or (b) my mother who doesn’t turn off the ringer.
You cannot blame this on my mother. (Well, you could, but if you do, you’ll end up with that cordless phone right up your butt.) She is, as I mentioned before, a little forgetful through no fault of her own (and every fault of mine). She cannot, it seems, ever remember to turn off the ringer before putting me down for a nap.
Now listen carefully, because this is where you come in. After I go down for a nap and she remembers to turn off the ringer, it is impossible for her to do so, because if she does, the telephone will ring loudly no less than eight times. In order to completely turn off the ringer, you are forced to scroll through all of the ringing options and therefore must listen to it ring in all of its variations. Eight ringalings. Why you thought a person who wanted the ringer completely off would want to listen to it ring at all is beyond me. But eight?! You, esteemed inventor, are the very definition of a total and complete Buttface.
My mommy would like you to come to our house and babysit me for 72 consecutive hours so you can truly appreciate the pain and suffering you have put her through. And then she would like you to buy her a new phone, live-in maid, and bi-weekly massage.
Sincerely,
William F. P.
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Words he used last week: “kids” and “dogs.” “Dogs” is a hard one for him–he has a hard time deciding what exactly is a dog, and what is a dit. This weekend he saw a weaner dog playing in its backyard and he pointed and shouted “dit!” Because yes, from a distance, weaner dogs do resemble ferrets.
I also feel that I should include “this” and “that” in Will’s vocabulary, because he’s said them for a couple of months. He points at something and says “dis!” or “dat!” which I wasn’t inclined to think of as actual words until I realized that I am always pointing things out to him and saying “look at this!” or “what is that?”
In other news, he is being a royal pain in the butt. I think he’s teething…but more importantly, he’s slept horribly the last two nights and has refused to take a morning nap. I could handle the nighttime interruptions and lack of sleep if I could get a nap from him in the morning. But instead all I get are crankies. This would be a really nice time to live near his grandparents. “Hey! Wanna take Will for the night? He’s at SUCH a cute age.” mwahahahahaha
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William is so smart it scares me. The other day I was vacuuming, and when I finished, I unplugged the cord and started winding it onto the vacuum cleaner. Will walked to the other end of the cord, picked it up, walked over to the outlet, and started trying to plug it in. We have those outlet covers that automatically spring closed every time you unplug something, so he wasn’t in immediate danger, but it was still scary. We’ve been trying to teach him that cords and outlets = no, but he is just as drawn to them as he is to the tv power button.
On Saturday Will and I ran some errands, and toward the end of the day he’d had enough carseat time. He shouted. He kick his heels. He strained against his harness. And then he stopped. A look of calm and cunning spread over his face, and he STARTED TO FIDDLE WITH THE BUCKLES. If he’d been strong enough, he totally would have unbuckled the top grey buckle first (just as I do) and then pressed in the red button to release himself. He knew exactly how to do it…and I watched through our baby mirrors in awe. Thank goodness he isn’t that strong!
That’s the thing about raising ferrets alongside babies–Getting Into/Out of Things is Ferret 101.
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Will has his first bad diaper rash, and during his diaper change I was being really gentle, but wiping was still hurting him. I know this, because not only did he start to cry, he signed “all done.” It was so sad!
He did not sign “all done” after breakfast this morning…instead we had another first: he fell asleep in his high chair! I was knitting next to him, the dishwasher and washer were going, and I think the background noise must have been just perfect, because he nodded off right in his chair…and Will doesn’t do stuff like that! Sleep is his enemy! I took some pictures–hopefully I’ll get them posted later this morning.
We’re having friends over for a barbeque tonight. Will and I will be running errands today!
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…left the house at 9:45am. This was really big.
…met my friend Erin and her Baby Gap model baby Sarah in Old Colorado City for some shopping and lunch at a little bakery there (Tuesdays are French Corn Chowder Day, which makes them my favorite day of the week)
…drove past a cop going 17 mph over the speed limit and didn’t get pulled over. There was absolutely no reason for him not to pull me over. I saw the cop on the side of the road as I blew past him, looked down and saw how fast I was going, stopped breathing, slowed down, watched the rearview mirror…and nothing. The dude must really hate paperwork.
…visited with my friend Courtney and her three kiddos in the afternoon.
…got ice cream in Old Colorado while Will was sleeping in the stroller so that I wouldn’t have to share with him
…finished the capris I was making for that custom order.
…enjoyed really warm weather.
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“His only instinct is to destroy everything he touches.”
“So he is a monster.” “Only a little one.”
“RAAAAHHHHH.”
Q: The above quotes are:
(a) Quotes from Lilo and Stitch
(b) Words heard at the Turchin household daily
(c) All of the above.
A: (c) All of the above.
I’m doing my best to raise a caring, thoughtful, obedient, well-behaved child that 1943 would be proud of. But God certainly didn’t give me much in the way of raw materials.
When my parents came to visit, Will treated them to a little shock and awe. They worked hard to come up with a nickname better than “Will the Destroyer.” It came down to Willzilla or Godwilla. I say we run with Willzilla, because there is nothin’ godly about the trail of destruction Will leaves behind him.
