aw, shit

i've been feeling a little unhinged lately. t2 is going through some kind of nap transition that has our days jumbled and all this crawling and exploring and keeping up with is hard on a gal. so the end of the day comes and just about everything around us is a complete, turned-over, spilled-on, crunched-up cheerio mess. because i'm a bit of a tidy tina, messes get to me. bad.
i feel like my brain has ridden the scrambler 678,000 consecutive times.
that said, the other day i was trying to clean out my closet while t2 poked around in our bedroom. my closet is a nightmare right now. i've been either going barefoot or wearing flip flops for the past month because i can't find any of my shoes.
so i'm on task and making progress when t2 has an explosion. i pick him up and dash him to his room for a change when i realize that a big, wet glob of dung has spilled out of the back of his diaper and onto my arm, shirt and (somehow?) foot.
very soon, there's splatter on the walls and on his FACE and well, everywhere. it's sticking to absolutely everything.
whoever invented glue had a baby, i'm sure of it.
we got through it and later that day went for a walk to the park with wolly. only the dog park was closed for cleaning. so i tied wolls to a poll and decided to push t2 on a swing until it reopened. that didn't work out, though, because i turned around 5 minutes later and a bevy of spanish nannies were shouting perro! perro! consiga ese perro loco!
there was a black dog standing at the gate of the kid park prancing and panting and drooling and generally acting like a rabid madman.
do i claim him or do i just act like nothing's happening?
wolly, good ol wolly, chewed through is leash. isn't that just precious?
i scurried to get t2 in his stroller and get over to the wolly before he did something really stupid. the dog park was still closed (it's all mulch, but they actually spend an hour a week watering the goddammned thing), so we shuffled over to a grassy area, pushing the baby and holding wolly by the 10 inches of leash left attached to his neck.
i was busy convincing myself that someone very nice would find wolly if i just took his collar off and left him at the park when a ranger found us. i was sure, absolutely sure, he was going to tell us to leave and i was going to have to start crying because i had a long walk ahead of me that would have been murder with a stroller, a hyper lab and no leash.
instead he handed me a new leash, one he'd found and presumably been waiting to give to someone just like me.
someone pathetic.
i thanked him, probably with tears in my eyes, and he said he was about to turn off the sprinklers and we could go in the dog park - 5 minutes earlier than he was supposed to let us in.
a random act of mercy.
and i sometimes wonder why i'm so tired at the end of the day.

tayloe in the wild

sometimes i feel like a species scientist in the field, watching some kind of beast. i think it's funny that when we're just sitting around like this, my brain downshifts and i think about as little as possible while his little thinker is no doubt in motorskill overdrive.
the movie grizzly man kinda makes sense to me now. i get why that dude went a little bonkers and actually thought he was connected to the bears in a way no one else was. he watched them all the time.
of course, they ate him in the end, but anyway.

traffic in the kitchen

ol wolls is dealing (just barely) with t2's love of balls, which must really be reeking havoc on his mental state. especially because t2 will grasp a ball in his hand and wiggle his way over to wolly and offer it up to him. i mean, literally bonk him in the nose with it or drop it right near his feet. for some reason, a reason i really can't begin to understand, wolly doesn't respond. most of the time he just gets up and tries to find a peaceful place to sleep. which, of course, prompts t2 to scamper along behind him, panting.
other times i swear wolly actually plays opposum. leave me alone kid, i'm dead.
very un-wolly.
the only thing i can figure is that these two worked out some kind of cheerios + goldfish for hours of torment trade, with wolly writing in some kind of all-day, everyday fetch policy that'll become active as soon as t2's old enough to play that game.
anyway, how bout that speed crawl, eh? there's just one speed - superfast. i kinda want to paint little flames on the outside of his thighs. the trouble, though, is that his limbs can't always keep up with his overdrive. so at least once a day his zip turns into a flail and he face plants on the floor. ouch.

what does a doggie say?

ruff, ruff? woof? arf? gggrrr?
not in our house. i ask t2 what a dog says, specifically what our hyped up, over-bred crazy dog says, and he pants.
heh, heh, heh. heh, heh, heh.
nothing's truer than the truth.

