Cookie Ball?

Leo's sick AGAIN, and with this most recent illness (a respiratory bug of some kind, nothing too dramatic) came the return of my veggie panic.

I have a very difficult time getting Leo to eat vegetables, and a not insignificant amount of anxiety about how this affects his little immune system.  He eats his fill of fruit and avocado but I have to be really tricky to get him to consume greens.  I can usually sneak a few bites in at the beginning of a meal when he is hungry and eats with gusto without really looking at what he is putting in his mouth...but when he realizes that those are broccoli florets underneath that parmesan, he gives it the cold shoulder.  Perhaps I have committed that cardinal sin of accidentally urging him a little too hard to eat his veggies and he figured out that it was important to me and therefore a power play on his part.  He's a smart one, and I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Yesterday, with the arrival of actual fall-like weather in SoCal, I made a chicken noodle soup with lots of veggies including carrots and kale, and he liked that.  Success!  But today's lovely butternut squash/cream soup puree was offensive to his toddler sensibilities.  So, based on the recommendation of a friend, I tried a spinach muffin recipe from a popular kids' recipe blog which I won't insult by linking here and therefore forever associating the recipe author's webpage with the photo of my muffin disaster.

Because I have been cooking dinner on-the-reg for the past several months, and have become a pretty decent cook (ifIdosaysomyself), I have developed a false sense of cooking mastery, which carried over into this evening's baking.  The recipe included applesauce, and I was out, and I was desperate.  So I improvised.  With banana.  Oh, and I subbed agave for the sugar.  Which never really works in baking, I know, I know.  Really, "improvising," in general - not a good idea with baking.  Especially when you are baking something that is supposed to be disguising the flavor of Spinach.

Below, you can see photographic evidence of the resulting barely-sweet, rock-hard, spinach-scented, human-poo-resembling monstrosities:

I gave one to Leo after dinner as we were playing in the living room.  He looked at it, and then looked at me, and said, "Mama catch!"  Barely stifling my giggle, I said, "No, baby, that's not a ball, that's a cookie!"  He looked at it again, then back at me, and said, "Cookie ball?"

Oh well, tomorrow is a new day.  Parmesan broccoli, anyone?

Talk that talk

Leo has been talking up a storm.  Little sentences and phrases.  He mimics almost everything we say, and rarely mimics something that he doesn't seem to understand.  Sometimes he completely floors us with what comes out of his mouth.  Today, for instance, we bought him a life jacket for swimming so that we can relax a bit when we take him down to the water to splash in the BIG waves.  He was enthralled with it, and talked about his "Wy-Dacket" all night, and sobbed with heartbreak when we took it off at bathtime.

Here are some of my favorite recent stunners.

brand recognition

• Sometimes, when we are out and about running errands, we will make a Starbucks stop for a little corporate coffee fix (and they have those little Horizon milks he likes and little healthy-ish snack boxes).  I guess this has made an impression, as we were grocery shopping the other day and he pulled a box of single-serve Keurig-style Starbucks pouches off of the shelf - something I don't buy - pointed to the Starbucks logo and said: "Mama coffee!" with great pride.
• We frequent the grocery stores near our house, one of which is Whole Foods.  He recently pointed to the WF logo on a bottle of water and announced, "Hofoo."  
• He pointed to the "Kirkland" logo on something random - garbage bags, maybe - from Costco and proclaimed, "Apple cookies."  (His favorite snack is a bag of these freeze-dried apples we buy in bulk.)

our place in Leo's world

• Papa day - any time Matt is off and spending time with us is proclaimed a "Papa day."
• Papa juice - any time we see orange juice
• Byebye George - when our neighbor George drives off
• Byebye Jackie - any time a stranger starts a vehicle and drives off in Leo's presence as we are passing, Leo remembers that his beloved babysitter Jackie recently did the same when she left after spending the afternoon with him
• Ahhhhco Wy - still with the Uncle Ryan madness.  Several times a day, Leo seems to see something or someone who reminds him of his beloved uncle.

letters and numbers

• You are going to think that I am insane, or lying, but Leo knows all of the numbers, 0-9, and all of the letters in the alphabet...and has since about 18 months.  Right after his first birthday, we noticed that he had developed a very fanatical interest in letters and numbers and he still talks about letters and numbers ALLDAYLONGGGGG.  I don't know if he knows all of the lowercase letters yet, but he knows many of them, and often points to a letter and says, for example, "Big A!" or "Little E!"
• Whenever Leo sees a writing utensil, he begs us to draw a K.  Always a K.  "Draw K!" 

comedian Leo

• Leo often does/says things intentionally to be funny or get a laugh - like fake sneezing or, my favorite - when asked to spell his name, he will say, "L-E-Mama!" or "L-E-Papa!"  One time he said "L-E-Nana."  We don't know why, but he seems to get a kick out of it.  We often say, "L-E-O spells 'Leo!'" and I guess he just thought it would be funny to not give us what we want or something.  Sometimes he'll give this same answer when we ask him what his name is.  I've heard him say his own name ("Wee-o") exactly twice (and both were in the past two weeks).

polite Leo

• More juice, please
• Thank you Papa (often unprompted, always with the sign and sooooo cute)
• Please (also often with sign, and sounds like Peeeeeeez which makes me die at the cuteness)
• Pretty Mama
• Love you, Papa
• Sorry, Papa (when prompted to apologize after swiping)
• Ducky, ok? (after viciously throwing Ducky across the room - showing GREAT concern)

oopsie

• Oh sit!

We're Forked (or, Lessons in Utensil Decorum and Empathy)

Eat

Play

Stab

Ouch

Kiss

Cute

His own life, and I hope it is a lovely one.