Other babies look out the window. Will looks out the window while eating the wall. I give you Exhibit A:
Some babies like to build towers. Will likes to knock down the towers that others build.
Some babies like to read books or have them read to them. Will likes to eat books. Or just pull them down off the shelf. I give you Exhibit B:
Some babies like to play on the floor. Will likes to tear up the floor. I give you Exhibit C, Will pulling up the vents (not an isolated incident):
Some babies take naps. Will likes to trick his mommy and daddy into thinking he’s taking a nap…and then rip down the wallpaper border in his room, even though we’d moved his crib away from the wall. I give you Exhibit D, the sight Nic found when he peeked in to check on what we thought was a sweet sleeping Will this morning:
The good news is that he recognizes his destruction as bad. The first time he pulled up the vent I found out about it because he was crying. I went over to him, and low and behold, there was a hole where there had once been vent.
When he’s done something new and destructive, before he even sees our reaction, he makes his “I’m such a naughty boy” face/whine. Now we just have to get him to realize this before he destroys things.
My wall-eating, milk-splashing, wallpaper-tearing, tower-knocking, book-ripping, lotion-eating boy. To be fair, he comes by in honestly. He’s just taking after his mother. In a matter of four days this past week, I managed to drop our camera (with the most expensive lens we own attached to it) on our concrete garage floor and back into our super nice stroller. Nic was able to fix the stroller, and we escaped with just cosmetic damage to our camera body and $110 worth of damage to the lens. I guess when you add it up, $15 for new wallpaper just doesn’t compare.
If Willzilla wants to be the King of Damage in the house, he’s gonna have to work on his game. He just can’t compete with his mommy.
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The yarn whose arrival so thrilled me yesterday. These are skeins of Socks that Rock yarn from Blue Moon Fiberarts. The left is the Downpour colorway in heavyweight, the right is Scottish Highlands in mediumweight. I can’t wait to finish the capris I’m making for the custom order so I can work on these pretty pretty socks!
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You can move “milk” into the got-it-down category. Today, after his shots, he got strapped in the car and made the sign for milk. It killed me that I didn’t have a sippy cup along with me!
He wasn’t so brave for his shots today. He got two, and I think the tech wasn’t as skilled as he could have been, because Will reacted more than he has in the past. It made me so sad.
I’ve forgotten to write this down, and haven’t managed to get a photo of it yet, but when he does something naughty he makes this face. All squenched up. Like “I can’t help myself.” If you tell him “no” he makes the face, too. “I want to so badly.” It’s a face I’ve seen in photos of ME as a toddler.
Two new skeins of yarn arrived in the mail today for me to knit socks with. I’ve been waiting for them for two weeks and Will and I did a happy dance when they arrived. I’ll post pictures later–they’re beautiful!
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I thought I’d do an inventory of the signs Will knows right now, at almost 13 months:
Signs he has down pat:
- more
- waving: If you say hello or byebye, he waves. If you leave or enter a room, he waves. If you go near a door, he waves. He waves at people, dogs, and cars (probably because he always waves at Daddy as he drives away)
- shaking his head for no
- all done (just moved into the “down pat” category this morning) (thanks to a story my mom told about Emily, we started teaching him this weekend)
Signs he’s learning:
- milk
- light
- water
- food
- nursing
- no (I think he knows what this one means when we do it [closing your fingers together] but he’s never done it himself)
Signs I want to remember to introduce this week:
- dog
- thank you
- gentle
- touch (combined with “gentle” and “no”)
- pain
- hot
- cold
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I posted eleven new videos tonight. Brought to you by my mom and dad–they finally made our extensive “borrowing” (ie–ruthless thievery) official and bought a new camera, gifting the old one to us. I knew all these cute Will videos would pay off!
You might want to pace yourself, though…eleven videos is an awful lot of cute to watch in a short time span…
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He is scared of his swing. Sunday he still loved it, since Monday he’s been terrified. No rhyme or reason.
He is obsessed with his slide. Goes to the sliding glass door and points to it constantly.
He loves to dance. Whenever he hears music he bops and smiles. The dance he does while sitting is my fave. I totally adore that kid.
This last one has been going on for weeks and weeks, but I’m thinking it’s only going to get worse: Will has no respect for the childproof locks on the cabinets. They open up enough for him to squeeze his arm in there, and he will. He pulls out whatever he can (even opening up the plastic set of drawers I have INSIDE of the cupboard)–like toothpaste, lotion, tweezers, plastic bags, toothbrushes, hairspray, etc…so even our childproof cabinets aren’t safe. You have to store everything at the back of them so that skinny little arms attached to smart boys can’t grasp them.
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(an open letter to toddlers everywhere)
Sometimes mommies get what’s coming to them. As babies we’re at their mercy. What we eat, when we sleep, how long we get to crawl around naked after our baths…they decide it all. And sometimes it’s just not cool.
