Walking & Talking

Toby followed his birthday up with a dramatic developmental growth spurt.  This was combined with a string of big adventures that took him from the mountains of Utah to the (former) swamps of our nation’s capital and back to the lakes of Michigan.  Forgive the textiness of the beginning; I decided they were stories that needed to be told, and maybe better without images anyway.

On the Monday after the 1^st birthday, Matt headed down to Indiana Dunes for a cool plant identification workshop.  This was a fantastic professional development opportunity for him, but because it overlapped with my conference it meant spending 10 days away from Toby.  This was by far their longest separation, and a bummer.  We consoled ourselves with phone calls and Skype, although with both methods Toby’s main objective was obtaining/besmearing the technology.  We look forward to when Toby can interact with the person instead of just teething on the keys.  In the meantime, I worked hard to get my talk ready for the upcoming conference, handle Toby, and take care of Violet, who we realized had all the symptoms of a UTI the day before Matt left. 

When it rains, it pours.  Monday evening I picked up Toby from daycare and we took Viles to the vet.  I think the vet techs thought I was crazy to let him chew on my credit cards, but I was willing to give him ANYTHING to keep him from licking the floors.  Violet weighed her desire to hide in my lap and her wish to not have her tail pulled, and opted to hide under a chair in the corner instead.  I wished I had eight arms.  An hour later, the kitty had an antibiotic shot and we headed home with some optimism.  Early the next morning, Tresha called to say she was closing daycare for the day – her daughter Lyren had been throwing up for hours.  (Subtle foreshadowing: Lyren loves kissing babies.)  Joelyn saved the day by taking Toby last-minute so I could work on my talk. 

Daycare was open again Wednesday, I figured out how to wring a story out of my unexpectedly complicated data, and Noni arrived Wednesday night to help us get ready for a very early Friday departure.  Toby’s Thursday morning routine checkup went well.  He got a heap of vaccinations which the doctor assured us wouldn’t cause any problems for traveling.  We got everything packed and went to bed early.  Friday morning started well… and then, ten minutes before we were supposed to get in the car, Toby threw up.  This was no dainty spit-up.  Thank goodness mom was there – she thought to grab a couple of towels, and she sat next to Toby on the car ride. 

The trip was surprisingly pleasant, given the vomit.  In the car.  In the airport shuttle.  On the plane, and then the next plane, and finally the shuttle to Snowbird, the ski resort where the conference was held.  When he wasn’t throwing up or sleeping (he did a great deal of the latter), Toby was fairly cheery.  In fact, I was convinced he was feeling better, and let him taste my strawberry smoothie at the Salt Lake City airport.  He liked it, and was motivated to learn how to use a straw more effectively than I would have believed.  This made the last episode of sickness by far the most dramatic.  I would have felt bad about it normally, but I wasn’t impressed with the quality of the car seat the shuttle service provided or their inability to either install it themselves or provide me with the necessary literature.  All three of us walked away feeling fine.

The ongoing discussion with Noni about whether Toby’s ailments had been due to a virus or a reaction to the vaccines was settled when we both fell ill three days later, right on schedule.  Mom lay on the couch, I lay on the floor, Toby bounced off the walls.  We survived with the help of Dr. Noni’s arsenal of travel medications, and after the one day of real misery our only regret was the prolonged dip in appetite preventing us from eating the amazing ice cream purchased the night before we were struck down.  We even found the energy to pop Toby in the stroller and take him for a walk through the beautiful landscape at Snowbird a couple of times.  Toby also enjoyed charming conference attendees, digging in to his first breakfast buffet, and discovering how to operate the dials on the breast pump (turning up the vacuum, yikes!) 

The camera didn’t come along, but maybe eventually I’ll get that picture of the mama and baby moose napping under our porch that Mom took while I was in meetings and lil’ T was asleep.  Personally, all I saw was famous scientists.  In lieu of mountain pictures, here’s the best slide from my presentation and one of the 3-4 coolest results of my dissertation: it pays to have short stamens when pollinators are abundant.  (Hopefully the additional analyses currently underway supports this.)

A million thanks to Noni for seeing us through this trip.  Toby was getting so cocky on his feet, and friskily practicing stairs in our hotel loft, that she was seriously concerned he would take his first step with her instead of Matt and me.  No worries!  He waited until we were home, and twice took a step between the futon and the coffee table on June 28^th.  Matt and I were both right there.  Thrilling!  A few days later we were in Ligonier, PA for the annual Schultz July 4^th extravaganza, and Toby took three steps in pursuit of Aunt Becky’s iPhone (she was generous enough to let him play with it.)  Now he can toddle all the way across the living room.  Very precarious, very cute.   He still refuses to have his hands held while he walks – he’s never let us help him along in that way.  I’m curious whether this form of independence will turn out to be a consistent part of his personality.

