living with an almost-2-year-old

Emry, August 2012

I just found a half-eaten meatball from three days ago tucked inside my shoe. 

You?

on cycles

When Emry was born, I had three living grandparents. Now, as he approaches his second birthday, I have one.

Emry and my Grandma Syl, New Jersey, June 2012

I was doing a puzzle with Elan this morning, remembering when he first started liking puzzles two years ago. He was six inches shorter then.

At the end of a 7-hour flight just me & my boys, June 2012

When Elan was Emry’s age, he had the same gorgeous wispy-curled blonde hair as Emry does now. People thought he was a girl, just as they think Emry is a girl now. When I was too lazy to comb it out and it got full of dreadlocks, the Peruvian woman who ran his nursery school stuck him in the bathtub, plastered it down with heavy-duty conditioner, combed it out and put him in braids.

Elan at 2 years old, Berkeley, February 2009

When I picked him up, I couldn’t find him in the yard full of children. I didn’t recognize him from the back.

Now he’s starting kindergarten. I know it’s a happy occasion, but everytime I think about it, I feel a mix of uncertainty about the future and nostalgia for my first baby, my first toddler, my first preschooler…

Elan at 22 months, the same age Emry is now, San Diego, September 2008

Today I realized that he’s better prepared to start kindergarten than I am to have him start. Is that what parenting is – always being a few steps behind? Always thinking that if you could just push the “pause” button, you could catch up? I spoke with my grandmother, and she said, “Time moves on. You can’t stop it.” And I know that, of course. But ever since Elan was born two weeks early, I’ve felt behind, unprepared for the next thing, like I’m forever caught still prepping the tiny layette while he’s busy outgrowing it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ve held on to the thought it was because he was born early – that giving birth 14 days ahead of schedule set me on a course of catch-up. But maybe that’s just the nature of parenting, at least when you are a person who leans toward nostalgia, as I do.

Elan at 22 months, just after we moved to Berkeley, September 2008

I’m not sure if he’s nervous about starting kindergarten. I’m not even sure how much he’s thought about it. I’m trying not to impart my own ambivalence on him by talking about it much, since my older child can smell insincere enthusiasm from a mile away. And the summer has been so busy with travel and visits, there’s hardly been time. And now the first day is upon us. His backpack is ready, his lunch is packed, his clothes are laid out on his bedroom floor for tomorrow morning.

Blackberry picking, Birch Bay, Washington, August 2012

I look back to the possibilities for this year Mikhail and I created together, on a cold January afternoon on the beach: love, light & taking the next step. There is nothing to do but take that step that scares you. Tomorrow, we will hold hands and walk together through the gates of the elementary school. 

Heaven for a Star Wars obsessed boy, Legoland, San Diego, July 2012

And today, on the last day of summer vacation, I took my boys to the botanical gardens for a walk and Elan and I baked cookies together while Emry was napping. I pushed "pause," even if it was just for a few moments.

Redwoods at the botanical garden, Tilden, today

sneaky, sneaky

Hide and seek, Emry & Elan, July 2012

Park, pool, pizza -- a trifecta for happy (& then sleepy) boys.

Throw in a little hide & seek in the plaza of a beautiful shopping center and two gigantic pink-frosted heart cookies...what more could a little boy want? 

a nice, relaxing weekend

Emry, before the hives

The title of this post is ironic.

Over the past week, I feel as if I am being engulfed in fuss. Elan tends toward fuss naturally. Although his pre-K teacher and others who see him in a school context have a hard time believing it, the kid melts down faster than a popsicle left on a blacktop parking lot. In Palm Springs. In the summer. When it's 112 degrees.

Emry is usually more even-keel, and is much more the type of kid whose cries tell you something. He's got his hot-tempered cry. Translation = I'm mad. He's got his yowling cry. Translation = I hurt myself. He's got his frowny cry that ends with thumb in mouth. Translation = I'm frustrated/overwhelmed/hungry/tired/can't deal.

