… somebody told his first fib.

We were in our hotel room in Paihia with me trying to get him to nap. Tau hid his new Little People Christmas Flap Book behind the gauzy curtains. No idea that it was clearly visible through them.

“Tau, where’s your book?”

Poker faced response: “I dunno where is …”

Sigh.

After our recent crib-jumping escapade we decided it was time to move Tau to a toddler bed.

So, after hunting the Internet high and low, we decided on the KidKraft Modern Toddler Cot because it could take Tau’s existing crib mattress and looked to be the lowest to the ground of all the beds we saw.

As Tau watched Dave assembling it, we talked about the new BIG BOY BED (!) and how wonderful it was and how he didn’t have to sleep in the crib anymore because that was for tiny babies.

Quite sweet and gullible, our child. He has taken remarkably well to sleeping in the bed and has only slipped onto the floor once in the month or so that we’ve had it. Dave found him, still wrapped perfectly in his blankets, on the floor in the middle of the night.

He does push his luck some nights by getting out of bed before he falls asleep and walking to peer over the railing to see what we’re watching on TV. But generally, a firm “Get back in your bed, NOW! please …” sends him back under the covers.

In addition to the yellow sheets I originally made for the bed, I bought a cute Safari fitted sheet from Target to match the Safari monkey pillow and lamp already in his room.

Had to move the lamp up high recently when Tau burned his hand on it. He decided it would be a good idea to touch the light bulb to see whether Mom was right when she said it was “HOT, Tau! Don’t touch!”

And so begins knowledge of the fact that Mom is usually (always?) right.

Oh, and in case anyone is planning on sending Tau a lion for Christmas? A subtle hint in the picture above. Let’s just say the zoos and wildlife preserves of the world have been calling, requesting the return of their beasties.

A bit blurry but here is Tau walking a mile — OK, a meter or two — in his dad’s slippers.

Note that even though he is very clear on which is his left and right foot, he hasn’t yet clued in to the fact that shoes are shaped to fit the left or right foot. Hence the shoes on the wrong feet!

He wears his own slippers inside Dave’s so that his feet don’t slip out right away.

And it’s hard to tell in this picture but he was so chuffed with himself — to be wearing DADDY’S SLIPPERS!

I mean, the swagger! Like, hey Mom, look how big I am!

One night last week Tau and I are snuggling on his bed before sleepytime, reading Five Little Monkeys.

This book works, by the way. All of a sudden our kid knows that jumping on the bed is a BAD BAD thing. The monkeys? They get owies when they jump on the bed. The fact that Tau cut open his head and had to have his arm in a cast for two weeks, even though we told him repeatedly not to jump on chairs and beds, means nothing. But NO MORE MONKEYS JUMPING ON THE BED!? Apparently that works.

So we turn to the first page where the five little monkeys are all sweetly tucked into the one big bed by their mama.

“Look at all the baby monkeys Tau. Let’s count them … one …”

“Uno! Dos! Tres! …” Quick little finger stabbing the page. “Cuatro! Cinco! Seis!* …”

This boy, he can count in English to around 14 — the number of steps between our downstairs and upstairs floors at home — and to roughly diez en Español. But I thought it was cute that his first instinct was to count in Spanish!

———————–
* Usually counts to more than necessary for the number of objects.

Halloween art from daycare

Sometimes life gets in the way and I don’t get to report back on a major event. Like Halloween.

Which for Dave and I is neither here nor there, not having grown up trick or treating and so feeling no real connection with the holiday. In our pre-Tau days, we were the people who turned off the lights and curled up in bed early with a movie. Or went out for dinner so that we could see everyone dressed up but not have to wrangle with the challenges that Halloween presents.

Like how many pieces of candy to give each trick or treater. And whether you hand the treats out or just hold out the bowl and let kids help themselves. And what kind of candy is deemed acceptable anyway? All that and gauging how much candy to buy upfront, so that you don’t have a mountain of Kit Kats and M&Ms left over. Not that that’s a tragedy in my opinion — I can always find a way to dispose of Kit Kat bars.

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Recent Tau smarts:

• Sunday night, I put Tau in new pajama pants. The long-sleeved top didn’t fit over his cast, so I dressed him in an older short-sleeved top. He gets pretty spinny just before bed and was paying exactly zero attention to the PJs — throwing assorted animals out of the crib and doing twisted manic somersaults was far more exciting. Monday morning, I wake him, stand him up in his crib and turn to get his clothes for daycare. Looking down at his legs, he tells me, “Tau’s pants …” Hands on the hips in indignation. “NEW!” (more…)

At the door this morning. “Tau, wait! Mommy needs to put on her shoes … uh, boots …”

Turns around, staring at my boots for the first time because the new word (it’s only just cool enough to consider wearing boots) … the NEW WORD! … has alerted him to something that needs to be examined, explored, filed away in his little Rolodex of comprehension.

Tugging them on, showing him the zippers. “These are Mommy’s boots.”

“Boo-bz?”