The other day, I dropped Leo off at the gym kids' club before my workout class.  He loves it there, he rarely leaves without a fuss when I come to pick him up.  When I first started bringing him, he haaaaated it and would cry and cry.  Several times the kids' club workers came up to get me after 10 minutes or so but I just kept bringing him until he got used to me leaving for a bit and then coming back, and then he started having fun with all of the toys and the other kids, and now he smiles when I tell him we're going, and he'll even ask to go - Kih-ka!

I digress.  Anyway, we walked in the door and, as usual, he immediately dashed for the toys in the little outdoor fenced-in area out back.  I signed him in and then, when I looked up, he was hugging one of the people who works there, one of his particular favorites, a college-age kid named Mateo.  Mateo was giving him a hug back and laughing and then he looked up and saw me and kind of blushed, and I realized that they must do this all the time - they were happy to see each other.  They're buddies!

I got such a lump in my throat.  He has friends!  People he knows, people he likes, and they are a part of his little life.  He's too young to miss someone like Mateo when he's gone or think too much about it, his life is still so "in-the-moment," and in that moment he was happy to see Mateo and it just made me so happy and wistful all at the same time.

I've always had this sense that becoming a mother involves learning to let go in little ways, a thousand times each day, and accept these little people for who they are, while doing your best to provide them a safe environment in which to grow and learn on their own.  Every day he is growing very, very slightly away from me.  I used to hold my hand on my large belly and think about how miraculous it was that he was a part of me, but that we would always be growing away from each other.  That's how it must be, that is life, that is growth, that is raising a child.  You do it for them, not for you.  Sometimes you have to remind yourself of that fact.  I do, anyway. 

But for now, I'm going to enjoy being as close to him as I am.

Growing up tooooooo quickly.

My Leo love, you are not a baby anymore.  

Sometimes I wish I could have just a few minutes with you as a baby again, all chubby, coo-y, peach-fuzz-headed and snuggly.

Though you are still pretty snuggly.  And I would miss your words, and your hilarious sense of humor, and your silky blond beach boy hair, and the way you fake sneeze and crack yourself up laughing about it, and the way you love to test your balance and be daring and try not to fall down...and your sensitivity...and how you wear your heart on your sleeve...

I miss Baby You, but I love watching you become Big Boy You.   Ugggghhh!  I love you SO MUCH!

Unco Wy

We had a visit from my brother and his sweet and lovely lady friend, who are doing a cross country Western US road trip.  They stayed for two nights.  Leo was in heaven with his Unco Wy.  His first words before falling asleep and after waking were "Unco Wy" for three days straight.

 

Unco Wy's special lady had surfed a few times so she went with Matt.  Here they are paddling out but you can't see them...or can you?

Unco and I alternated applying sunscreen for 15 minutes and then chasing Leo. 

After applying sunscreen, I said, "Oh forget it" and laid down on my back and let Wy chase Leo for a while.  "Yell if you get bored or tired," I said. 

He never yelled... 

 

...not once!

Wy and I had biked to the beach.  Leo had so much fun that he fell asleep on the ride back.  Incredibly, he slept for two hours even after I unbuckled his helmet, pulled him out of his bike seat, carried him upstairs, unlocked the door, tripped on the baby gate...Uncoes are exhausting...

...but Leos are more exhausting.  This is Leo playing The Game with his uncle.  And winning.  Leo always wins, I think that's one of the rules. 

 

We were a little blue after they left this afternoon to continue their adventure.  Leo woke up from his nap calling for his Wy, but I explained that Uncle Ryan had to go home, so he went bye-bye, and we'll see him in Minnesota in a few weeks.  Leo seemed to consider this and accept it.  Throughout the rest of the day, he would periodically remind me, "Byebye Unco Wy" and my heart would mellllt.

Electric bike rides are a known cure for the blues in this house, so we embarked on a little afternoon adventure of our own to cheer ourselves up.  Mama wore lots of fancy accessories to try to avoid getting sunburned.

<3>

Byebye Unco Wy and Casandra

Best buddies

Kat and Luca moved back to New York today.  Leo and I are really sad to see them go.  

I met Kat the first time I went to the prenatal yoga class where I ended up meeting most of my mom friends.  She was almost full term and as we were chatting Luca kicked out towards me through her belly - I'll never forget that. 

After Luca was born (a couple of months before Leo), Kat and her husband came back to the yoga class to share their incredible home birth story.  I was so inspired by her story, it was one of the standout birth stories from that class that inspired me to work towards having my own natural birth, which I was lucky enough to achieve.

We ran into each other a few times over the course of the next several months and exchanged numbers; when I got food poisoning when Leo was four or five months old, she brought me soda crackers and sprite and pretty much saved my life.  Right after that, they moved to an apartment up the street, we started meeting almost nightly at our neighborhood park, and the rest of the story wrote itself.  We've been through a lot together - baby sickness, teething, lack of sleep, husbands working/traveling, lots of wine, lots of mascara reviews, sometimes feeling like we were going insane trying to balance our old selves, our new selves and our new growing families.

When we started spending time together, our boys were not yet crawling.  They grew to love each other and became best buddies.  They are a couple of months apart in age, and they have learned so many important lessons from one another, not having any siblings or cousins nearby.  Recently I was watching them play after spending an entire afternoon, dinner, and evening together and I realized that I had not seen them fight or even get mad at each other.  They'd learned to play and get along by being together.  What an incredible thing for two boys who live so far from extended family. 

It's not often that you meet a friend who becomes like family.  I've been lucky to meet more than one on this mama journey, but Kat is the only one who not only doesn't tease me for wearing mascara to the gym, but she could usually be found on the elliptical right next to mine not only wearing mascara but probably involved in some heated discussion about it (with me).

We will miss you, but we can't wait to come and visit you on the East Coast!