hey, family!

i'm too tired to think even though i had a really great day and tayloe brought me an awesome suprise. i'll tell you all about it later.
for now here are some pics.
the first one is tayloe with his cousins eliza jane. these two have a ball together. am i the only one who can actually see the humidity in the air in this picture?

max and henry are our tayloe cousins. i refuse to think about the things these two are going to teach t2.

three generations of emerys. i love this picture.

happy birthday

i can't believe t2s first birthday past and i didn't even post a blog. we've been on the east coast since last monday and i've been the most slack blogger ever, haven't i?
i don't highly recommend a 5 hour plane ride alone with a one year old on your lap, by the way. it was less fun than a root canal. he napped a total of 45 minutes. good times.
however when we landed my best (8 mo pregnant) pal cathy was waiting for me and so were my parents. we ditched t2 with mom and dad and headed to charleston, sc, where i spent three delicious days and nights away. these were my first nights away from 2, and it was good to actually start to miss the little critter. cathy and i went to a spa and shopped and ate ice cream. i feel incredibly lucky to have gotten to spend time with her, just the two of us, before her baby comes. keep watch for news and photos of little lipp, due aug. 25.
t2s first birthday was never-ending. we had a fun party in LA two weekends ago with cake and ice cream and booze. thanks everyone for coming!
last weekend we had a family party at the river cottage with more cake and ice cream. (it was the third cake i'd made in a week - butter cake with vanilla icing and sliced strawberries on top. i'm not shy - it was DELICIOUS).
and monday, his actual birthday, we had cupcakes and he was bathed in love by his granparents and uncle and, of course, his mother.
i'm going to reflect a little. just a year ago t2 was a stranger in our house. we loved him of course, but it was more out of duty than anything else.
now he's one of us. equal parts catherine (calm, kind, caring, attractive, sensitive, smart. i could go on ...) and tayloe (wicked, sly, robust, loud, messy, loves to sleep...), and we absolutely adore him. he's just the yummiest, most delicious little person i've ever met.
if i had to find one thing i like the most about him, it's what a boy he is. he's full of piss and vinegar. he eats everything, plays with everything, uncovers everything, laughs a lot and loves to be tickled, tossed around and taken on tours of every single photograph and picture in any house he's in.
none of us can imagine a life without his wet kisses and the sweet, baby-voiced way he says "huh?" when he points to something he's curious about.
oh t2, what would we do without you? not very much, i believe.

next time i won't feed him cous cous

i made this video because i really love this song by my friend chantal and i can't get it out of my head. so i'm sharing it with you people. she wrote it for her two boys (who are three and two) and she's always reminding me when i'm what if-ing and worrying and just generally overthinking the way mothers do that all you can do - really - is love your kid(s).
isn't that liberating? cause i mean, if i can do nothing else i can at least do that.
so here's to me.
turns out giving a 1 year old cous cous is a pretty sour idea. i gave some to t2 tonight and while he did in fact get some in his mouth, i didn't consider how it'd hold up to the nightly floor tossing. not well, it turns out. i still have little cous cous (koo-koo as my mom calls it) grains all over the floor, even though i swept and vaccumed. and i'm pretty sure that even after a very long soak in the tub, there's still some in the folds of little tayloe's body. and perhaps also in the folds of my body.
now there's an image ...

iOne

there've been a few folks who've asked me about birthday gifts for t2. so i created an amazon wish list, which has lots of books and toy ideas. i love wooden toys and so does t2, so there are lots of those. amazon has good prices and you can even get some of the things (especially books) that used. that's fine by us since you'd be saving and recycling, two things we dig.
he's really attached to this blanket we got as a baby gift when he was born. i'm terrified i'm going to lose it in all our moving around, so we'd all sleep better if there was a back up.
other than that, we ask for humanitarian gifts in tayloe's name to our favorite organizations, like heifer.org, the sierra club, our local PBS station KCET, our local public radio KCRW, Oxfam America and Save the Children.

dead woman's shoes

tayloe found a pair of Prada shoes in our garbage can the other day. that sentence would make no sense anywhere else in the world.
it also occurs to me that it's a little odd that my husband knows designer shoes when he sees them.
and that he actually looks in our garbage can.
and that he presumably took a dive in our trash to retrieve the shoes.
hm.
i won't think about that.
the shoes aren't my size, of course, and i don't really like them that much anyway (if i did i'd squeeze my toes in them regardless) so i'm selling them on eBay.
how much can i get for italian heels found in the trash? i hope at least $30 because i'd help me get a really cool birthday present for t2.
this was tayloe's advice:
"make them sound really awesome. something like, "purple james brown shoes! very sexy! very LA! perfect for all seasons!" and then he said, "just don't put that you found them in the garbage."
oh, ok. good tip.
i've been calling them dead woman shoes because we're sure that someone tossed them in our can just before tying cinderblocks to the gal's body and heaving her off a yacht into the santa monica bay.

last first holiday

i just realized it's t2's last first holiday.
we had big plans to go to the beach today, but it got cloudy so we went to the pool instead. it was sunny there and foster's freeze is right around the corner.
if you can't have a french fry on the fourth of july, when can you have a french fry.
tayloe's leaving in the morning for the live earth concert in johannesburg south africa. he'll be back tuesday, which is also his birthday.
(aside: who goes to south africa for a weekend? right now i'm watching him zip up his tiny little daypack backpack, which holds everything he's taking. who takes only a carry-on backpack to SOUTH AFRICA? jeeze louise).
anywho that leaves me and wmd, who in the last week really amped up his 'spirit.' it's as if someone told him (geoff emery) that we are going to love & feed him no matter if he's an angel or tayloe the terrible.
slamming his sippy cup on the floor after a long, wet gulp. screeching at me when he doesn't get what he wants in the time he thinks he ought to get it (one second after notifying me). putting his little paws on the dvd player/tv etc and looking back to make sure i see. and my favorite, acting like a junkie going through withdrawl when i change his diaper.
i'm the adult, i keep telling myself. i'm the adult. i'm the adult. i'm the adult.
that means i do the adult thing. set the boundries, say no, show him what he can play with, sympathize with his frustration, explain the right thing to do and then move on and so on.
but damn, people, sometimes i want to throw that sippy cup up in the air and blast the bitch with a 12-gauge shotgun.
but then i think of all the explaining i'd have to do. and the mess it'd make.
so instead i act mature and say (under my breath) with conviction, "look you, last year at this time you didn't even exist."
so there.