This morning my mommy didn’t let me play on my slide, even though I went to the window and signed “more.” I mean, this is super cute stuff. It deserves to be rewarded.
But Mommy said she was still in her bathrobe and her mascara was all over her face and her hair looked like the ferrets had slept in it, and she said that since it was 10:30 there was no way even a hobo would go outside.
To make it worse, she tried to blame it on me. ME. William F.P. She said the reason she was still in her bathrobe at 10:30 this morning was because of the shenanigans I pulled last night. She said that she was getting ready for bed at 11pm when I woke up and cried for an hour. She said that it was Daddy who begged her to come in my room and stand by my crib until I fell asleep. She said I was a crap weasel for waking up again the minute I heard her climb under the covers. She said she almost died of The Tireds while she was standing next to my crib waiting for me to fall seriously asleep until she finally got to go to bed at 1:15am. She said when I woke up at 5am this morning she was ready to sell Glowey and all of my trains.
This kind of attitude cannot be tolerated. Mommies are mommies. It’s their job. And if they can’t remember to do it with a smile, we must punish them.
This morning I threw all of the clean clothes Mommy had washed and folded last night into the ferret room. I stood at the gate and tossed them all in there. It was Mommy’s fault for leaving the basket in the hall anyway.
When she poked her head out of the office to see what I was up to, I saw the defeat in her eyes.
I got her.
I win.
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Spring poked its head around the corner to say “hello” yesterday. It was a gorgeous day and warm to boot. Will and I went for a walk in the afternoon and the kids on the street behind us had a lemonade stand set up. I was glad I had cash.
Today was equally lovely, so Will and I walked to Safeway to scope out some good dinner options. My mom and dad bought us a barbecue while they were here, and I was eager to be the one in the neighborhood making everyone else thing “darn–wish we’d barbecued tonight.” Hamburger meat was on sale, so it was fate.
Will had his first hamburger (a little tiny baby one Nic and I had fun making). He hated it. Kept spitting it out and throwing it on the floor. Ate all of the asparagus we put in front of him, but refused to eat his hamburger meat. Nic is questioning paternity.
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You can add “cheese” to Will’s list of words. This one said exactly like it’s supposed to be.
My boy loves cheese.
Da, ferrets, light, and cheese. His four favorite things in the world. I expect “shaved turkey breast deli meat,” “bananas,” and “destruction” to be next.
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My parents just left this afternoon to go back to Seattle, but they got to see SO MUCH walking! And so much progress!
Will has really taken off with independent walking…this morning he pushed off from the gate at the bottom of the stairs and walking halfway into the living room before plopping down by hid drum–that’s about 20 steps! And then just a couple of minutes ago we were walking around the kitchen. Will was holding onto my finger and then he let go! All on his own! And walked 15 steps to the oven where he pulled down all of my dishtowels.
We’re so proud of all of his walking!
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I’m pretty sure William will be a full-fledged walker soon. Two nights ago as I was getting him ready for bed, he was holding onto the rocking chair ottoman, and out of nowhere he let go, took a few steps, and then flopped himself down on the futon mattress we keep on the floor in there. Yesterday he did that a lot–let go of whatever surface he was using to cruise along and took a few steps to grab onto another surface or to just fall. It’s so cute and stumbly, and he has a tendency to lean his front way far forward, like his top half is moving faster than his legs can keep up with.
I’m really looking forward to when he can walk–he crawls so fast, climbs everything, and is into everything anyway, so I can’t see how that could get worse. I see lots of things getting better, though–never crawling on gross floors, not having to lug him around, and being able to put him down when I’m standing in line at the post office trying to fill out forms and pack up my packages with TWO hands!
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Last night Nic gave me a hug and said “I love you so much I could head-butt you right now.”
This is the ultimate declaration of love…at least it is in the Turchin household lately.
Will is a hitter. We’ve been working with him, and it’s getting better. Or, at least, it seemed that way until it appeared to be replaced by head-butting.
If you’re snuggling with Will, or playing with him, or just having a really good time, you might get a quick hug followed by a head-butt right in the face.
And it would be funny, but it really really hurts. We say “no” sternly and it should go away in the next couple of days. But it’s sad, because you can tell by the look on his face that he only wanted to tell us “I love you so much I’m gonna head-butt you right now.”
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Will had his 12 month well baby visit yesterday. He weighs less than we expected–just 24 pounds, which puts him in the 50th percentile. He was 32.5” long, which put him off the charts again. This has been the story all along–middle for weight, top for height, so he’s our little string bean. I’ll look up his head measurement and add it in later, but he was 50-75th percentile for head, which is where his head has been all along, too.
He took his shot like a pro (a pro who bashes himself around daily). I found out that in Colorado, 1/3 of children aren’t vaccinated, and that whooping cough, measels, and mumps cases are so common they don’t even make the news, so I decided to speed up his delayed vaccination schedule, so we’ll be making lots of trips to Peterson for the next few months until he’s caught up to his peers (well, 2/3 of his peers).
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All the galleries should be working again. There aren’t any photos in the March gallery, but I had a typo in the password there.
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