Grrrrrr

Well, I noticed today that Troy's last four teeth have finally come in. They had been bothering him for a long time, as he voraciously chewed everything he could get into his mouth. He even loved me brushing his teeth just because he liked chewing on the rubbery bristles of the toothbrush. The funny thing is that the missing teeth were his canine teeth, which meant they were missing in the exact same place in his mouth, top and bottom. So, I guess he had a sort of symmetry at least.

Arm Warmer

My wife bought Troy these little satin pillowcases for the pillows in his bed. Most of them have a zipper, so the pillow is completely ensconced inside the pillowcase. But one of them has these overlapping flaps instead. When Troy is trying to relax for a nap or for the night, he likes to hold the pillows under his arms and rub his hands back and forth across the satin. But with the pillowcase that has the flaps, he’ll actually stick his arm inside the pillowcase for some reason. And he’ll lay there wearing it like an oven mitt, or arm warmer, or something. It’s the funniest thing to see.

Kiss!

This morning, we were doing one of our Troy-sandwich hugs, when Troy suddenly leaned back to look at both of us. My wife and I took turns covering his adorable little face with kisses while he giggled with glee. Then, he reached out and put one hand on my wife’s cheek and one hand on mine. He forcefully turned our faces toward each other and then pushed my wife’s lips against mine, saying “kiss!” Now, it was my wife and I that were giggling, and Troy just kept pushing our lips back together every time we pulled apart. I guess he feels that kissing will bring us all closer together.

Tail Lights

We’ve been trying to take Troy out running / walking in the evenings while the weather is beautiful outside. Troy only seems to know two speeds, full-out sprint and stop. So, he and I spend the entire time running down the sidewalk while my wife walks behind us pushing the stroller.

But Troy gets easily distracted by the lingering Christmas decorations, cars parked in driveways, acorns in the seams of the sidewalks, flags stuck in yards, statues of zen frogs hiding in flowerbeds...well just about everything...you get the idea. So, we stop A LOT. Sprint...stop...sprint...stop...sprint...stop.

One second, Troy will be messing with something in someone’s yard, and the next, he’s running full throttle down the sidewalk. I spend the entire time chasing after him to make sure he doesn’t stray into the street or into someone’s open garage. And then without any warning at all, he’ll just stop to mess with something new that’s he’s spotted.

Sometimes, I’m going so fast to try to catch him that I get too close, and I have no way to stop when he does, so I end up sidestepping around him or leap-frogging over the top of him. He needs a pair of taillights rigged up, so I get some kind of warning that he’s braking. On second thought, I’m not sure that would help either. He’d probably end up looking like a student driver, gunning it and then slamming on the brakes over and over.

A Good Heart

We decided to take an evening stroll tonight as a family. Troy had been cooped up inside all day, so we thought it would be good for him to get out and run around. My wife likes to take the stroller with us just in case the munchkin wears himself out and wants to ride the rest of the way home. Besides, it’s also a great way to carry water, snacks, blankets, extra clothes, etc.

On the way home tonight, my wife was falling behind Troy and I as we made a furious dash down the sidewalk. Troy kept stopping to wait for her, looking back to make sure she was okay and still following. When she’d get close, he’d take off in a sprint again. At some point, he must have decided that my wife was getting tired, so he went between her and the stroller and started pushing it for her. He took her burdens on himself, so that she could rest. It was so beautiful. He’s such a sweet boy with such a good heart.

Daredevil

It was a beautiful 70 degrees today, so we decided to take Troy out to the park. Not exactly what I’d call winter weather, but it does make it nicer to play outside. Troy did his typical rounds at the park, running up the stairs, sliding down the slide, running around the playground, and back up the stairs again. But suddenly, he just up and decided to go headfirst down the slide. When he got to the bottom, he slid off the end, laughing the entire way; picked himself up; and started climbing back up the slide. That’s right, as in uphill against the slide, feet slipping and going down one step for every two upward. When he got to the top, he dove headfirst back down the slide again. We didn’t teach him that, so he must just be a daredevil; a fearless, thrill seeker!

A Covid-19 Christmas

Well, my wife and I carried the Land Rover down stairs last night and covered it with a blanket. We wanted to capture Troy’s reaction to it when he first saw it. We’re glad we did, because he casually looked at it, grabbed a couple of books, set them on top of this new Troy-height “table”, opened them, and started reading. He made no attempt to look under the blanket, just accepted that his crazy parents decided to do some redecorating while he was asleep.

We decided to eat breakfast before opening presents, because we figured Troy would be uncorralable (not sure that’s actually a word) after he saw his gifts. My wife made a nice spread in honor of my birthday, even throwing in some bacon as a treat! After everyone was satisfied, we dug into the gifts.

