brusha brusha

please tell me you watched dolly sing 'coat of many colors' on the last blog post. it's too good to miss.
i got t2 a toothbrush a few months ago when the vet told me i needed to brush wolly's teeth and i told her i didn't even brush my kid's teeth. and wouldn't you know, the he loves the thing! no trip into the bathroom is complete until all 9 of his pearlies are polished with super silly strawberry paste. it makes a very nice bribe.
help mom pick up these blocks and we can ... GO BRUSH YOUR TEETH! sit still while i put your shoes on and we can ... GO BRUSH YOUR TEETH! it almost feels mean. on the plus side, he has the cleanest mouth in santa monica.
my friend lisa and her son sean came over yesterday and she brought sean's brand new miniature broom, which the two boys took turns whisking around my house like a couple of molly maids. brilliant, right?
eat all of your peas and you can go SWEEP THE FLOOR! hahahahahahahahaha.
this should work out just fine until he starts asking friends if they want to come over and mop our kitchen.

haircut + dinner w/dolly

t2 had his first real haircut while we were on the east coast. it was a pleasant surprise that he was very good and didn't grab the scissors and poke anyone's eyes out. he even had a lollipop. more pictures from our trip are on flickr.
i have my camera back and keep meaning to get walking video, but then forget. i'll remember eventually. it's just that between keeping him from climbing the walls and whopping on other kids .... well, i'm a little distracted. pharida jokes that t2's spirit (i'll always call it that, even when he's in jail) is my 'payback' for having such an easy infant. only pharida can get away with this kind of 'joke.'
on saturday night tayloe and i went to dinner and a movie (the flick was 'into the wild' and i give it lots of stars). tayloe picked the supper spot, matteos, because it was close to the theater. we loved it the minute we walked in because it was tacky with just a touch (the tiniest little touch) of taste. we were saying just this when we realized we were seated right next to MRS Tacky, dolly parton. mmmm, mmm, i love me some dolly. i mean coat of many colors?
dolly's sippin her martini with her girlfriends and we sit down. and i stare. how do i not stare? as my mother in law says, anyone dressed like that wants me to look at them. there's so much to look at. her ginormous boobs, for one. and the 80 karat diamond ring that's so big it spreads over three fingers and i can't even tell which finger it's on for another. and her hair and her lipstick and her spandex and her big poofy lips. she's only 5"2', but there's a lot of doll in dolly.
i tried to eavesdrop, but the only thing i could hear was her saying,'there's no such thing as natural beauty' in 'steel magnolias.'
i did get over it eventually and we had a really nice dinner. we were just about done when we looked over and noticed dolls and her gals were touching up their makeup. at the table. full-on compact-lookin, lipstick smackin,' makeup applyin. oh no she didn't.
tayloe leaned over to me and said ever so quietly, 'you can take a girl out of the country ...' which made me laugh so hard i snorted wine through my nose.

teedle toddle

home again, home again.
i wish i had some new pictures or some video, but i left my camera on the east coast and it's en route as i type. so we'll just have to wait. pooh.
mr.mister is a bonafide toddler. after taking his first steady stretch of steps to his great aunt courtenay in the great hall of mt. airy a few weeks ago (i think he was inspired by his young friend sawyer), t2's been an unstopable beast on 2 feet. he's a comical mix of a drunk and frankenstein, staggering around with his arms straight out in front of him. it's a familiar image if you've ever mixed big tayloe and a bottle of patron.
with his new found skill has come an enormous amount of confidence to try dangerous things, including climbing on anything he can swing his leg up on and then trying to jump off. this has taken precedence to throwing things and hitting people. however now instead of trying to explain gentle, i'm faced with trying to teach a toddler that sitting in a chair is ok, but sitting on a table is not. it's kinda tough not only because it's tedious but also because i find that even as i enforce the rules, i'm questioning them. i mean, some tables really do look like chairs.
sometimes i try to sum up the ways my time as a stay at home mother could come in handy should i ever find myself in an office again. there's the patience, and the organization. but there's also this fundamental right and wrong stuff. like don't bite people and don't hit them and don't go bananas and jump off other people's furniture because all of that is really offensive and rude and no way to make friends.
speaking of making friends, one last thing. thursday we were at the park. t2's toddling around and i'm watching him. i'm also eavesdropping on other kids' conversations. there's this little group of 3 year olds, maybe 4 or 5 of them, all playing in the sand with buckets and shovels and such. one little boy has a toy flip cell phone. while the other kids are building a castle, the cell phone kid is unflipping his phone, putting it to his ear and shouting, "IT'S JUST A STUPID MEETING! CANCEL THE STUPID MEETING." then he'd flip it closed and put it in his pocket. a few seconds later, he'd repeat it all.
poor little parrot. the other kids were looking at him like he was retarded. it makes my heart ache.