But Emry's been having an off week, the kind of week that ends with me taking him to the doctor "just in case" and finding out what I already knew: he's teething (the forever process), and he's got what's probably the start of a little cold. I'm always glad, however, after I've taken him in for one of these "is this really necessary?" checks, because there was that one time that he never quite seemed sick, just fussy, and when I finally took him in, he had an ear infection that had probably been hanging around for 2 months.

Anyway, there's the back story to me, getting in the car with 2 kids on a quiet, still-foggy Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. Heading off for donuts whilst letting my beloved sleep in. It should have been quite bucolic and enjoyable, kids in their PJs, me with my hair unbrushed, all relaxed Sunday-like.

Except for the screaming.

This time it was Emry. But he had been fussy all week, and so it wasn't that surprising. I gave him Motrin for his teeth, changed his diaper, and shortly after, he started yelling "Owie." Well, "owie" has been the soundtrack to my days lately, so I wasn't paying too much attention. But, 15 minutes later, as we pulled up in front of the donut shop, Emry was hysterical in his carseat. I found myself getting that kind of shortness with Elan that indicates that I'm stressed out, and I realized I wasn't really breathing much. I whipped out my cell phone, called my pediatrician father (yes, I realize how lucky I am) and said that I was really worried about Emry. As I said this, I pulled him out of his carseat. He was grabbing at his ankles, shouting "Owie" so I laid him down on the passenger seat, unzipped his sleeper, and found his ankles covered in what looked like giant white hives, the skin red and inflamed around them. "Holy $%#&!" I yelled, just as a turbaned man passed me on the empty Oakland street.

Yeah. It was that kind of morning.

I put Emry back into his carseat, his sleeper half off, as he screamed a little less when the cool air hit his inflamed legs, yelled at Elan when he started to complain about not getting donuts, and drove home as fast as I could while leaving a trying-not-to-sound-too-panicky message for my local pediatrician.

Now it's 1 p.m. and the hives, or whatever they were, after flaring up badly on his knees and a little bit on his arms and butt, were nearly gone when he went down for his nap. After a dose of allergy medication and Tylenol, he was a giggling happy menace, grabbing the remote and spilling Cheerios all over the floor as I attempted to unwind in front of the Sound of Music.

Julie Andrews probably would not have cursed on the street today, as I have. Twice.

The second time I found myself cursing on the street was when Elan decided to have a 40-minute scream-a-thon while Emry was napping and while I was trying my darnest to take a nap myself, feeling fairly catatonic after the stress of the morning. Mikhail was trying to get Elan out of the house, a process that frequently starts to resemble attempting to feed a hungry tiger without getting your arm taken off. Finally, I gave up on my nap, stumbled downstairs, found Elan screaming in the stroller parked in the carport while Mikhail tried to wash dishes, and wheeled my howling offspring out to the sidewalk. Then I cursed. Then I walked away.

I'd say there's nowhere to go but up.

more costa rica

We stayed firmly on the beaten track in Costa Rica. We went to typical tourist sites. This was intentional. Mikhail and I - and Mike and Maud, the friends we were traveling with - have done a lot of traveling off the beaten track. At times way off. But for this, our first international travel with kids, we decided that typical tourist amenities were right up our alley.

In Monteverde, we went full-on nature-tourist. We visited a butterfly/insect exhibit, a snake exhibit (Mikhail happily sat that one out), a frog exhibit, a hummingbird feeding area, and a hanging bridges cloud forest walk.

The butterflies were quite friendly. 

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Perhaps even a little overly friendly.

Let us just be clear that it is not my breast in the above photo being felt up by a butterfly.

One even laid eggs on Mike's back. Perhaps it was all that fermented mango they were feeding them.

The snakes, however, were not so friendly. 

Although that's not fair of me to say. Maybe they were friendly. Maybe they would have loved a little cuddle. But they were behind thick glass, and we weren't getting close enough to find out for ourselves. 