The first was a reveal of the mysterious “table” in the middle of the floor. Troy was sitting nonchalantly on the couch, watching his mama slowly pull back the cover. But the moment he saw the car, he got a huge smile on his face, jumped to his feet, slid off the couch, and ran over to touch it. He loved pushing all of the buttons and handles. He let us put him inside, but then the moment it started to move, he wanted nothing to do with it. He jumped over the door, scared and panicked. We tried again several times, but he wouldn’t get back inside. Instead, he would get behind it and push it back and forth across the room. My wife said that he looked like he was weight training for football.

Troy’s Grammy and we both got Troy a stuffed dragon, and he loves both of them. Ours was a Build-a-Bear “Toothless” doll from the movie How to Train Your Dragon. The moment he pulled it out of the box, he recognized it from the movie. He threw it down, straddled it, and sat on it just like Hiccup. It’s a big doll, but not big enough to hold him, so it looked funny and ludicrous. But he was in heaven, imagining that he was soaring through the clouds of Berk!

But my brother won the day when Troy opened his gift to find a box full of dinosaur figurines and a book that audibly tells him the name of each one. His screams of “Dino, Dino, Dino!” could be heard all across the neighborhood...and probably several towns over as well. After that no other toy mattered anymore. Not the giant dump truck that my mom got him, not the wooden trucks my other brother got him, not the hand puppets my stepmom got him. It was all about the dinosaurs at that point. He eventually did play with everything as the day wore on, but he always came back to the dinosaurs. He even took the velociraptor with him when he took his nap. He woke up with a little red claw mark pressed into his soft cheek from hugging it the entire time.

All in all, it was a very nice Christmas. It was fun to see Troy enjoy being spoiled with gifts, the complete joy and excitement when each new thing was pulled from its wrapping. Not knowing which one to play with first. Overwhelmed by the new things to explore and manipulate. That was the greatest gift we could ask for, and we didn’t need a lot of things for ourselves. It’s not Troy’s first Christmas, or even his second. He had one in the womb, and one as a 10-month old before this. But it’s the first that he is cognizantly aware of, so it made it extra special. And hey, I threw in a nap for myself too. We had a truly blessed day.

Covered

I was sitting and enjoying a Christmas movie with my wife tonight. Troy had no interest in it because there were neither dinosaurs or singing trolls in it. So, he was running around like a madman. When I sat down on the couch, I grabbed one of the couch pillows and put it behind my back. Troy decided to be nice and get me another one too. And another one. And another one. He handed me all eleven pillows, one by one. I took them and laid them on top of myself, covering more and more of me with each successive pillow.

When I was completely covered, Troy jumped up on the couch giggling at me. He took the last pillow back off my face and smiled at me. I said, “Troy, I want to teach you a lesson, using these pillows as an illustration. I want you to imagine that each of these pillows is something you did wrong, something that would make dada mad and get you in trouble. But instead of getting mad at you, dada took them from you and laid them on himself instead. He took your punishment, so you didn’t have to get in trouble. That’s what Jesus did for us. He took our sins on Himself, so we didn’t have to be punished. Jesus took your pillows, Troy. And Christmas, this thing that we’re celebrating tomorrow, is Jesus’ birthday. He was not much younger than you are now when He came into the world, just a baby. But even back then, he already knew about you and loved you.”

Troy seemed genuinely interested...not! He laughed and covered my face with the pillow again. Oh well, I’ll keep trying.

I Have a Pooper

Tonight, Troy broke a bowl while trying to help his mama load the dishwasher. Slipped out of his hand, and shattered, a simple accident. But I needed to keep him out of the glass while I cleaned it up, so I strapped him in his booster seat. I was nearly done with the sweeping when he started to fidget and try to get out of the seat. When I tried to explain to him that I needed him to wait a few more minutes until I could finish cleaning up the danger, he looked at me perfectly innocently and sweetly and said, “I have a pooper.”

It was crystal clear. Perfectly articulated. And he did in fact have a dirty diaper, so it conveyed the correct information as well. I can’t believe how quickly he’s picking up and spitting back out concepts and ideas. A child’s mind is truly a wonder. I also couldn't help but laugh that he called it a "pooper" just like we do.

Some Assembly Required

I decided to get a head start on the requisite Christmas Eve present assembly for Troy. We bought him a driveable two-seater Land Rover, and we’ve been hiding it in the attic for a month. I’m not eager to be up until all hours of the night putting it together, so I decided to do it this morning instead. I locked myself in the spare bedroom and went to town on the assembly.

