Here come the holidays...

Thanksgiving came and went with breathtaking speed, but while we were in it, it felt like a leisurely vacation. Of course, getting ready to leave is the hardest part – luckily Toby helped me pack (all the clothes on the floor were in the suitcase before that).

We drove down to Richmond and used Grammie and Grandpa Royer’s house as home base, with a few forays out to visit with Noni & family. No pictures from Grandpa’s house, have to remedy that next time! Toby loved the food (especially venison sausage at Grandpa’s, and pretty much whatever he could get his hands on at Aunt Cathy’s Thanksgiving). It was lovely to see everyone.

The best part may have been the cousins, though. They had many hours of fun time to play together. Now that Isaac can walk, the roughhousing has begun. At daycare, Toby has a reputation for sweetness – he kisses babies, gives out hugs, and is all innocence and peace-church-inheritance. But as many of you have noted, the kid is built like a wrestler (“fireplug” and “destined for husky sizes” may have been overheard recently). Perhaps Isaac is just bringing out his true nature. It took Toby a while (and several diaper grabs) to convince Isaac that he would rather roll around that floor than climb the stairs, but eventually persistence paid off.

At the end of it all, we got those sweet looks that we can probably expect for the next ten years, “Us? We weren’t doing anything!”

Toby’s primary passions continue to be books and pushing buttons. Buttons may soon be taking the lead. I let him accompany me into the basement to shift laundry to the dryer once, and he discovered the amazing, light-and-sound-producing computer that is our washing machine. Now he stands at the basement door making sad sounds, begging to be taken downstairs. We give in at least once a day, and he stands for 5-10 minutes in front of the machine, pushing one button after another. This morning he wanted to stand in the laundry basket while he did it. Why? The mysteries of the pre-talker.

Not a lot of progress on the talking front since the last post, but he will make owl noises (a whispered hoo-hoo), and I think he can say “bowl.” And he asks me to sing “Baa baa, black sheep” repeatedly, usually chiming in for the “baa-baa” in the middle of the song. That’s cute. He knows I can’t resist. He particularly likes to be serenaded while he’s nursing. If I stop, he pauses too, looks up, and says, “baa-baa!” 

With winter comes the need to bundle. Last year we mostly put him in a pre-warmed carseat, covered him in blankets, and ran to the car. This year it’s all about accessories. Snowsuit, mittens, hat… the first time I put them all on, he tried to stand up, then tried to sit, and finally gave up and rolled over on his back. A squishy billiard ball. Now we’ve acquired the final piece – boots! We’ve been fortunate to get almost all of Toby’s clothes second hand, but his snow boots are brand new. And luckily, he looooves them. The first time I put them on, he obviously thought they were weird. We got a show reminiscent of putting shipping wraps on a horse’s legs – he walked about five feet lifting his feet way up in the air and stomping them down before things normalized. Sort of. Somehow boots just mean tromping. Even now, when he’s had them all week, he asks us to zip them on and then he stomps around the loop in our house – kitchen, hall, living room, kitchen – over and over. (Not really that different from a normal evening, when he may run the loop five times a row, except for the stomping.) Here he is mid-circuit.

Our next adventure: getting ready for Christmas. Look for the next post in early January!

Bears and Beers and Steers, Oh My!

Our first celebration of fall was picking out pumpkins with Noni. We got two little ones. We skipped carving them, but Toby has really enjoyed tossing them around. He likes to make groaning “it’s so heavy” noises, sometimes before he even picks them up.

We didn’t really celebrate Halloween with Toby last year, but this year he seemed just the right size and age for me to inflict all my Halloween fantasies on. Next year he’ll probably demand to be dressed as Batman or Luke Skywalker. This year: a cute, fuzzy little bear!! We even planned to take him trick-or-treating with my yoga buddy Jen and her son Desmond (we were pregnant in yoga teacher training together). The evening of the 31^st turned out to be too wet for toddlers, so we opted to visit our favorite Michigan brewpub, Darkhorse, instead. Toby got his first soda and candy (a KitKat bar, he ate two bites and then gave it to me, yay!). The boys had fun eating cheesy breadsticks and being cute.

We took Toby to Joelyn and Mridul’s house a few days later so he could ACTUALLY trick-or-treat. We established that no, you can’t fit the costume in the carseat, and yes, he is actually the cutest thing ever. (If Joelyn, MommaSue, and I all agree, then it’s pretty much a fact, right?)

