thumpa, thumpa

i had my 4 month appt today and for fun i took t2 with me.
he sat on my legs as the nurse poked around my belly looking for little baby's heartbeat. t2 watched intently, glancing worriedly from me to her to the heart beat apparatus. when we heard it i said, 'that's your brother' and his eyes got big as grapefruits.

last week

this time next week we'll be on the road, little tayloe will be safe on the east coast with his grandparents and it'll be my last day being 32. hm.
i had my last swim classes today, which made me very sad. the kids are so cute and they're so much fun in the water. i'll have to find a place in virginia to put my kiddie swim knowledge to good use.
packing is going so slowly. one day i think i'm really on the ball and the next it seems like we've hardly made a dent. it's so easy to get caught up in other stuff like canceling bills and saying goodbye to friends and getting the cars ready to make the trip that packing easily slips to the end of the list. nevermind that this week both our washer has broken and we had an electric problem that required a handyman be here all day yesterday. (tayloe and i fixed the washer on our own. bravo for us!) oh, and little tayloe has occasionally and without warning been barfing since friday. more on that later.
i keep thinking about monday night, when it'll all be done and tayloe and i will be in a hotel waiting to shove off the next day. come on, monday.

easter, part 2

happy easter

we had a big day on sunday. the easter bunny brought baskets and hid all the eggs we dyed and then we had brunch and another easter egg hunt at a neighbor's house. i even made jellybean cupcakes.

favorite pastimes

when little tayloe isn't helping me unpack boxes, he's begging me to turn the hose on in the backyard so he can spend hours filling and emptying pans and buckets, making puddles and watering the picnic table. honestly, hours.
i can't wait to take him up to mt.airy to water paint the exterior. oh kid, have i got a job for you.

best good friend

the good thing about packing for a move is that eventually everything turns up. i found my camera charger and with it these weeks old photos of tayloe and his best buddy at the park.
meet sean. tayloe's opposite in so many ways and his very favorite playmate. they stomp puddles, they dominate the slide, they run circles around each other, they kiss on the lips.
sean is proof that great kids come from great moms (and dad's). sean's mother lisa is one of my very favorite people and i'm going to miss her terribly. i get teary thinking about it, so i'm going to stop thinking about it.

bye bye

note that i haven't posted many pictures lately. there's a reason. i can't find the camera charger. or the rip cord. boo.
tonight i put little tayloe in his bed and covered him up to his nose, the way he likes. i told him we loved him and before i turned to leave, he wiggled his little arm up from under the covers and waved to me. bye bye mama.
jeeze louise.

carry me back to ole virginny

i'm pregnant, my birthday is very near and we've been in our house for two years. obviously, it's time to move.
we've got 2 more weeks in sunny santa monica until we load our u-haul and head back to virginia. i realized today i hadn't posted this news on my blog and i think that's because it's only now sinking in. we've been hemming and hawing over it for months, but things just fell into place recently and a plan started to form. after a couple of months at the cottage, we're looking forward to settling in charlottesville, where i spent the first 12 years of my life and where tayloe's lived on and off since college. it's a good place to put some roots down since we already have some there.
there are two things i'm enormously excited about. the first is thunderstorms. big boomer clouds that rush in late in the afternoon, dump rain and lots of crackle and then move on, leaving steamy evening skies.
the other is lightening bugs. flicker, flicker.
thinking about these things helps me forget that leaves die and fall off the trees in virginia and that it also gets very cold there. it also helps me forget how very, very hot i'll be this summer. i'll think about that tomorrow.
of course, there are equal things i'll miss about our home here. windy palm trees. the la cocoracha truck. in & out burger. the ocean. and the sun and our neighbors and our friends. plus, this is the place where we started our family. sniff sniff.
anywho, this troop's got a long way to go and a short time to get there. ever tried packing boxes with a toddler at your heels? i don't recommend it.
seriously, can't someone carry me back to ole virginny? like in a superfast sonic machine that also entertains kids, feeds husbands and packs and unpacks boxes?

