First off, my apologies for not posting for a while (OK, a long while, mea culpa). Summer whizzed by as did Autumn and now tomrrow is Halloween. Time truly flies. Unless you are pregnant, like me, then it goes a slow as a darn snail!

So yes, Truitt is getting a baby brother in December. We are very excited. It has meant a whirlwind of activity in the Taylor household as we stepped up our potty training efforts with Truitt, moved him into a new bedroom and rearranged half the furniture in the house in preparation for baby #2. The nursery is about halfway ready for the new addition. It’s a slow process as I know how I want it to look and to be honest, at the end of the workday, I’m too exhausted to work on it. So it has become a weekends only project!

Back to the point of this post. As part of the pending delivery, Drew and I took a labor & delivery tour of the hospital (Bethesda Naval). Now, we are planning a scheduled C-section due to some medical reasons with myself, but felt it would be important to go through it just in case baby Taylor decides he’s ready to make his appearance before the scheduled delivery! These are group tours held once a week for anyone who is planning on delivering at this hospital and in my session there were about 12 couples. After the general information session held in a classroom, we headed out to do the walking tour part. It was then that I noticed one couple. They were young – I’d say early to mid-twenties. The mother was quite pregnant, but it was the father that caught my eye, as he had a prothsetic arm and leg, both on the same side of his body. He walked and maneuvered quite well. If he’d been wearing a long sleeve shirt and pants, I probably would have only noticed a slight limp. But he was so young. Now, I’ve been around our wounded warriors quite often, having spent significant time at Bethesda Naval Hospital and having visiting Walter Reed Hospital a couple of times, but for some reason seeing this young man walking through the delivery area with his pregnant wife really hit home, in the most humbling way. After the tour I asked Drew why only his arm and leg seemed to be effected as he had no visible scarring on his head at all, and was told that the headgear and kevlar vests protect the “vitals” (torso and head) and losing an arm and leg at the same time is typical in an IUD explosion.

So let me just state now. I am so very proud of all of our men and women who serve our country day in and day out. I am so humbled by those individuals that experience what this young man did in combat, an experience that changes them in such a profound way, both physically and mentally, yet they have the fortitude to move beyond any physical limitations. It was truly beautiful to watch him walk around the delivery area with his wife, smiling down at her and encouraging her as we went along.

About a two months or so ago, Truitt entered into his “no” phase. Every question you asked him elicited the response, “No mommy!” or daddy, or whoever other unfortunate soul who asked him to do something. So we spent considerable time emphasizing that you don’t yell no to every question. Especially to mommy & daddy. And especially especially to his teacher Ms. Cathy. Eventually he dropped the “no” in favor of “yes maam.”

Apparently this was just a ploy to please us while his devious brain figured out a different way to say no. So now, if we ask him to do something that he doesn’t want to do, instead of saying no, he tells us (very seriously), “I cannot do that.”

We have at last stumbled upon a vocabularic challenge with Truitt. Every child has a hard time with a letter or multiple letters. Mine was the letter “m”, specifically when I said milk. It came out as “lilk”. Truitt’s is the letter “L”. He either substitutes the letter “w” as in “Weswy” for my sister, Lesley OR he pronounces the “L” but it requires him to stick his tongue out. All the way out. It is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while. He just can’t figure out how to sound out an “L” AND keep his tongue in his mouth.

One of words he’s having particular trouble with is, “lollipop”. It comes out as “poppywop”. I’d heard him say poppywop before and had no idea what he was talking about. It took a visit to Jason’s Deli for lunch for the lightbulb to come on. At the register where you order and pay, they have a basket of dumdums for the kids. Fortunately, it’s too high up for his grimey paws to reach, so he kept tugging on my pants and asking if he could have a poppywop. The guy behind the cash register deciphered his request and discreetly told me that he thinks my son is asking for a lollipop. Of course I caved, I felt guilty that my toddler translator seemed to be malfunctioning.