play nice

yesterday was such a treat. t2 and i left richmond county and headed down to heathsville to see sweet reid and her even sweeter son sawyer. we had such a nice time playing and hanging out at their way cool barn house.
reid took this series of pics (and also one of them playing very nicely together). every time i look at it i laugh so hard. i also can't help but ask why my kid's the one crying.
t2 does kinda have a hitting/biting "issue." sometimes i honestly know he's playing and has no idea how strong he is or that what he's doing is wrong. other times, he really is mad - like when we had to get out of the river today. either way, we always say no firmly and tell him some kind of alternative (even though we feel stupid saying, 'we don't hit, we hug' because he's still so young). it makes me feel very self conscious as a parent and reminds me that even though my ego isn't attached to a salary or a job in an office anymore, it's very much attached to this little golden haired person and the way he behaves.
i know he's far from an angel and this is just the very skimmy surface of the things he'll do that'll make me want to shoot myself in the head. i guess i'll just keep being consistent (or is there some wonder trick, like duct taping his little hands to his thighs???? tell me, tell me, tell me... ). but hit? and bite? does it have to be that? its so ..... boyish.
despite all the snips and snails and puppy dog tails, he fell sound asleep in my lap at bedtime with his little head on my chest and his sleepy piece clutched in his arms.
that's what little boys are made of.

thank god i'm a country boy

aren't these pictures great? my mother-in-law has an amazing eye and took these on saturday as we washed her car. the one with the chocolate lab moose's mouth framing t2's head is a blue ribbon pic, i think.
t2 had a dandy time playing in her flower pots and in the puddles that the hose made. the country really is a great place for a kid (and his parents). it's still pretty hot, but you can feel fall right around the corner. this is the time of year tayloe and i were married, and because we were married here it makes me very nostaligic for this place.
i can't help but tote t2 down to the river, plop down in the sand and watch him toss rock after rock into the water. we've all been sweaty and dirty and salty most of the time we've been here and it's been delicious.

well that was fun

a few photos from our vaycay last week. t2 got to wear some very fancy clothes on saturday at a wedding in spokane. il esta beau.
(i don't reccommend spokane by the way. our hotel was absolutely lovely and our friends there are lovely, but the town kinda stinks. literally. the only thing it has going for it is gonzaga basketball.)
now that summer's just about over, i think i'll let my hair grow long. it's going to be a rough couple of months because right now (even though i just had it trimmed) i look like fraulein maria (the hills are aliiiiivvvveeee ...) seriously, put me in some krenlin and an apron, shove a carpet bag in my hand and send me on my way.

babys first blackberry

this is a little absurd, but we gave t2 an old blackberry that tayloe had because he goes bananas everytime he sees his dad's.
we even charged it so it lights up when he punches buttons.
it's silly, but he loves it so much that now whenever he's headed for trouble (which is always) i can say, "where's your phone?" and he immediately drops what he's doing and starts looking for it. i wonder how long that'll last ...
i was trying to catch him on tape pretending like he is talking on it. it really is funny - he holds it up to his ear and babbles. but of course he's like the dancing frog when we actually ask him to do something, so instead this is a video of him standing up on his own. and in the end he looks just like his dad - who frequently stands in the middle of our living room, pecking away as if his life depends on it.

back, gone, back, gone

this is another birthday shot, taken at the cottage in va (that's t2's paternal grandfather) because i've been extra lame about taking pictures lately. to my defense, everytime i take the camera out, t2 dashes toward it and then throws a fit when i won't give it to him.
cabo was very very hot. it was mostly work so i didn't get to see much, but i did realize that tortillas in america are the pits. saturday morning after going to a surf beach we went to a delicious tortillaria. the scene was unreal - it was about 100 degrees at 9 a.m., and these ladies are working in a room that's about 150 degrees because they have to press the tortilla and then toast it on a griddle. the press looks like an iron from 1940s. there were about 5 little mexican girls, all about age 5 or 6, with orders their mothers had sent them down the street with. for a moment at least i felt like i was actually in a different place. you should have heard me trying to tell the woman in spanish that i wanted 12 tortillas in a bag.
i have no idea what makes authentic tortillas so good, but i'm going to take a wild guess and say lard.
we leave tomorrow for seattle and then spokane for a wedding. we'll be back sunday and then most likely are going back to the east coast for a good long while. no flies on us. i'm going to do the best i can to keep up here because it seems like changes are happening every day to t2. he says ball (ba) and banana (na na) and duck (duh) and wants to walk.
actually, he doesn't want to walk so much. it's me who really wants him to walk. he's like carrying around a sack of wet concrete. i didn't walk until i was 16 months, and i'm telling you right now if it takes him that long i think it's only fair that i get a deep tissue massage weekly, starting today.
now that i think about it, i'm not sure what i'm going to do when he does start walking because i can't keep a single pair of shoes on his feet. he yanks and kicks off anything i put on and inevitably one shoe ends up in the middle of the road and i don't notice it until i'm back to the car. the other day he was actually riding a pony at the farmer's market barefooted. we're such rednecks.
anyway, we'll keep you posted ...