something that makes me so sad

i've been reading every story i can find about eve carson, the unc student who was killed randomly in chapel hill, nc last week.
and what i can't believe is that they have photos of some thug using her atm card and driving her car in chapel hill. blocks from where she was found dead. unreal.
(as an aside, how does he know her pin #?)
what is keeping her parents from going stark raving mad?
i'd like to trust that the chapel hill police know what they're doing, but years of small town newspaper experience just won't let me. dear god, please PLEASE help them.

no, really

the morning barfs can stop any time now, little baby. your big brother is so used to it he comes into the bathroom with me and makes puking sounds while i'm hunched over the toilet. and then he spits. it's not exactly a skill i would have rushed to teach him.

now that you know

there's a lot i gotta catch you up on.
first, tayloe thinks dick farmar is the prophet of warsaw because at tommy's birthday/christmas party at mt. airy in december, mr. farmar looked at me dead serious and asked me if i was expecting. how's that for a conversation starter?
of course i was and didn't know it.
the other thing is that when i went to get my normal annual checkup once we were back in LA and the nurse asked me for a 'sample' i kinda knew i was pregnant but didn't really so i was nervous. so nervous that i spilled said sample all over the floor. to my credit dr. park's bathroom is really small (back me up, sarah q). in between flushing and standing up, i knocked it off the sink counter. i came out with the cup and the very shallow remains and tried to laugh it off by saying, 'ha ha, i bet that happens all the time.' i mean, who hasn't spilled pee on their doctor's bathroom floor (and then stepped in it)?
the nurse said, actually, it wasn't all that common.
the final thing is that i went recently to get measured for a bridesmaid's dress since i'm to be in my sister in law's wedding (horray!) on oct. 11 (a month post-partum). a sweet little indian man pulled out his tape and his pen and paper and measured my chest. he wrote down a number. then he measured my waist. and measured it again.
'hhmm,' he said in his indian accent.
'hhmm' i said.
'hhmm,' he repeated. 'vell, it's just dat tour bust and tour vaist are de same size.'
and i said, 'not exactly barbie.'
he said, 'do voo vant me to make your vaist smaller?' and i said, 'nah, i don't have the time today and plus, i kinda want this baby.'
he laughed and said, 'i'll just vrite down vhat it is and vish voo luck.'
luck with the baby or luck fitting into a dress, i'm not sure.

uh oh

when something falls on the floor or goes under the sofa or he does something he knows he's not supposed to do like tip wolly's water bowl over, little tayloe is fond of saying 'uh oh.'
uh oh mama. uh oh dada. uh oh uh oh uh oh.
i'm sure he'd of said 'uh oh' yesterday if he had been at the doctor with big tayloe and i when we found out we for sure are having another baby in six months and that said baby is another boy.
two dirty little emery boys. uh oh.
i wonder if i can get my epidural now?

sweet potayloe

little tayloe, if you're reading this you should know there are a few things from the last few days that i'll probably hold against you for the rest of your life.
the first is you barfing craisins down my overalls on sunday night.
the second is the way you refused to eat all day monday and tuesday only to wake me up at 4 a.m. wednesday morning and demand 'yilk' and a 'nack.' oh, aren't you cute.
you did at least say please, which kinda makes me want to forgive you. at least by the time you're married.
i'm glad that you're feeling better, though, because i feel a lot less guilty putting you in time out. i know you think it's funny to grab dirt from my flower pots outside, cart it inside to spread around my rugs and then grab my hand and lead me to the vacuum cleaner, but it's not. it's so not.
this morning you and i went for a walk. you found a rock to carry around with you and as we toddled along you tried to stuff it into every opening you saw. we went nowhere fast, but i was happy to see the real you. for a while there you looked like a wilted piece of lettuce.
so look, sweet potayloe, let's stay away from the sickies for a while. we've got better things to do.

things that go barf in the night

last night i was thinking t2 wasn't his usual happy self and i thought about he hasn't been sick in a long long time and also how he'd never thrown up.
sometime around 10 he woke up whining and shivering. he had a little temperature so we gave him some medicine and snuggled down with him in our bed. around midnight, he woke up hacking. then he sat right up in bed and promptly barfed.
i had just changed the sheets.