Back to the letter “L”. Last night I was reading Dr. Suess’ ABC book and of late Truitt likes to repeat each page. I got to the letter, “L” and, for those not familiar with the book, here’s what it says, “Big L, little l, Little Lola Lopp. Left leg. Lazy lion licks a lollipop.” I laughed so hard, I was crying. I’m not sure I could even figure out how to type the exact phrase that came out of his mouth. It did, however, end in “poppywop”.

Pool season has officially arrived and I can’t be more excited about it. I grew up with a pool in my backyard when I was a kid so having one down the street for Truitt is about as close as we can get right now. In preparation for pool season, I bought a couple of pool friendly toys. One of them being a wind-up lobster. Wind it up and the tail flaps up and down really fast, propelling it forward in the water. Well, after one day at the pool, and several kids trying to steal it from us, we decided to banish the lobster to the only other body of water we have – the bathtub. So every night for the past couple of weeks, Truitt has actually asked to have a bath so he can play with his lobster.

So perhaps all the time spent with the lobster in the bathtub might have warped Truitt’s perception of what a lobster is and where they live. As we were driving to daycare last week, we passed by the duck pond near my office. We often feed ducks, fish and turtles (yes, turtles eat stale bread too) after dinner so he likes to point it out to me every time we pass by. As we pass by here is the conversation we have:

Truitt: Ducks live in the pond?
Me: Yes Truitt, ducks live in the pond.
Truitt: Fishies live in the pond?
Me: Yes Truitt, the fishies live in the pond.
Truitt: Lobsters live in the pond?
Me: No Truitt, lobsters live in the ocean, not the pond.
Truitt: And Truitt’s bathtub!

I have entered into the realm of hard core potty training, aka potty training bootcamp in my house. Truitt is willing, so I’m willing, even though it involves spending A LOT of time sitting on the edge of the bathtub trying to keep a squirming toddler (male…) still enough on the potty so the peepee goes INTO the potty. He’s wearing pull-ups now during the day, diapers at night and he’s so proud of them. I am blessed that his teacher and staff at daycare are as enthused about his potty training as we are and are willing to work with and encourage him while he is there, taking an active role in his training.

So yesterday, I pick him up from school and Truitt tackles me like normal and starts yelling (two things to know about my son, he never walks, always runs, and when he’s really excited, he says things really really loud), “I poopoo caca in the potty.” Not my choice of descritives, but, I got the point nonetheless, as did everyone in the daycare. So I was appropriately excited about his accomplishment, telling him what a big boy he was etc. So we head out of the building and are walking down the sidewalk toward the care, and every random person we pass, Truitt yells the aformentioned statement. Thankfully, most were parents themselves and they gave me knowing looks of pity!

Now that it has gotten warmer up here, we’re grilling out constantly. One of my summer grilling staples is corn. I hate canned corn, so Truitt has gotten little to no exposure to corn prior to now. So we grill our first corn of the season and I proceed to cut the kernals off the corn for Truitt. Unfortunately, he saw how we eat corn and insisted he eat it the same way. He hoovered EVERY kernal off that cob…

Toddler Conversation:

Truitt: Where’s G-mom?
Pop: G-mom went to Atlanta to get her hair done.
Truitt: G-mom?
Mommy: Truitt, G-mom went to Atlanta to wash the grey out of her hair!
Truitt: G-mom has grapes in her hair?

When the movie Jurassic Park (the 1st one) came out I LOVED it. You see, I wanted to be a paleontologist for a long time as a kid and knew the name of a ton of dinosaurs. So it was really cool for me to see the magic of technology bring them almost to life on the big screen. But Holy Crap, the Velociraptors scared me to death. I had nightmares about those things after seeing that movie. Even watching it today, gives me the shivers.

Anyway, the past few weeks as I’ve picked up Truitt I’ve noticed him playing with some of the toy dinosaurs they have at school. So this past weekend, after his Daddy left for a week long trip to Tampa, and after I dragged him around to three different nurseries looking at plants, I decided to surprise treat him to his own dinosaur. I took him Sunday afternoon to Doodlehopper (wonderful local toy store) and we went to the dino section and I told him he could pick out his own dinosaur. His eyes got huge and he mulled over the decision for a few minutes. And picked out, yes, a velociraptor. The meanest scariest looking one out of the bunch. I asked him if this was the one and he nodded his head and off he went.