It wasn’t too bad. The instructions said that it would take two people and 45 min to put it together. Shows how much they know, I did it myself in an hour and a half! Now, I have to hide it for the rest of the day and figure out how to get it downstairs after he’s asleep.

Leave Them Alone!

Tonight, my wife was trying to change Troy’s poopie diaper, but she wasn’t having much luck, because he kept picking up the wipies that she had laid out. He was doing it just because it was getting a rise out of her. And the more she reacted, the more he did it. Until finally, she screamed out, “Troy! Leave them alone, leave them alone!”

Cheeky bugger that he is, he smiled his most charming smile, and said, “Leave them alone!” An exact mime of my wife’s words. She started laughing, and I said, “Congratulations, you taught him something new tonight.”

The Christmas Star

Tonight, we went out to look at the “Christmas Star,” which was supposed to be a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter on their orbits around the sun, coming so close together that they looked like one bright star in the sky. I guess some scientist somewhere decided that this provided scientific evidence to explain the phenomenon of the star in the Biblical Christmas story. Their orbital paths being so different, this conjunction only takes place every 600 years or so. Needless to say, it’s not something we’re likely to see again.

So, we packed up some celestial binoculars that we bought off the internet, snacks, drinks, cameras, and the baby; and we headed to Sanger, TX, hoping to get far enough away from the lights of the city to get a nice, dark view. We found an open spot near the marina of Ray Roberts Park, and spent the next hour figuring out how to set up all of the equipment. Note to self, we should probably have practiced with the equipment beforehand, so we weren’t doing that on the fly when it mattered. Oh well, it all worked out fine.

Forty-five minutes after sunset, two bright lights appeared in the sky right where the sun had been moments before. One was slightly brighter and bigger than the other. There was a noticeable distance between them, so I wasn’t sure it was the correct celestial bodies. But my wife assured me that was it, and seeing a faint smudge of a ring around one of the planets confirmed that it was indeed Saturn. While cool, I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t this blindly-bright star in the sky, with the two planets so close together that they looked like one star, as I’d been led to believe.

And what was Troy doing while all of this stargazing was going on? He was sitting in the car, eating chips and leaving little orange fingerprints on everything. No interest in anything going on above him. I guess he doesn’t want to waste time wishing on stars for the future when he can enjoy the moment now.

I See You - Part 2

Tis the Christmas season, during a Covid pandemic, which means brown shipping boxes are plentiful in our house. Every shape and size has made an appearance this holiday season, neatly stacked up by the front door, waiting for processing. The recycling truck has definitely had to work overtime this year!

Today, my wife was opening boxes and sorting their contents. She was stacking the empty boxes haphazardly off to the side in a huge pile. When all of a sudden, I realized that I hadn’t heard Troy in a while. So, I went looking for him. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I was calling his name, but nothing. Suddenly, movement caught the corner of my eye, and I saw a pinkish elbow sticking out from behind the pile of boxes. Creeping forward, I said, “Is there someone behind those boxes?” Popping my head around to look at him, he smiled at me and said, “I see you!” I replied, “Hey! That’s my line!”

Sesquipedalian - Part 5

Troy's ability to pick up new words has exploded over the last few weeks. Every single day, he's amazing us with something new he learned. He's increasingly moving away from noises and gestures toward actual words.

A few animals are still getting gestures. For example, when he sees a raccoon, he'll put his fingers up in circles around his eyes. And some animals are still getting sound effects. For example, a pig gets a deep, gravely grunt; and a rooster gets a very loud, shrill crow.

But the words are flying off his tongue!

Cow comes out exactly as it should, although he tends to drag out the "o" a little bit, so it's more like, "coooow."

For a turtle, he switches to Greek and says, "hey-lone," which is very close to "χελώνα."

A monkey comes out as "mucky." I guess he thinks they're dirty.

Whenever he wants some milk, he runs around the kitchen, yelling, "malk, malk!"

Several people in our neighborhood still have pumpkins out from November. I took him for a walk one day, and he ran up to them, touching each one, saying, "pupkin, pupkin, pupkin..."

He can recognize a sloth in his books now, but he says it, "slouth," like "mouth."

Whenever I'm changing his diapers now, Troy will reach up and start pinching my elbow. He feels it out; the shape, the size, the hardness. And he repeats, "ah-bow, ah-bow, ah-bow..."

He can now tell the difference between a deer and a moose. We know because he started bringing us his stuffed moose and saying, "moosh."

He picked up a wooden star the other day that my wife had pulled out of the closet. He showed it to her and said, "tar!"