prayers

at bedtime when i tell little tayloe it's time to say prayers, he puts his little hands together and closes his eyes and sits perfectly still as i ask god to bless our family and friends and thank him for whatever i can think of to be thankful for that day (the blue sky, that i found my swim cap, the eggo waffles that were on sale).
then i put him in bed and close his door and start to pick up the pieces of our day. sometimes i find cars stacked inside a box, largest on bottom, smallest on top. very frequently there's a sippy cup in the bathtub. one of our toothbrushes is always somewhere near the toilet. blocks are always in our shoes.
i check all of his favorite hiding places - under the rugs, behind the doors, the dog food bag, the trash.
i discover his masterpieces and unveil his treasures and realize this is what i'm thankful for.

doo doo crayola

this morning tayloe neatly arranged all of his crayons in his breakfast bowl and, while i wasn't watching, fed them one by one to wolly.
wolly, of course, ate them. he won't eat a tomato or a piece of lettuce coated in ranch dressing, but he'll eat crayons.
this should really brighten up our backyard. spring color, don't ya know.

swim update

this photo was captured just moments before tayloe rolled himself into a tidal pool (sorry starfish) and had to be stripped down to his diaper and lugged back to the car. brilliant idea. explore tidal pools with the puddle annihilator.

washer

today i went to add some dish towels to a load of laundry and found the laundry detergent bottle floating at the top, tangled in a shirt and covered in suds.
it was almost as good as the time i found our phone in the freezer.

the swimmiest swimmer

i haven't posted any video in a while and thought this capture of some recent park play was kinda cute.
last monday i was browsing through craigslist postings for some freelance work and saw that the ymca down the street was hiring a swim teacher for 36 month olds on down to infants. i'd been meaning to enroll little tayloe in the class for 1 1/2 year olds and just hadn't gotten around to it. that should surprise you.
it suddenly dawned on me that i could teach the classes, he could take the classes with me, we could get paid for it and i could get a free ymca membership all in one swoop. as an added bonus, we could both get some pretty kickin green hair.
and don't ya know that's what happened? after some observation and training on friday, t2 and i found ourselves in the pool and teaching 3 classes on saturday morning.
the first class was a disaster. it's been a while since i taught swimming and i had no idea the class would be so big or that i'd have to yell so loud. i also didn't realize how many kiddie songs i don't know. after the class, i had one of the nicer parents teach me a few favorites.
class 2 was smoother and i even had a mother tell me she liked my style. class 3 - infants 3 months to 12 months - was a breeze.
i didn't think t2 would object to pool time, even if it was for 2 hours, and i was right. he trooped right along, floating on his back, jumping off the side, happily hanging on my hip and helping me pick up toys.
but my god were we tired when it was over. so damn tired.
you know what happens when you do an ok job at something - you get asked to do it again. so now i'm the regular toddler/baby swim teacher at the santa monica ymca on monday, wednesday and saturday mornings. t2 can either come with me, swing it at ymca kidcare in the gym (for free!) or - on saturdays - stay with his dad.
for all you la mamas - a new session starts in march and they're adding a fourth class. sign up, won'tcha?

super dooper big fat tuesday

i voted in the ca primary today.
little t tugged at my pant leg and i punched my support for barack.
i love the guy and it's stupid to vote for a woman just because i'm a woman. i don't even like hillary. she uses too much hairspray.
sometimes obama speaks so beautifully i want to cry.
i mean imagine having that after eight years of verbal assaults from the decider. maybe someday soon i'll be able to watch the president speak on tv and not feel sick. that would be nice.
anyway, if you know nothing about bo (unfortunate initials), learn something - especially you folks over there in virginia and d.c. don't brush it off because it's a primary and then complain later that you don't like the final candidate, you slackers. (and i guess that goes for republicans too, so get out there on feb. 13. especially you, geoff)
your time's comin.