“No … boo-ts. Boots.”

“Boo-bz.”

“Boots.”

With certainty: “Boobs.”

“OK dude …” Can’t beat ‘em join ‘em. “If you say so!”

Mommy’s boobs. On her feet.*

Nice!

* If I was Jessica at OTJs, I’d be breaking out my Photoshop skeelz right about now.

Working Playdoh, eating dinner and wrestling a rubber snake. All with one hand. The other, after seeing the orthopedic specialist after Saturday’s fun and games, is now in a dark blue fibreglass cast.

… monkey get into trouble too.

Guess who’s been trying to climb out of his crib? At nap time yesterday, Dave and I lowered his crib side and gave Tau a very serious lesson on climbing out of his crib carefully. He’s tall enough to lie on his tummy, swing both legs over the crib side and slide down backwards ’til his feet touch the floor. We practiced over and over again and then Dave went out to the hardware store and to get a haircut.

Instead of just putting him in his crib and leaving, I practiced the getting-out routine again with him and then told him (again!) that it was time for his nap and tucked him in. By this stage, he was silly-tired, if you know what I mean, so I lingered in his room, tidying out his clothes drawer and filing books back on his shelves. The side of the crib being down was clearly a novelty and every time he tried to climb out, I made him lie down and tucked him in again, told him it was time to go to sleep.

As he started settling down, I turned (not two steps away, I swear) to move a pile of too-small clothes from the floor to a chair so that I could fold them. And then I turned back to see if he was getting drowsy … just in time to see him launch himself over the side of the crib, fly through the air and hit the carpet, face and then chest first. Thud.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! You can imagine.

Surprisingly, after all the tears and wailing, there was no blood and no swelling. Just a limp-limbed little monkey, clearly exhausted and in a bit of shock. He fell asleep, snuggled on my chest and arms around my neck, about five minutes after the fall. (more…)

On Sunday, after the annual neighborhood bike ride, a bunch of riders and friends came over for a barbecue. The last time we hosted this event, two years ago, I was just over eight months pregnant with Tau. He was born a week later.

Though we decided to dodge a formal birthday party this year, I did make carrot-cake cupcakes, frosted in different colors and arranged as a bunch of balloons. And we sang Happy Birthday, which Tau was prepared for because he’s been singing it to himself for over a month!

Because our place is small, it’s always hectic having so many people over, and this time it felt even smaller with toys littering the living room carpet. That said, I think everyone had a good time — I know we did!

My friend Declan had just bought a new camera lens, and so he brought his camera over to try out the lens on the birthday boy. A set of some of my favorites is here on Flickr.

First three photos by Declan; last photo by Sue

“When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments;
tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become.”
Louis Pasteur

Dear Tau,

There were times when I carried you in my body that I stopped to wonder what kind of child you would be. I thought you’d be active because you never stopped moving. I thought you’d never be content in one spot because you were constantly pressing against the confines of my body. And of course I imagined you’d grow to exhibit some of your dad’s traits and some of my own because that’s just the way genetics work. Guesses on my part and, turns out, I was right on all counts.

But I also wondered how you would look and behave. I imagined a carefree little scruff, running around in board shorts and flip-flops as boys do in our neighborhood. A boy with shaggy, sun-streaked hair not unlike mine and a mischievous personality not unlike his dad’s. To be sure I imagined you as a boy at nine or ten who would breeze through the kitchen and out the back door with his skateboard, shouting behind him, “I’m just going to Ethan’s and then we’re going to the beach and maybe I’ll stay …” Gone before I could call you back to explain or tell you to phone home if you wanted to sleep over.

Our first year with you was one of learning to meet your basic needs. And trust me, it took your middle-aged, self-involved parents a whole year to learn to do just that with any sense of confidence. But this year, these past twelve months, have been all about getting to know who you are. About your wonderful little body and your growing abilities and your lovely character.

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Tau and toddler teacher Ms. Jen

Today was Tau’s last day in the toddler room at daycare. Next week, after his second birthday, he’ll move in with the “big kids” in the two-year-old classroom.

He has been visiting there this past week and when we go to pick him up, he drags us around by the arm, giving us the tour.

The two-year-old classroom has a BIG room (with way cool books and lifelike “dino-nors”) and a BIG playground (with BIKES! and a BIG slide! and a BIG climbing structure! and a wood-chip SAND BOX! with a new-to-him PLAYHOUSE! on it). Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point!

Wonder of all wonders, the two-year-old class also has a BIG potty (regular-sized toilet with a step stool) and a chart on the door with all the kids’ names and green stars for potty attempts and blue stars for potty successes. And we’re all for anything that makes potty training easier at home!

Best of all, the two-year-old classroom has a working water fountain and when you press it — you guessed it — a BIG arc of water shoots through the air and you can catch it in your MOUTH! I don’t think the daycare center realizes how much their water bill is about to skyrocket!