He has become increasingly obsessed with dinosaurs. I guess they had some little plastic ones at the daycare, so he's intrigued with these strange animals. So, now he runs around the house, saying, "dino, dino, dino!" Which usually means that he wants us to put on Ice Age or Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous for him to watch.

And there are a whole list of words that come out perfectly: door, egg, gone, goat, hat, cold, hot, bus, coat, eat, and down.

The Pickpocket

CC got his son a new game this weekend. It consists of a wooden board, that's painted to look like a net, with a string hanging off one end. There is a magnet at the end of the string, and the point of the game is for Declan to try to pick up insects off the floor, using the magnet. Even though he's only had the game for a few days, Declan has already become quite adept at moving the magnet around to snag the unaware insects. In fact, he's so good at it, that it's become a little boring for him now. So, while CC was sitting on the couch, playing a game, Declan was standing in his playpen, guiding the "insect net" into CC's pocket and removing his loose change. He got away with three quarters, a dime, and two nickels before CC realized what was going on.

I think we have a future pickpocket on our hands!

The Troy Sandwich

There are times when one of us will be holding Troy, and he'll reach out for the other one, as if the current person is insufficient to fulfill his needs so he's spreading the love. Usually, whoever is holding him will pass him off to the other person, and Troy will latch on to the new person with a firm hug. However, this morning, when my wife tried to pass him off to me, Troy reached out one skinny little arm around her neck and one skinny little arm around my neck. He pulled our heads next to his in a group hug with him sandwiched in the middle between us. I wrapped one arm around him and one arm around my wife, and we stood there having a family hug in the kitchen. None of us wanted to let go.

First Conceptual Sentence

The grammar might not have been pristine and some of the words might have been missing, but Troy said enough today for me to understand his first conceptual sentence. We were upstairs playing, and I noticed the time was getting close to noon. So, I told Troy that it was time to go downstairs to eat. Not wanting to be pulled away from an activity that he obviously was enjoying, he started running away from me. So, I started walking down the stairs, watching him through the bars of the bannister, and calling to him, "Ela, ela." He reluctantly came to me, but stood on the other side of the bars, refusing to come to the stairs.

It was at this point that I decided to try to reason with him, telling him that it was time to eat and that we needed to go downstairs. I was hoping that with a reasonable explanation as to why we needed to pause the "fun" that he might agree to accompany me. He stayed put. So, I just kept repeating, "We need to go down and eat." After the third or fourth time, he looked at me through the bars and said softly, "Go down and eat."

I was so excited that he had put together his first conceptual sentence that I forgot about the food, ran back up the stairs, whisked him into my arms, and twirled him around in circles, kissing him and telling him how smart he was. Who knows if he understood entirely what he was saying, but it was a start. My boy is so amazing!

The Christmas Lights

Tonight, we decide to brave the cold and take a stroll around the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights. So, we bundled up like Eskimos and headed out. We tucked Troy into the stroller and wrapped a nice, thick blanket over his legs to keep him warm. I told him it was like taking a carriage ride around New York in the winter, which seemed to intrigue him. That and maybe just getting out of the house had him calm and quiet.

We wound our way up and down each street with Troy impressing us with his knowledge of deer, horses (yes, it's Texas after all), snowmen, and Christmas trees. He munched on his snacks, and we watched his little face light up brighter than the Christmas lights that glowed blue, red, green, and white. I think he loves Christmas as much as we do.

Thoroughly frozen, we headed home to make some homemade corn dogs. Although, they were more like corn cubes, as my wife decided to replace the traditional sausages with blocks of cheese instead. All in all, a nice, peaceful night.

The Mood Killer

CC and I were comparing dad war stories tonight between our two sons. We got on the topic of of him trying to save up for a new house, because their little one-bedroom apartment wasn’t cutting it anymore. Declan was getting too old and too consciously-aware to still be sleeping in their bedroom with them.

I asked him if Declan was noisy, and he replied that it wasn’t Declan, it was them. He said that he and his wife were making love one night, trying to be as quiet as possible, but obviously failing. He happened to glance over at Declan’s crib to find him standing up, perfectly quiet, just watching them and sucking on his pacifier. He said it was so creepy, like some scene out of a horror movie or something. Talk about a mood killer! Now, he’s freaked out to even touch his wife, because that image always pops in his head.

Yeah, I'd say it was time for a new place...

Flying Bath Toys

Troy has a handful of toys that he takes into the bathtub with him. They’re rubber animals; a whale, shark, sea lion, frog, etc. At some point during every bath, he gets tired of playing with them and starts chucking them out of the bathtub and across the bathroom. I’m usually sitting on the bathroom sink, watching over and chatting with him. So, he’s made it a game to try to hit me with the flying toys. I’m telling you that kid has quite an arm on him!