 For Toby’s second wedding, we headed down to Austin, Texas to see my cousin Emily Rosenthal marry James Allen. It was a quick trip, but lots of fun and surprisingly easy. Toby seems to enjoy hopping in the stroller and checking out airport terminals, which turned out to be a really good thing. We arrived in Detroit at the far end of terminal C, walked all the way to the far end of terminal A, left Daddy reading his book and strolled to the other end of terminal A to get lunch, and made it back to find all the other passengers were gone – our flight had been assigned a new gate. Back to the far end of terminal C; Toby ate an entire piece of pizza on the way. Thirty seconds after we settled in, gasping and sighing, at our new gate (right next to the one where our flight from Grand Rapids had arrived), Delta announced the plane needed repairs. A theatrical collective moan arose from the crowd. We went back to the far end of terminal A again. Matt and I were tearing out our hair, and Toby was having a fine old time. Six elevators, three trips through the psychedelic tunnel, and six opportunities to gaze at the coolest fountain ever. Here’s roughly what the trip looked like.

But once we got to Austin, and Toby was done throwing up in the taxi, it was all smooth sailing! We had a great time playing with the cousins, aunts & uncles, Grammie & Grandpa Royer. Plus the fun of flushing toilets and playing with phones in hotels.

  The wedding was mind-blowingly beautiful and every last one of us had a really good time. Toby liked the bluegrass band, longhorns (to look at and to eat), and exploring all the nooks and crannies at Wild Onion Ranch, where the wedding was located.

He was particularly fascinated with the glass pebbles embedded in the sidewalks. We may have enjoyed the photobooth, too. The photographer really wanted to put a fuzzy black wig on Toby (“He’ll look just like Billy Joel!”), but the tot wasn’t about to let that happen. Matt managed to avoid the photobooth altogether, but enjoyed local beer and good food.

Those were the major adventures since our last post, but of course there have been lots of other exciting happenings on the toddler homefront. October 20^th was a big day, with his first documented scribbles (although there are rumors he did it at daycare before) and mastering “baa-baa” in answer to the question “What do sheep say?.” 

 Another favorite new phrase is “uh-oh,” when something is dropped. Sometimes he says it before dropping the object, which gives us fun insight into what’s going on when he’s in another room. He is learning other new words fast, but not yet so fast that we’ve lost track of them. Other new additions since the last post include no (“nehnehneh”), ball, mice, yeah, brr (as in, “I’m cold, get me out of this tub!”), all-done (you can hear this at the end of the boot video), eyebrow, and beep. That last one is usually in response to a sound from the kitchen. He gets excited because he knows we get to go in there and stir the pot, open the oven, or answer the phone. Sometimes he runs into the kitchen ahead of us. He's even gotten interested in letters, and recognizes "O" and sometimes "M." His chatter has taken on a new melody and flow in general, so we can hear how sentences will form. It’s the most beautiful sound.

The physical skills Toby has mastered over the last six weeks are even more astounding. He has always liked dumping and knocking over, but he suddenly has taken an interest in stacking, sorting, and putting away. Usually followed by dumping again, but that’s cool. This newfound manual dexterity has also inspired playing the xylophone and pushing his wooden “mower” around. And some things haven’t changed; no matter how much “putting away” gets done, we still spend the end of the day re-folding wipes, putting the tupperware back in its cabinet, and restoring the books to the bookshelf.

He’s learning new uses for his feet, too. He LOVES to put them in things – shoes, boxes, pots. He really likes to put them both in one object and then sit on it. If you know why this is so fun, please email me, because it’s a mystery that repeats itself many times a day at our house. Standing on one foot on a basket or cup is also super fun.

 

Sometimes, just to mix things up, he puts things on his arms

And he is climbing. Chairs, couches, stairs. Thursday morning I turned around to see him standing triumphantly on the kitchen table. He is one step from realizing that he can not only carry his little blue chair around, but also use it to clamber on things. Poor Violet, soon there will be no containing him. He hasn’t learned how to turn doorknobs yet, though. I shouldn’t have said that. Anyway, we’re getting to flex our untested discipline muscles as Toby learns what is off limits, and then watches us carefully as he puts his toe over the line repeatedly. Mostly it’s standing up in his highchair or poking Violet. Watch out kitty, he’s coming to get you.

His emotional development is also coming into relief, with occasional classic toddler mini-fits (throwing himself on the floor, pounding his fists). We are making some progress at not laughing when things like this happen (also a problem with standing on kitchen tables, etc.) The separation anxiety that hopefully peaked for good a couple of weeks ago was not funny in the slightest, but we’re reassured that it’s right on schedule and the sadness stops as soon as the desired person is out of sight. This can be either Mama or Daddy; he prefers to have us both. The flip side is the glee he shows when we come home – running up to the door when I tell him I hear Daddy’s truck, clapping his hands when he sees Mama through the door, and clamoring to be picked up by whoever just walked in. He’s already a nearly full microcosm of human experience, and we’re lucky to be his stewards and co-conspirators.