happy campers

we got a wild hair and went on a camping trip up the coast last weekend. it's interesting with a baby. i didn't know dirt could stick in so many places and you just haven't lived until you've hiked a 10 month old to an outhouse and tried to bathe him while you shower.
we spent one night near the beach, all hunkered in together with bellies full of fajitas listening to waves crash. the next day, we trucked up to big sur and camped in a redwood grove. the canopy was so beautiful we left the rain fly off so we could stare at the trees all night.
inspired, we kept going up to mendicino county, where our friend kevin lives in a tree house near the beach. we ate like royality and drank more anderson valley wine than i really want to remember. by the time we got home we looked like a band of gypsies. even wolly was tired.
we've driven the entire pacific coast highway, from the very top of the olympic peninsula in washington to los angeles. the stretch between malibu and san fran is some of the most amazing.
it's t2's 10 month birthday. here's a pic to mark the day.

bubbles

ball buster

mama's boy

there's a story about our first mother's day in my head, but i think i'm going to save it for the book. that way it'll give us all a little, what's the word ... distance from reality. that always makes things funnier.
it ended rather nicely, i will say that. we went to a lovely party in the afternoon and tayloe made me a grilled cheese while i watched casino royale.
at the party, we got to see our friends joe and sara, their baby twin girls, josie and chase, and their 4 year old sal. everyone was getting along swimmingly until t2 tried to french kiss a twin (i'm not sure which, i can't tell them apart). he opened his mouth and moved slowly, romantically toward her, ready to dazzle her with his carrot breath and incoming top tooth. he licked his lips and drooled (thanks for the tips, wolly) and was just about to make his move when, slamma. she heisman'd him. hand to the face. no way, mr. not on the first date, cool your jets and take 5. and don't even think about moving in on my sister. everyone laughed and he cried in defeat and humiliation.
ps - thanks to ganny for the most smashing new suit and shoes. you just can't find these kind of classics in la. xoxo

indigo child

dr. destruction is coming on 10 months and i think that has people thinking about preschool. by people i mean folks other than me. i'm not thinking about it because i'm still waiting for this child's mother to come pick him up.
where is that lady, anyway?
at the park the other day i was mindlessly talking to a mother sitting near me. it's a nice day, your daughter's cute, i hate the sand at this place, what's up with the new dog park near the airport. blah blah blah. the kind of chatter that takes up space and time but doesn't really get you anywhere. the kind of chatter, frankly, that i expect from and have come to enjoy at the park.
maybe i was zoning out a little too much, because this lady decided to clobber me with 'what preschools do you have him on the list for?'
not have you thought about it. not have you been to look at any. have you GOTTEN HIM ON LISTS? PLURAL!
um, what?
i thought for a very quick second about lying and saying yes but then i realized i don't know the names of any preschools in a 100 mile radius, so i'd surely look like an idiot when she asked me which ones. and she FOR SURE was going to ask me which ones.
so i just said no, hoping she'd think i was such an idiot, dangerously dumb even, that i no longer was worthy of her company and the conversation could be over.
but that's not the way things work at the park, it seems.
instead, she decided to rattle on about how competitive good preschools are, how most couples go look at them when THEY'RE PREGNANT and how her kid (13 months, mind you, a good year and a half away from preschool) is on four lists or some shit.
oh. how interesting, i say.
why the rush, i asked. i felt annoyed, like horse-fly-buzzing-around-your-head annoyed.
she blabbed on about the reasons as i tuned out. i was just about to excuse myself when she said, 'but the real reason we've been looking so diligently (interesting choice of words, i thought) is because XXX is an indigo child.'
i looked at the kid to see if she was blue. or cross-eyed. or seemed retarded in anyway.
she was scooping shovel fulls of sand into a bucket. once the bucket was full, she'd dump the sand out and start all over. occasionaly she'd grab a fist full and open her hand and stare at it for an extended period of time. she looked perfectly normal.
did i really need to hear what an indigo child is? more importantly, did i need to hear it from this woman?
apparently, i'm a masochist.
indigo children, i learned, are extremely bright, gifted children who have an evolved consciousness and have come here to help change the 'vibrations of our lives' because they have a strong desire to live instinctively. they are our bridge to the future because they are the ones who are going to create one land, one globe, one species. also they have an amazing memory and are easy to recognize because they have bright, clear eyes. sometimes they have a blue aura, but that part is disputable.
the 'vibrations' part is verbatium, by the way.
it all made sense. if you had the jewel of the world, the savior, a little messiah or the next dali lama on your hands, wouldn't you want the very, very, very best preschool, too?
me on the other hand. i just have an average goofy blonde kid who likes to be pushed in a moldy, blue swing and bang his head against things. the best i can hope for is that he gets an ok teacher at public school and doesn't end up in jail.
i looked at her kid again. she put a handful of sand into her mouth.
i'm forever facinated by realities, by our truths - how things that are very real to one person can be complete bullshit to another.
i guess that's why i kept listening. i wanted to see how something so completely absurd to me could be so very, very true to her.
of course, we didn't make it that far. it was way too hot and rarely do i ever reach an epiphany without vodka, tonic, ice and limes.
we parted ways and she seemed happy that we'd met. that was one of us, at least. i'm left having to find another park, one that's sure to be less convenient, to go to.
of course yesterday i called pharida, asking for her advice on preschools. true to herself, she said she was probably going to send sadie to one up the street. it's good, it's cheap, doesn't have too long of a list and is three blocks from our neighborhood.
i trucked up the street yesterday to check it out, all the while thinking, 'this is really something this child's mother should be doing.'