Cats and Toddlers

Today, we spent the entire day putting up Christmas decorations. Lights, garlands, wreaths, stockings, random stuffed Santa Clauses, the works. I asked my wife why we were doing all of this when we weren’t going to have anybody over this year. She said that it was for us. It was a way for us to get into the spirit of the holiday; that Jesus’ birth and what it brought into the world...hope...deserved a celebration, especially during a pandemic. It’s hard to argue with that logic, so we did the house up in style!

Troy watched in wonder as each new piece went up around the house, curiously inspecting each string of lights or picking up each giant candy cane. He ran back and forth between us, inserting himself squarely in the action and “helping” by undoing everything we had just done. But his absolute favorites were the Christmas trees.

I put a small one upstairs in the front window, and he was helping me pull out the branches and wind lights on each layer. Mostly he was just standing in front of me, preventing me from making progress, but I’m sure he thought he was helping dada put up the tree. My wife put a larger one downstairs in the den, and he was grabbing the strings of lights as they slid across the floor and bringing them to her, tangling them up in the process.

It’s very hard to try to decorate with a toddler underfoot. It’s frustrating, and it makes the whole process take twice as long as it normally would. But it’s hard to be mad when he’s just having fun and exploring, not really acting up.

But it wasn’t until this evening that we realized the biggest problem with a toddler and Christmas. And that is the ornaments on the tree. He is enamored with them, as in won’t stop pulling on them or touching them. And there are so many different, wonderful new “toys” to play with! I can hear the sounds of glass or plastic tapping together from the other side of the house, and I come running in to find him reaching up as high as his little stretched out, tip-toed body can reach, pulling an ornament down from the middle of the tree. The branch bending with the strain of trying to hold on to its treasure while also trying to resist the unbelievable strength of this almost two-year old.

And no matter how many times I’d drag him away from the tree, he’d sneak back over there when I wasn’t looking. Just like cats, toddlers cannot resist the siren’s call of pretty, shiny things. And all of the tugging paid off as the branch finally released its hold. Unfortunately, Troy wasn’t expecting it to actually work, and with the sudden lack of resistance on the other end, he immediately dropped the ornament. It shattered into a hundred pieces on the floor. I’m not sure what he’ll do when we actually put presents under the tree. He’ll probably try to open all of them early. Cats and toddlers...this is going to be a long Christmas season.

Blanket Suspenders

With the onset of winter, the nights have been getting colder, especially in our bedroom. We’ve tried putting a nice thick, warm blanket on Troy when we put him to bed, but he’ll immediately kick it off. So, after he falls asleep, we’ll sneak back in there and cover him up again.

Sometime over the next two hours, he’ll slowly kick it off again. He doesn’t wake up, so either he’s doing it in his dreams or subconsciously he’s just a turd. Either way, I’ll inevitably wake up every two hours and cover him back up.

I got to thinking that what I really need is to outfit him with some suspenders, and then I can clip the ends on the edge of his blanket. Then, he won’t be able to kick it off himself. Of course, I’d probably just find him with the blanket bunched up around his neck and his naked feet sticking out the end.

Accident Prone

Every day at daycare, they have a routine. Just before lunch, they take the kids out on the playground to get out some energy before food and a nap. Troy knows and anticipates this routine. He loves going outside, so when it’s that time, he’ll grab his coat and stand by the door. He doesn’t have to be told, he just knows somehow that it’s that time. He’ll sway back and forth, unable to contain the energy and excitement building up inside him. And the moment they open the door, he takes off running at full speed!

Well, today, he went barreling out the door, tripped on something, and flew face-first into a table they have outside. He hit it so hard that he busted his cheek open, narrowly missing his eye by a couple inches. With blood and tears streaming down his face, he refused to let them tend to it, because he wanted so badly to go play. He refused to let anything stand in the way of running on the playground, even a serious injury.

They got the bleeding stopped and let him go while they contacted us to let us know. By the time he got home tonight, his cheek already looked much better. Just a scab where he cut himself, and a small dark bruise on his cheek. His teacher texted to check on him later to see how he was doing. She said that Troy runs faster than any two-year old that she’s ever seen. He gets going so fast that she said she’s constantly on edge the entire time they’re outside, because she’s afraid he’ll plow into something and hurt himself. I guess her fears finally came true.

I know he’s a little boy, and I know little boys play hard. They end up having a lot of accidents. And Troy is probably worse than most. He has two speeds, passed out and full throttle. There’s no in-between. I’m just worried at all of the freak accidents he has, especially to his head. He’s taken my accident-prone life to a whole new level!