Mikhail hates snakes. Elan's favorite animals are snakes. And his very favorite snake is the eyelash pit viper, one of the most dangerous venomous snakes found between Mexico and Venezuela. Go figure. 

Mikhail and I have a theory that our older child thrives off of oppositional energy -- not when it comes to school (at least not so far), or to his age-mates (thankfully), but when it comes to us, his parents. It started at birth. We assumed that, as a first baby, he'd follow statistical trends and be late. But instead, he was a full two weeks early. The weekend he decided to make his grand entrance was not only just before a gigantic work project was due for Mikhail's then-new job, it was also the weekend my parents, our nearest family members when he was born and we were living in North County San Diego, moved out of the house they had lived in for 27 years.

He says the eyelash viper is his favorite snake because it's yellow, and yellow is his favorite color.

Let's just say that, from the start, he's liked to keep us on our toes.

This was my favorite snake. 

The coloring on this guy is magnificent. And he's not actually poisonous, he just looks like a poisonous snake so that predators will leave him alone. Or at least that's the story I remember about him, and after 20 minutes of googling Costa Rican snakes to try to remember his name, I'm willing to stick with that story. Plus, I think there's a metaphor in there somewhere if you go looking for it.

The hummingbirds were, as Maud likes to say, "amazeballs!"

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Hundreds of them zoomed from feeder to feeder, whizzing by your head lightning-fast, with their sharp beaks seeming only inches from your eyeballs. Sometimes I wanted to duck. But I trusted that they knew what they were doing.

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They weren't upset by the red interloper, though they really didn't seem to know what to make of his price tag.

Then there was this.

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Which was quite amazing, so long as I didn't allow myself to consider the possibility of getting lost.

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Or anyone falling off a bridge. Which I did not consider, not for a moment.

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The four of us seasoned travelers (not the kiddos, novices that they are) are known for our loyalty. Once we find a cafe or restaurant that we really like, we go back over and over. In Monteverde, that was a cafe called The Common Cup, which had the kind of Costa Rican coffee we were hoping to drink everywhere but of course only found a few places.

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Note my icy, frothy, chocolate-y coffee drink. Yum.

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And Elan's eating a cinnammon roll, minus the frosting because that qualifies as gooey. Look at that, the kid did eat in Costa Rica!

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Emry was feeling much better.

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And Elan was still in a really good mood.

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At least most of the time.

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*Starred photos - credit Mike Moclair & Maud O'Connor

costa rica

We went to Costa Rica.

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I think Tabacon Hot Springs is my new version of Eden.

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Hot rivers and massage-style waterfalls.

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Black-bottomed pools of varying sizes and temperatures set into the jungle.

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At the base of a volcano.

There was a water slide, which meant that Elan was in heaven.

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He was in a stunningly good mood for the first part of our trip, which we made sure to enjoy in case it changed suddenly. Which it did, but that's a story for later.

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Emry had a fever for the first four days of our trip, topping off at 103.9 degrees. I had to buy a thermometer at the grocery store in San Jose (Costa Rica, not California) since it was the one thing I forgot to pack. Of course, it was in Celsius, but lucky us, we had the Internet, so we didn't have to actually do math while comforting a toddler who'd just had a rectal temperature taken.

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He might have been glassy-eyed, but he could still live it up at the swim-up bar.

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Kid's a rock star.

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Our hotel room here was a splurge. But it was big enough for an indoor soccer game, so we definitely didn't go wrong.

And perfect for room service breakfast.

Which, when you're traveling with two small children, is anything but romantic.

But then you get this, too, which is pretty fun.

We were traveling with our Irish travelin' friends, Mike & Maud, who we first met 10 years ago in South America. 

Bless their souls for traveling with us and our pesky kids. They gave us a date night. They packed the car (our suitcase & duffle on the roof so we could fit all 6 of us in one SUV). They entertained our children. They entertained us.

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And they took many of these awesome pictures.

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I think this is my new happy place.

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*Starred photos - credit Michael Moclair, Maud O'Connor

Thanks for everything, guys!