He Takes After His Daddy!

This morning, I was moving a load of jeans from the washing machine to the dryer.

Tyler was playing with the empty laundry baskets.

Suddenly he ran over, stooped down beside me, and then he ran off quickly.

I chased him down to see what treasure he was trying to hide from me. Know what he'd found? A wet $1 bill.

His daddy is going to be so proud!

Who is Sleeping Beside Me?

Tyler got the second of his two flu shots yesterday evening. Brian also got his flu shot yesterday and he kept talking about how his arm hurt. So we gave Ty some Motrin without waiting to see if he would need it.

Well the Motrin wore off around 1 a.m. Tyler started crying, so I went in to check on him. He fell asleep as soon as I started rubbing his back, but he started crying again about 15 minutes later.

I remembered the flu shot so I got some more Motrin for him. I decided to sleep in the guest bed with him for a little while so I could comfort him until the Motrin kicked in.

He promptly rolled to the other side of the bed, away from me, and leaning against the mesh rail that we bought to keep him from falling off the bed. He fell right to sleep. So much for needing comfort.

Even with the mesh rail, I still have a fear that Tyler will wake up and try to crawl off the bed, so I slept with my hand on his leg so that I would wake up if he moved.

I didn't wake up until after 5, and I decided to take him back to his bed then. He was sound asleep and didn't even whimper when I dropped him in the crib.

I snuggled back down in my bed and fell sound asleep.

I guess Brian woke up before his alarm went off. At any rate, I didn't hear the alarm. I woke up to someone crawling -- or falling -- out of bed. Of course, I thought I was in the guest room and that Tyler was crawling out of bed. I went from sound sleep to frantically scrambling and grabbing for Tyler, who was still safely asleep in his crib.

Tough

I'm at the kitchen table, working away.

Tyler is alternately playing in the living room or in here trying to crawl up in my lap. A few minutes ago, he started sort of crawling up on the kitchen chairs.
He would pull up so that the was laying across the seat on his tummy and then he would push backward and land on his feet.

Until he pushed forward and landed on his face.

He sat up really quickly, like, "Maybe Mama won't notice."

(Of course, I'd already pushed my seat back and was reaching for him.)

He looked up at me sheepishly, like, "Am I in trouble?"

After he realized he was not in trouble, he sort of half-whined and came over so that I would pick him up. He never cried. And almost as soon as I picked him up, he wanted down to go play.

Sucker.

I am so tired of telling Tyler not to play with the trash can.

It is just the right height for him. He loves to put things on top of it so he can knock them off. And he likes to rock it because it makes a lot of noise.

He really plays with it when I'm trying to work because he knows it'll get my attention.

In the last 30 minutes, I've told him 10 times not to play with it and tried to steer him to an acceptable form of play. I can't bring myself to spank him because he's really not feeling good today. (Besides, it doesn't seem to faze him when I do pop him.)

Anyway, fed up with it all, I dumped him in his pack n' play (playpen) a few minutes ago. As I was doing it, I thought, "This is a bad idea." You see, I have to put him in the pack n' play when I'm doing interviews, so I had already decided that I can't use it for punishment and a safekeeping area. I don't want him to think he's in trouble every time I have to make a work call.

But in the frustration of the moment, I forgot about that decision.

So instead of walking off, I sat down and stared at him. "Don't touch the trash can," I said. "Do you understand?"

He stared back at me solemnly.

Then he grinned and ducked down behind the side of the pack n' play. He jumped back up and grinned again. I laughed and said "peep-eye."

This is what I do when he's strapped in his high chair and I'm cleaning up the food he's dropped. I jump up and say "peep-eye" from different places. (I don't know why my family says "peep-eye" instead of "peekaboo" but that is what I heard as a child and that is what pops out of my mouth when I'm playing with Tyler!)

Now he was in charge of the game and he ducked down several times and I played along with the "peep-eye" bit.

Some punishment, huh?

A Child Who Entertains Himself

Want to know where he learned this trick? Here's a movie from May. (Make sure the sound is on — the giggle is the best part!)

Tyler-ese

Most of you know that I'm trying to teach Tyler a few useful signs so we can communicate until he can talk.

He knows "all done," and "milk." He waves for "bye-bye" and "night-night." I've been trying to teach him "water," "hungry," "Cheerios," "more," and "puppy."

I'm not always consistent about doing the signs... and apparently Tyler doesn't always interpret them correctly.

"More" is tough to do because it requires both hands, so I can't do it when one hand has the spoon and the other is holding a jar of baby food. But I do the sign a lot when I'm giving him Cheerios.

I'm pretty sure he thinks "more" = "Cheerios" even though I've tried to teach him a sign for "Cheerios."

Yesterday, when I was feeding him pears and he kept doing the sign for "more" (basically clapping his hands together). I was so excited, I kept saying, "That's right, mmmooorrre pears!" and holding the spoon up to his mouth. But he wasn't really into the pears. That is when I realized he was looking around for the box of Cheerios.

Now I don't know whether to change the sign. Should I start saying "Cheerios" and doing the sign previously intended for "more"? and come up with a new sign for "more"?! Or should I try to use the the "more" sign in more situations to help him understand?!