adios

this is at our dave rabb gym class, which ended today. boo hoo. they don't open again until after labor day, which seems like forever away.
i'm leaving in the morning for cabo san jose in mexico. i'll be gone for two days working on my women for the world freelance project, mapping out their new web site (by the pool) and filling their web pages with content (with a cig in one hand and a cocktail in the other) and coming up fundraising ideas (after i order lobster).
the tayloes are staying behind on their first solo/overnight/two-day venture together. i sorta wish i could be in two places at once because i'd really like to watch as they whittle away the day together, most likely in their underware/diapers, eating ice cream and watching professional sports.
tayloe's (big) a rock star for staying behind and minding the store, especially when he had the option to come along.
in gratitude i cooked them a big pot of mac and cheese (broccoli added) and made some chicken salad - food that's easy to grab in between 'girls gone wild' and 'america's next top model.'
i think they're really going to enjoy each other, but if i'm wrong and you get a pitiful call from tayloe asking for help, please do what you can (just don't call me).
mr. mom, i love you forever. you're my favorite place.

recall

so mattel announced another toy recall because some of its toys have dangerous parts. but there's a whole other batch of toys that are being recalled because they're made with lead paint.
um. ok. talk about a problem i thought we'd solved, like, 20 years ago.
speaking of toys that should be recalled, tayloe's (little tayloe) uncle geoff gave him an up-up elmo for his birthday. geoff's the guy that gave us the 'my balls are magical' toy and the rolling, talking ball that says 'i'm over here!' when you've been ignoring it for too long.
determined to outdo himself, he delivered elmo with a smile. only much to our delight, t2 hates it. i mean really hates it. he turns and crawls away from it whenever he sees it. and if it starts talking ('elmo wants up-up, up-up elmo,') t2 starts crying. it's even worse if i start playing with it. he'll try to smack it out of my hands, tears streaming down his face as if to say, 'don't do it mommy! it's a bad toy! can't you tell? can't you ... (cry, cry, cry) ... can't you (cry, cry, cry, cry) ... can't you tell it's EVIL???' it's the saddest thing ever.
so i did elmo a favor and put him in 'storage' in a ziplock bag under t2's crib. only i didn't hide him well enough because t2 found him. elmo came alive from the grave, crying 'up, up, elmo wants up up' (i mean, why can't he at least say please?) through the plastic bag. and that was pretty much it for t2. he had a complete meltdown.
as a side note, this kid melts down about very little. last week a balloon popped in his face (he bit it, of course) and he laughed.
anyway, he melted down crying and crying and crying. i took elmo out and tried to show him it was ok, that i hadn't buried him alive, that he was only 'resting' in the plastic bag, but t2 wanted nothing of it. he whacked elmo so hard i dropped the thing on the floor. it fell with a thud and then said, 'thank you' in its stupid elmo voice.
so elmo and his red polyesther 'fur' and his googly eyes and his bad manners are banished to the man room outside.
if he survives that, which i very seriously doubt, i have my own ideas about what to do with him ...

little glimmer of devil

you tell me, what should the thought bubble over his head say?