He decided to start talking more at MommaSue and Grandpa Fred’s house – he took quite a liking to their brown lab, Argo, and enthusiastically called her “dog!”  Okay, maybe it sounded more like “dur,” and maybe he says that noise A LOT, but he especially said it to her.  He also likes to combine it with “ah,” enabling us to make a whole slew of new Toby jokes.  What’s Toby’s favorite key signature?  A-flat (A dur, in the traditional German).  What’s Toby’s favorite way to enter a room?  A door.  Fun, fun, fun.

He also started saying “mama” quite clearly, and tries entertaining and ever-more-accurate approximations of “kitty” (mostly “iddy”, sometimes whispered “keh -IDDY”) and “daddy.”  Those three words will probably have to tie for his first.  "Star" recently joined the ranks.  His babbling has generally gotten more diverse, with inflection and facial expressions.  We are inspired by the feeling that he really understands and wants to communicate, and are working with him on his favorite things with renewed vigor.  Be on the lookout for on/off, open/close, light, button, and fan to enter the vocabulary.  Hooray!  In the meantime, he’s also investing in body-language communication.  He waved goodbye to Daddy on 7/11 and started pointing at things he wants (or places he wants to be carried).  So even if the words come slowly, Tobers lets us know what’s up.

He continues to be an adventurous eater, including his first bacon stick (a Schultz tradition) and crab cakes on the 4^th of July.  Oh yeah, and his first beer.  Uncle George would have been so proud.  (No, we didn’t actually let him have any!)   

Another new favorite activity is feeding us things off his tray, which is usually really fun.  Unless what he wants to feed you is raw tomato mashed with a blueberry scone.  He also enjoys eating things that aren’t food; mostly rocks and aborted viburnum fruits from the bush by our front door.  Some of the appeal is probably my comic attempts to extract the item from his jaws.  Sometimes he picks it up, pops it in, and then gives a big grin holding a pebble between his teeth.  Mostly he’s consistently cute about food, though – my favorite part of the week is how he insists on helping me make the Sunday morning pancakes.

After the 4^th of July in Ligonier, PA, we headed further south to meet up with Joe Bednarek (Matt’s dear friend from his Peace Corps days) and his family just outside Washington DC.  Joe and his wife Olya have a 6-month-old son, Dominic, who we were excited to introduce to Toby.  We had a lovely couple of days talking new-parenthood and hanging out with our boys. 

We headed home totally refreshed.  We only made a short stop at Noni’s house to break up the trip – Toby took the opportunity to show us that he could climb all the way up and down the stairs by himself.  Once.  After that, what’s the point?

He’s also finding other new ways of getting around, from riding rather than pushing his truck to convincing us to give him piggy-back rides.  That last one is a little hard on my back, but Daddy seems to be able to do it with no repercussions.  Pretty much any time someone he likes is sitting on the floor, they’re at risk of having him cruise around to their back, hold on to their shoulders, lean in close, and then maybe bounce a little if they’re not getting the “give me a ride!” message.  Then once the ride begins, there are usually giggles.  Since the end of a ride is a bummer, I sweeten it by sitting on him (couch) or laying on him (bed).  I know, that doesn’t sound like fun to me either, but Toby thinks it’s hysterical.  And anything that makes our little boy laugh is pretty much irresistible, even if it necessitates a visit to the chiropractor in the end. 

 

Now that summer is in full swing, our little man has been exercising his Michigan birthright by going swimming in lakes.  He cries taking a bath in a strange bathroom, but lakes are a different story.  He loves them.  His first experience in a natural bod of water was our own Gull Lake, right next to the biological station.  Joelyn came along to share this special first.  It’s a big lake with a lot of boats, so there were fairly sizeable waves, but that didn’t phase Toby.  He played in the sand, sat in the surf, and got carried out into deeper water.  A few days later he had a lake playdate with my friend Marcia’s grandson Logan, and they both learned how to climb up the toddler slide and whoosh down it into the water.  These experiences brought back a lot of fond lake and pond childhood memories for me.  I think we’ll have many joyful wet days in future summers. 

Just before this post went up, MommaSue came for another visit, perfectly timed to cover for Tresha’s daycare vacation.  Toby is scrupulous about loving all of his grandmas equally (immeasurably), so he decided to reward Matt’s mom with the same kind of joy mine experienced in her last visit – i.e., vomiting.  This illness was quite a bit worse than the June one, but I think the fact that we weren’t on an airplane equalized things.  Good job, Toby.  Somehow the grownups escaped this one.  Thanks to MommaSue for making a very sick little boy and four loads of laundry in one day seem almost like a holiday.

In other news, I’ve submitted the first draft of the first chapter of my dissertation to my advisor for editing.  Progress!  Also, the robins in the bush by our front door hatched their 3 eggs and the nestlings just fledged yesterday.  We’re thrilled they didn't get eaten like the cardinals that occupied that nest before them.