In the meantime, he's eating lots of Cheerios! If I don't pay attention when he first claps his hands together, he squeals and claps his hands fairly emphatically for a 1-year-old. It is really funny when his hands don't quite line up!

Mischief by the Hour

I lost a makeup brush to the toilet this morning around 8:30 this morning.

Shortly after 9:00, Tyler threw away 5 perfectly good contacts -- a whole package of the daily wear contacts for my right eye.

Tyler gave me a break during the 10’o’clock hour. Or maybe he was plotting for the rest of the day.

Around 11:30, I was rushing around to pack a diaper bag and get ready to go to lunch with a friend, and I caught Tyler at the top of the stairs. I guess I didn’t latch the gate good behind me when I came down. (Although I wouldn’t put it past him to climb over the gate!)

My friend Ashley met us here at noon, and we went to J. Christopher’s for lunch. I’d fed Tyler a little bit before we left but I took a bunch of Cheerios for him to munch on while we ate.

At 12:20, he stood up in his high chair.

At 12:30, he practically crawled up on the table.

I put his shoes on him so that it would be harder for him to get his feet up in the high chair.

I fed him Cheerios one at the time because if I gave him Cheerios to feed himself, he would throw them in the floor. It embarrasses me to leave a handful of Cheerios in the floor when we leave a restaurant. Just ask Brian — I always ask him to tip a little extra since the waiters and staff have to clean up after Tyler.

I gave Tyler sips of milk. I pulled things on the table out of his reach. I handed him a plastic spoon to chew on. I handed him the top to a baby food container and handed it to him again when he threw it down. In short, I did everything but eat and visit with my friend.

I guess we pushed lunch too close to his naptime.

Anyway, I finally ended up holding Tyler and, when Ashley finished eating, she held him while I ate quickly.

While Ashley got her stuff together to leave, I held Tyler and let him chew on the top to his Cheerios container. I handed Tyler and the container of Cheerios to Ashley so she could entertain him while I gathered the miscellaneous spoons and plastic things Tyler had chewed on.

While I was looking for my keys in the baby bag, I heard the container of Cheerios hit the floor.

“OH, noooooooo.” I looked straight at Ashley. I didn’t want to see the floor.

Yep, for some reason, I had packed a particularly large container of Cheerios and Tyler had only eaten a quarter of them. The rest were all over the floor. I cannot stress this enough. ALL OVER THE FLOOR.

I get embarrassed when we leave 10 in the floor. This was more like 1,000. I couldn’t walk without grinding them up.

(Luckily the J. Christopher’s people were very nice, but I’m so embarrassed I can never go back there. It’s a shame because I love that place.)

Tyler fell asleep in the car on the way home and he’s upstairs napping now — or maybe he’s plotting for the 5’o’clock hour. I’m very concerned about what he has planned for the evening.

Pot Holder Poll

Last week, I asked the question, "If you dropped a pot holder on the floor and your child picked it up, would you let him play with it for a while?"

4 of you said "yes" and one of you said "no."

For those of you that said "yes," I have another question for you: Would you be surprised to realize that your child had chewed the tag in half and was proceeding to eat it?

Yes, after I let him play with the pot holder for a while, Tyler walked up to me and dropped it on the floor, but he was chewing on something. I fished half of the tag (like a tag inside clothing that has washing instructions on it) out of his mouth!

Seriously, the kid can get in trouble with anything!

"You have to be faster, Mama"

The last week or so, Tyler has taken to crawling up in my lap while I'm trying to work.

I usually push my computer back so he can't grab it or I slide the chair back so he can't reach anything on the table.

This morning, I wasn't paying attention. He threw a cup of milk on the floor. I don't mean he knocked it over. He picked it up, swung his arm around and THREW it in the floor.

The Sound of Trouble

What does trouble sound like? When you're the mom of a 1-year-old, it sounds like paper being torn.

Tyler eats paper. We found this out when we moved and we kept finding him chewing on pieces of cardboard that he'd pulled off our moving boxes.

A few days ago, he tore a flap off his new "lift-the-flap" book and chewed it to pieces.

My grandmother has a small Downy bottle that all of the great-grandkids have played with. Seriously, it has been around for at least 6 or 7 years. And it looked brand new until this weekend, when Tyler managed to pull of a little bit of the label so he could eat it. (He's the 4th great-grandchild and the first to lose Downy bottle privileges.)

Anyway, I try to keep paper out of his reach. But it seems like he is always finding a new source that I haven't thought of.

Today, I'm working in the kitchen and he's safely in the living room, in plain sight, playing with his Spiderman riding toy. He's honking the horn and making the Spiderman voice say, "New suit, new attitude."

After a few minutes, I become aware that the toy is silent but I hear paper tearing.

I look up from the computer to see Tyler with a big piece of the sticker that he's pulled off of the Spiderman toy. He's shaking his hands vigorously, trying to throw the paper off.

I go in there to help him, and he manages to stick the sticker on me.

I realize that the whole sticker on the seat needs to come off, so to keep Tyler occupied while I took care of that, I put the sticker on the back of his hand. He's smart enough to realize he has to scrape his hand on something to get the sticker off, but he's not coordinated enough to scrape the BACK of his hand on something, so he keeps scraping his palm on the floor and the sticker stays put.

I wasn't laughing or anything....