elliott james lipp

news, news, news! my friend cathy lipp had her baby boy on tuesday! elliott james lipp was born at 11:06 aug. 7 - everyone is happy and healthy.
i would have posted a photo of the little guy if, um, i had it. his slacker parents haven't sent one - you'd think they had a newborn to take care of or something.
meanwhile, tayloe keeps finding new things to get into. it took him 10 minutes to work his way out of this basket.
aren't those cute orange pants he has on? i switched to cloth diapers last week. i know, who does that this late in the game, right? i honestly wish i'd done it sooner. i do a stupid amount of laundry a week anyway, so i haven't really noticed that much difference. i bought some great liners and over pants on sale and already have a bunch of cloth inserts, so it was just a matter of putting it all together.
getting them - or any diaper - on in peaceful manner is something else entirely.
i'm going to make a million dollars inventing a stand-up diaper changing station that you can strap a kid into.
here's what my daily conversations with t2 sound like:
me: stand up and let's change your pants
t2: bababababababa
me: hold still now. still. still. hold still. look!!! a car!! right there!!! in front of you! ooohhh, what a nice car! car! car! red car! your red car! hold still (etc, etc, etc )
t2: aaaahahahaha. bababa. mama mama mama. DADA?
me: dada's working. he's not here. i'm here. hold still.
t2: DADA? DADA? DADADADADADADADA.
me: ok, we're almost done. look! another car! a car! WWWHHEEE! play with that car. (SLAM)
no, we don't throw cars, we roll cars. see (one hand putting diaper on, one hand rolling the car) roll. not throw, roll. roll cars.
t2: DDDDAAAAADDDDAAA? dada? dada? dada? dadadadadada
me: let's work as a team. we're almost done. almost done. almost ...
(t2 sits down and inevitably squishes a turd into any one of our persian rugs. then, he makes a break for it and finds something else to throw.)
me: sigh. (pull out the big guns and put a ball on a nearby table, prompting him to crawl toward it and stand up. 'he can't possibly fall for this again,' i think.)
t2: ba? ba? ba?
me: yes, that's a ball. hhhheeeey, i know! you should get that ball! that's your ball! get the ball! it's over here ...
(sucker ...)
t2: ba. ba. mama? dada? mama? dada? DADA? DADA? DADA?
me: DADADADADA is NOT here. FOCUS, CHILD!
it's cute that he's really attached to tayloe, unless i'm trying to get him to do something he doesn't want to do in which case he nearly always screeches for his dad. and here i was believing what everyone said about little boys being ssssssoooooo attached to their mother. hrumph.

the very busy spider

another cute birthday photo.
we have this eric carle book, the very busy spider, that t2 loves. it's his top choice nearly every night. now, i like eric carle. he's good clean fun.
but this one, the very busy spider, makes me mad. here's the deal. it's this spider and she gets blown across a field and lands on a fence post near a farm and starts spinning a web.
as she's making this web, various and assorted farm animals approach her and ask if she wants to play (pig wants her to go roll in the mud with him, the dog wants her to come chase a cat, the cat wants her to take a nap and so on). each time, the spider doesn't answer because 'she's too busy spinning her web.'
at the end of the day, she catches a fly in the web and then she falls asleep. she's so zonked she even misses hearing a compliment from an owl, who (hooo, hooo) says her web is very beautiful. and that's the end.
this spider, she's a pretty boring gal don't ya think? she's so caught up in getting her mundane tasks done that she misses all the fun on the farm. i mean, who wouldn't want to roll in the mud? where's the work-play balance?
that's the lesson i take from it (everytime she doesn't answer, i tell t2 how rude she is and how very boring her day is turning out to be), but i'm not sure that's the lesson the author intended.
i think maybe eric carle has some protestant work ethic hang ups that he hasn't really worked through. i halfway expect the very busy spider to be beamed straight to heaven and take a seat next to the almighty at the end of the book.
that said, if that spider is for hire i'm perfectly willing to hand over my dyson and a bottle of ajax and let her get her protestant work ethic on in my house.

a vaccum that doesn't suck

tayloe surprised me with a new vaccum.
it sounds like the most unromantic gift ever. but it's a dyson - a super slim, super sucking, bagless, headacheless dyson. in fact, one of the very best surprises i've ever gotten.
tuesday morning he left the house on a mystery errand and came home with the new slim model in the car. maybe i've lost my mind, but i think that's really sweet and romantic.
i jumped up and down and i think i cried a little when i saw it.
wolly's hair and baby mess have really started to cake in over the last few months. my 'ol wheezer (the dirt devil) just wasn't getting the job done. it just blew the dog hair around the house. in fact, the dog hair actually ran from it. the thing can't even suck up a cheerio anymore.
and emptying the filter is like setting off an atomic bomb. it billows a plume of dust over our garbage cans that doesn't settle for days.
i ripped into the dyson, put it together in 15 minutes and vaccumed for 2 hours straight. it could suck up the baby, i'm convinced.
it also swivles! and to empty it, you just remove the canister and open the bottom! dump and go! bam!
our rugs look like new and turns out we have wood floors!
thank you tayloe. thank you, thank you, thank you.

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.