P.S. – This is our friend Kane and Merry’s Chihuahua, Teddy, who we sometimes dogsit. Toby loves him, and even calls him by name. Do we need a dog?

Toby's first wedding

The milestones keep rolling in… on September 6^th we headed to California with Toby in tow to see my old college friend Abbie Turiansky get married in the redwoods.  We decided to treat it as a vacation, our first since Toby was born.  Abbie and her now-husband Aathi planned an amazing full weekend of activities in an old WPA-built campground in the middle of second- and third-growth redwoods.  This is Sequoia sempervirens.  Not the most massive trees – the ones you could drive a car through – but the tallest in the world (379 feet!).  All through the park you could still see the massive stumps from the most recent logging, 80 years ago; many were easily three times the width of any standing trees.  Many of them were surrounded by a tight circle of big redwoods, probably 80-year-old root sprouts.  It was interesting to be in the presence of an astounding ecosystem and also be surrounded by visible reminders of something even more amazing that is gone.  Judging from the visible rate of growth, it will likely be another 200-300 years before trees that size dominate the forest again.

Blah, blah, blah, Anne and Matt are biologists.  What’s important is that Toby thought the trees were cool.  He likes to look up at the canopy, and this canopy was very high.  He likes to touch bark, and this bark was like nothing he had ever touched before.  The forest floor was covered in redwood leaves for him to pick up and either offer to us, or stick in his mouth.  Sometimes there were even cones to grab and carry.  And the best part was that he didn’t have to entice us to take him out in the woods – it was right outside the door of our little one-room cabin.  For three days, everywhere we went was walking paths through the trees.  The other guests were charmed to see him toddling between the trees.  We were glad he has finally consented to hold someone’s hands going up and down stairs and tricky terrain, because it made all this walking a lot more fun.  Plus it’s really sweet to have a toddler hold your finger.

Toby enjoyed the company of the other wedding guests more than we expected.  He’s usually a bit reserved with new people, but almost as soon as we arrived he befriended the grandchild-hungry father of the bride, who walked him up and down stairs and around paths for at least 30 minutes before I missed him and stole him back.  Sadly, he didn’t stay up long enough to dance at the reception, so we didn’t get to find out how he would react to a live band and a horde of small children spinning in their finery, but he did love watching the musicians play before dinner.  And at least I got to dress him up in cute clothes before he’s too old to say no.

We also made a side trip down to the town of Mendocino to introduce Toby to the Pacific Ocean.  We found a beautiful, foggy, cliff-surrounded beach covered in fine sand and driftwood.  It was freezing cold, but the little dude still wanted to get in the water and never leave.  Even though he was shivering, he cried when Matt finally picked him up to head back (in the first photo, we're inspecting a dried shrimp while Toby tries to make another break for the water).  Luckily there was driftwood to inspect and wave around on the way back.

 

 

Right before we left, Toby fed himself with a spoon for the first time.

 On the way back, we stopped to visit with our friends Ryan and Doro and their toddler Rowan, who turned 2 a few weeks later.  The last time these boys saw each other, Toby was not quite a month old and Rowan was taking his first steps, so it was fun to see them interacting.  We just wish we could gather all our favorite people in the same place, but there are too many ones we can’t convince to permanently move to the Midwest.  Oh, well.

All in all, the trip was worth it.  Traveling across the country, changing diapers in the car, and driving up the coast of California with a toddler (especially one who gets motion-sick on curvy redwood roads) to stay in a rustic campground where we need to clean up for a wedding is not something I would want to do every week, but with the right company it was a great choice.  No more big trips for two months.

Developmentally, most of the big milestones have been communication.  He really enjoys screaming lately.  Out of joy, frustration, anticipation, or maybe just to see what new kinds of screams he can make.  We’re trying to not make a big deal of it and hoping the ear-piercing ones won’t last too long.  He says lots of words, too.  In addition to the 14-month list (Mama, Daddy, Kitty, Dog, Duck, Star, & Book) we are now more or less convinced he can say Outside, Water, Key, Again, Toby, There, Tree, and Moon.  I really think he said blueberry once.  But he doesn’t talk that much, and often a fairly well-annunciated word will regress to something more efficient that still gets the point across. (E.g., “kitty”  is now usually just “dee.”) 