All said, though, we are sad to be leaving Ms. Jen. Things have been up and down in the toddler room over the past couple months and Ms. Jen came in and provided much needed stability and genuine, mommy warmth. His new lead teacher Ms. Dani assures us that he will hold his own due to his size but it is always hard to see your kid move into a class where he is the youngest. And it will be a while before the new teachers learn all his little foibles.

The birthday will be low key. We figure this is the last year we can dodge having a kid’s party. As it happens, on Sunday we’re having a bunch of friends over after the annual community bike ride in our neighborhood, so we will have a BBQ and beer and cake. But not too much fuss.

Today, instead of taking in cupcakes for Tau’s birthday (you are only allowed to take in the store-bought kind and I couldn’t find any that weren’t loaded with sugary frosting), I took in a bottle of blowing bubbles for each of Tau’s toddler friends. Oh to have been a fly on the wall at that bubble frenzy!

And like all good blogging mommies, I will do a birthday post. Because really, not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could capture it in detail before it’s over, that I don’t wish I could just automatically download all of the astounding moments we have with this child directly into the computer, without missing a thing. So that one day he will have some sense of how much we have enjoyed raising him.

Sunday night, after our lovely week away on vacation (more on that to follow), we were getting Tau ready for bed. After pouring his milk as he played on the living room floor, I turned to reach for a lid for his cup. And in that time, Tau clambered up and started jumping like a monkey on the cream armchair. The one he knows he’s not allowed to jump on. As I went to drag him off, he dove sideways off the chair to get away and cracked his head on the media center.

Long story short, we spent an hour at the local emergency room where “man” (the nurse) cleaned the wound above his eye and “yady” (the ER doctor) used some super-special surgical superglue to fuse the three-quarter-inch gash closed.

That’s one tough little kid we’ve got. After the initial shock of cracking his head — screaming out of sheer toddler fury, followed by puking half his dinner due to being worked up by the crying — he was little Mr. Charming. Chatted and sang songs all the way through ER admission and treatment. “Yady? Yady doing? …. Man going!?” And showing off the bulldozers on his shirt to the nurse.

When the doctor brought him the handmade stuffie you see in the picture above, he took one look at its slanty eyes and informed us, “Baby crying!” And when Dave asked him what the baby’s name was, he pronounced, “Taco.”

So, Taco it is. The superglue apparently flakes off after a week or so, once the wound has healed.

By the time we got home at 9:45 p.m., he was overtired and cranky. As Dave did the dinner dishes, I lay next to Tau on our bed and soothed him, ran through the story again:

“You were jumping on the chair, and then you fell and got an owie on your head. And so we went to the hospital, and the nurse washed your owie and the doctor fixed your owie and gave you Taco. No jumping on the chair, Tau. No jumping on the chair, OK?”

“Fan?”

Fan? The ceiling fan above our heads.

I have a feeling that more visits to the ER are in our future.*

* Case in point, see the little bit of dried blood in his nostril in the top picture? Just before I took this picture, he was jumping on the couch and bumped his nose. Sigh.

I would not, could not, in the rain.
Not in the dark. Not on a train.
Not in a car. Not in a tree.
I do not like them, Sam, you see.
Not in a house. Not in a box.
Not with a mouse. Not with a fox.
I will not eat them here or there.
I do not like them anywhere!

This morning, as he woke up, Tau asked for Green Eggs and Ham. The book I mean; not eggs and ham for breakfast. As soon as I gave him the book, his face lit up like the sun.

“You want to read Green Eggs and Ham?”

Emphatic nod. “Read ‘am?”

“Come up. Out. Let’s go lie on Mom and Dad’s bed to read Ham.”

We have a pile of older-kid books like this that Tau seems fascinated by. What he loves about Ham is the rhythm of the prose, the repetition and the rhyme. Not in a house. Not in a box. Not with a mouse. Not with a fox.

That and he loves the fact that there are so many objects that he recognizes and can name out loud. Man. Tree. Car. Eggs. Fork. Wheels. Train. Fast!

I love that he loves books and I love that he likes Dr. Suess. I love starting the day on my back, head to head with my boy, reading in a grouchy Sam-I-am voice.

I keep meaning to tell you that we are done with dummies. Soothers. Pacifiers. Whatever you call them.

Until recently, Tau was still using one when he went to sleep at night. A comfort thing, more for the parents’ sake because we knew it allowed him fall asleep more easily.

And then a couple of months ago, we reached a stage where we realized that we could take it away, cold turkey, without him noticing too much. But if we waited much longer he’d reach the stage where having the dummy would become a battle of wills. That and we’d have to come up with an elaborate but toddler-credible reason to eventually get rid of the thing (clever Mel).

Already he was insisting that three blankies and various lions and books be with him in the bed before he went to sleep. And certain rituals were becoming entrenched: “More water?!” every time we went in to check if he was asleep, along with absolutely having to say goodnight to the moon through all three windows in Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom (thinly disguised way to get picked up and cuddled a bit more). Give it another couple of weeks and the dummy would likely have become an absolute must. Toddlers are fickle that way. (more…)