I was so worried once we got home that he would have dinosaur nightmares or he wouldn’t play with it because it was so mean looking. So I went back to check on him later that evening when he was in his room, and I saw him playing with the raptor, brown puppy and Douglas. And the funny thing was, the raptor was giving kisses to the brown puppy. Truitt saw me and said, “Mommy, dinosaur kissed brown puppy! Mommy kiss dinosaur!” So here I was, in Truitt’s room, kissing a velociraptor. I had failed to realize that Truitt had never seen anything that might pre-dispose him to think that this toy of his was scary, or mean, or violent. He’s never watched anything on TV other than Sesame Street or Thomas, or Dora etc. This is the essance of the innocence of a child. Nothing starts of as mean, or scary or violent. They see everything as untainted and pure. Sometimes I wish we could capture some of that as adults. But for the time being, I’ll watch it through Truitt’s eyes.

Truitt has always had a love of elephants. I can’t imagine why, ha ha. He’s always had a bevy of stuffed elephants in his room, ranging from the giant elephant from G-mom and Pop, to little small ones we’ve picked up for him over the past two years. His favorite elephant, though, is Douglas the elephant, whom he sleeps with.

I’ve always tried to teach Truitt how things really are, not simplifying them down as I’ve learned that correcting the simplified versions later on are difficult. So we were pretend playing yesterday with Douglas, Brown Puppy and White Puppy and were giving them pretend water from a cup. I showed him how puppies drink so he assumed that Douglas does the same thing. I told him that elephants do it a little different…they suck water in their trunk (aka their nose) and then blow it into their mouths. He thought this was really cool.

Later on Truitt asked for a cup of water (oh yes, you can see where this is going…). The next thing I know, Truitt is wailing and sputtering. I ask him what was wrong and he amongst the snotty/watery sobs he said, “I want to be like an elephant.” Guess I forgot to mention that only elephants dring that way.

Orange ya a massochist for returning to “THE” store time and time again.

The weather here in the DC area has finally begun to warm up, consistantly. Like 3 days in a row. So, this means all internal projects get put on hold and I move outside to tackle the flower beds. At one point (like maybe 20 years ago) the flower gardens at my house must have been outstanding to see. I keep stumbling upon things that indicated beautiful stone terraces etc. Some are still there to be uncovered as I did two weekends ago. Some, well, I’m not sure what the pile of rocks was!

Anyway, I’ve been yanking out plants past their prime and putting in new stuff. I love doing this. Many people claim gardening is therapudic – it helps them find some inner peace. Personally, I just do it for the outer peace! So most of the more unique plants I buy from the local nursery. But for standard items and to save a little money, I ventured to the Garden Center at the “Orange” store. Yes, I went back. I was specifically looking for Loriope, aka Money Grass and knew I could get it cheaper at the “Orange” store than at the local nursery. As I wander around, lo and behold, I come upon big 1quart containers of it stacked on one of those stainless steel mobile shelving jobbies. It was way in the back, so I assume they had just gotten it in as there was no price tag or signage anywhere near it. All excited, I ask a sales associate what the price is and he says I can just have the guy at the register look it up. I said I’d like to know what the price is before I load them onto my cart, please. He repeated, go ask the guy at the register (so much for customer service!). So drag my cart sans loriope up to the front, wait in line and finally make it to the register. I ask how much the loriope is and he says, I don’t know and stares at me. “Can you look it up, please?” “No, hey , this lady wants to know the price on, what is it?? Maam, just go ask him, please” and he indicates an associate standing by some shrubs. I drag my cart, leaving my coveted place in line, to ask the dude by the shrubs. “Sir I would like to know how much the 1quart loriope is.” His response: “I don’t know, you’ll have to have the person at the register look it up.”