I guess he’s having too much fun poking things, running around, and keeping us guessing to bother with pronunciation.  He still gets really into different sounds from time to time – there were 3-4 days when he loved saying “boo;” he would stick his chin out and up, pucker his lips, squint his eyes, and say “boooooo-ew!” over and over.  Especially when we were blowing bubbles.  Then it morphed into moo, and now he says it without the extra gestures.  Which is an important step, I guess, but still kind of a shame.

He’s sleeping way better now too; there was even a night when he only woke up one time.  I got brave about night-weaning, so it’s mostly my fault it hasn’t happened before now.  He even woke up once and sweetly said, “Mama?” instead of crying.  That was three days ago, hasn’t happened since.  But after the one really good night, the next day was amazing – all the colors were brighter, shapes were sharper, everything was generally easier and more joyful than I can remember it being in a long time.  Is that what my normal brain is like?  Oh, well.  I wouldn’t trade that times 10 for Toby.

He’s started regularly imitating our behavior as well as sounds, which is tons of fun.  He likes to brush the kitty and his own hair.  He’s very enthusiastic about waving (a whole-arm affair, from the shoulder, always accompanied by a big grin.)  When we go outside, he inevitably wants to climb in the car, sit in the driver’s seat, turn the wheel, and make the hazard lights come on.  (Don’t worry, no keys are involved and the emergency brake stays on.)  He also LOVES it when we sing and sign “the Itsy-Bitsy Spider.”  I did it more times than I can count on the flight home from San Francisco, and it seems to have stuck; he likes to grab my hands and “help” me do it, or runs to get his recorded book of nursery rhymes so he can listen to Grammie sing it while he sticks his fingers and thumbs together and throws his hands in the air.  CUTE. 

End-of-summer celebrations

What a month it’s been!  Since the last post we had visits from Grandpa Royer and Uncle Jacob, then the Royer-Miller clan, and finally Noni.  Our weekends were packed (with joy, and zerberts). 

Grandpa Royer and Uncle Jacob accompanied us on Toby’s first pilgrimage to Lake Michigan.  It was a beautiful day, and Toby loved the sand, surf, and pebbles.  I spent a lot of time taking rocks out of his mouth.  He had fun walking (and falling) in the sand, playing ball with Jacob, crawling in and out of holes Grandpa and Jacob dug, and eating sandy grapes.  The wind kicked up toward the end of the afternoon, so Jacob even got some of those Great Lakes waves he’s so fond of.  It was a great way to spend what may be their last visit with us in Michigan. (Cute videos from Grandpa that I'm having trouble formatting - ask to see them next time we meet!).

The next weekend saw the arrival of the Royer-Millers, i.e. CousinFest!  It was fun gathering such a young and noisy crowd around our table and seeing the boys really start playing together.  Everybody shared toys, books, and laps.  Toby pinched Isaac's cheeks (gently, mostly.)  We spent lots of time outside, either in our yard or at the playground; it is amazing how having small children can make even the most pedestrian outing an adventure. 

Noni’s visit was relatively calm this time – no major events besides some serious cooking.  We did take time to sit back and be amazed together at how much better Toby is getting around these days.  He rarely crawls at all any more, and is walking faster every day.  Once in a while it looks like he might try to run, but then his head gets ahead of his feet.  Usually he catches himself with his hands, but if he’s carrying something often he falls right on his face and needs some kisses.  He’s quite brave, and we’re slowly getting braver too.

Eating has been nearly exciting as walking.  Now the way to get him to eat something he's not interested in is to put it on a fork - instant deliciousness.  Or give him a big hunk he can gnaw chunks off of (e.g., watermelon at an MNA volunteer picnic).

 There have been two trips to Battle Creek’s Binder Park Zoo since the last post.  Their major attraction is a giraffe feeding station, and when you’re going there with a 14-month-old, most of the trip is getting all the way to the giraffes and back to the car before it’s time for a nap.  On our first trip, with Marcia and Logan, we squeezed in a visit with the (very frisky) snow leopard and a quick stroll around the petting zoo.  The second trip was with our daycare group, and we spent a lot of time on bathroom stops and walking up and down board paths.  As far as Toby is concerned, all of these things are an outrageous amount of fun.  He loves to walk on, look at, and rattle anything new.  Getting licked by a giraffe is just icing.

One of the things Matt got us started doing is taking Toby to the playground regularly.  There is a toddler playground just a mile down the road at the local school, and Matt encouraged Toby to get familiar with the equipment.  Now he climbs all over the main structure by himself, even going down the slide without any help (feet first, on his belly).  With a little help, he loves riding the swings or the horses.  This is often how we spend our evening together as a family between dinner and bath time.