new do

i was pretty solid on not cutting t2's hair until some (dumb) lady at the library said "what a pretty little girl." ugh. snip, snip, snip.
and to my surprise, he still looks the way i think a baby should look. so no harm, no foul.
every night at supper tayloe and i say one thing we're thankful for. tonight, i'm thankful to have such a patient dog. wolly certainly has his, um, quirks. but when it comes to sweetness, he rules. every morning t2 and i get up, get coffee and take dubs to the dog park. in return, he's kind and loving and adoring (and calm) the rest of the day. we've found our groove and it is good.

derby day

we had an impromptu kentucky derby party saturday and this is what t2 wore. dressing him is one of my favorite things to do. poor kid.
here's the debate happening in our house right now - should we give t2 a hair cut, paying special attention to trimming the hair around the ears.
tayloe says yes, that he looks like a hick.
i say no, little boys are supposed to have hair over their ears. if we trim it, won't he look like a little man?
help us. but keep in mind what happened the last time tayloe gave him a 'trim.'

gimme five

the latest from the land of ttwo. pardon the firmness with which i instill the new skill in the final frames of this video. perhaps i was a little gung ho.
observe also that the moment i cease to entertain, he turns and goes straight for da-da, who he has decided he loves more than anything else in the entire world.
he wakes up, takes one look at me and then yells, "DA DA???" "
i put him on the floor and he takes off crawling toward tayloe, muttering "da-da, da-da, da-da."
he gets to his father and has a melt down at his feet until tayloe picks him up. then he smiles uncontrollably and giggles a lot, looking at me every once and a while to make sure i see that he's having a perfectly delightful time without me.
da-da. da-da. da-da. dadadadadadadadada.
it's all da-da all the time.
and i'm totally fine with that.
oh also, we had the nine month appt yesterday. everything's just fine and get this - little tayloe got a shot, a hugh needle in his thigh, and he didn't cry. not a peep. isn't that weird? and amazing? the nurse said it made her feel good, so she gave us 4 cans of free formula, a bunch of $5 off coupons and a very nice book on early childhood development.
you should have seen me carrying all that crap plus the baby to the car. where was da-da when the similac was falling from my purse, when my hands were so full i had a book of coupons clutched between my teeth all while my pants were falling down and the baby was clinging to my neck for dear life. huh? huh? DA-DA????
i am woman. hear me roar.