Cucumber Slices and Forks

Every day at daycare Toby gets a “progress report” that tells us what he’s been up to that day, how long he napped, what he ate for lunch and what sort of things they found in his diaper. As someone who has spent the last 18 months fussing about the above things in DETAIL, it’s something I look forward to reading every day.
Sometimes I think they write it fairly generically - -like, for example, when they say he had pasta, yoghurt and CUCUMBER SLICES for lunch, I’m always a little skeptical. Unless they serve some sort of magical cucumber slices that look, taste and smell like chocolate; my son has never let me even put a cucumber slice up to his LIPS let alone CONSUME one. They have about a 15 millisecond survival time on his plate before they are thrown onto the floor with the usually verbose explanation, “NO NO NO NO!!!” accompanied by a look of utter DISGUST and DISAPPOINTMENT at me.

The first time I read about the horrendous CUCUMBER SLICE as part of his meal I almost marched right back in there to clarify and ask what magical cucumber they had come from OR offer some useful strategies to get flying cucumber bits out of the daycare worker’s hair… But when I thought about it some more I came to the conclusion that they were probably just somewhere in his vicinity. And they seem to think he’s a perfect ANGEL so far (?) so I don’t want to crush their delusions JUST yet….

So imagine my surprise yesterday when his progress report SPECIFICALLY mentioned lunch time and how he had “asked for a fork.” With an exclamation mark. And a smiley face.

“Toby asked for a FORK! ☺ “

Random.

Until I thought about it.

And how ODD it would be if you were sitting there peacefully serving 10 toddlers lunch and one of them decided to announce, “FORK! FORK! FORK!” in a somewhat slurred attempt at the English language.

I wonder how long it took them to realize he WASN’T in fact swearing at them. I hope it made their day as much as the image of it made mine!

My Lady's Man

Toby is becoming QUITE the ladies man…. On Friday he had a visit from his girlfriend Aliison. They ate dinner together, played, and then had a romantic soak in the tub in which Toby almost drowned himself trying to kiss Allison and then, upon realizing that his chivalrous efforts could not compete with the novelty of a spray faucet, settled for a foot scrubbing with mommy’s scrub brush. Even I didn’t get that kind of service when I was 10 months pregnant….

Saturday night, he joined us for a street party where he played in a bounce house with OLDER WOMEN and impressed them all with his cuteness and ability to THROW himself DARINGLY down the slide. I take it I have not seen the last of him simultaneously impressing women and scaring the shit out of me with his risky behaviours….

The weekend ended with a visit from Meredith whom he also wined and dined before enticing her to join him for bath time. Meredith, who has never really been impressed by an 18 month old penis before was quite taken and repeatedly pointed to it and asked, “What this?” while Toby tried discretely and with all of his might to rip his foreskin off. See last sentence in paragraph 2.

But the HIGHLIGHT of his amorous weekend came last night when I was urgently summoned to the front door. There he stood with a proud grin on his face, very carefully holding with both hands a beautiful pink rose for me. Daddy had helped him pick it and he had walked all the way up the hill with his determined little hands clenched around the rose so he could give it to me. In fact, he was SO EXCITED to give it to me that when the earwigs started crawling out of it and we grabbed it away from him he BURST into inconsolable tears. Rob was NOT ALLOWED to touch the rose - - he only settled once it was in his hands again and his beautiful (now tear stained) grin reappeared as he finally handed it to me. And I, like Allison, Meredith and the girls down the road…melted….

BAGBAT : Mystery Solved!

I can’t take the credit for it - - it was my mother who finally figured it out.

My mother is a linguist and a master of the English/French/German languages. She’s so adept at language that she does cryptic crosswords FOR FUN. And when I say “does them” I mean gets every answer within a few hours without breaking a sweat and pausing only to chuckle knowingly at the creator’s literary prowess. And her skills extend beyond English and the other two languages -- despite having never taken a lesson in other languages, she can annoyingly understand and translate almost all spoken Italian, and has been known to teach AP Spanish courses to other teachers. In fact, the only difficulties that she HAD with Spanish instruction was that she would occasionally and mistakenly lapse into Italian. Go figure.

So Toby’s mystery playmate – BAGBAT was definitely more than just a cute story to my mother. It was a puzzle that NEEDED to be solved. And, as always, my mother delivered.

I could hear the victory in her voice when she called a few days ago and stated her conquest with two short words,

“BACK PACK”

Toby's new friend : BAGBAT

Day #2 of day care was not quite such a success. Toby cried when I left. And apparently cried throughout the day when his braveness gave way to questioning about Mama? or Dada? and ended in tears. He was quite easily distracted and the tears “didn’t last long” but still - - it’s probably some ancient-mommy-torture method that somehow evolved into a socially accepted form of babysitting. A few times today, I found myself thinking, “Do I REALLY need to work? Do these 1000 patients of mine REALLY need me as much as my 18 month old son?” The answer is obvious, but not quite so black and white when you unwillingly pry their hugging arms away from you and turn and walk away from their tears. I think the WORST part is that you just never know WHEN they stop crying. Usually I can tke the tears when I am the one distracting him and hugging him and making it better. You see that they go away – it’s rudimentary psychology – tears end, mommy feels better. We all carry on with our day. But the whole DAYCARE thing just kind of leaves Mommy hanging…All. Day. Long.

As hard as today was on ALL of us, by 5pm, all three of us found ourselves happily back at home and together. And what better way to celebrate, than a ride on the swings and a chat about our day. Toby and I have been working on learning the names of his daycare workers - Ruth (“Rah”), Nora (“Na-nah”) and Emma (“Me-ma”). Eager to impress daddy with his new nomenclature, I asked Toby as we were swinging WHO he had played with at daycare today…

“BAG-BAT!”

We were both a little surprised by the answer. So I rephrased the question,

“Was NORAH at daycare today?”

“Na-nah”

“Who else was at day care today?”

“BAG-BAT!”

Rob and I pried and questioned for the next 20 minutes but every question we asked about daycare ended with the definitive and almighty, “BAG-BAT!”

We are not sure WHO “Bagbat” is. Or WHAT he is. Or what PURPOSE he holds at daycare. But one thing is certain : Toby is a big fan…

The Counting begins...

Toby is slowly learning to count. We realized this the other day when we were counting down to time out and he quickly turned away from whatever mischief he was into to announce “TOOOOO!” after Rob had sternly said, “ONE!”

So he knows what comes after one. Two.

He’s not so sharp with three, though. Today we tried to encourage his counting by purposely saying one and asking him what came next. We got the eager “TOOOOOOOOO!” exclamation again. But he was a little stumped by the complicated number that comes after that. He made several attempts at it- - the first time we asked he thought for a second and then said, “Ga-ga?” (Yes, he’s STILL asking for Grandma…) And every other time we try to coax him past two he comes up with a variety of solutions : Bath, Milk, Blue berries, Pictures....

Who KNOWS what comes after two, but you gotta start somewhere….

We Survived!

So today was the day. No fever. No earache. No pit in the bottom of mommy’s stomach. We were all ready and excited for the daycare adventure to begin. ESPECIALLY Toby. I kept saying, “Today you’re a big boy and you’re going to day care!” and he’d repeat, “Da-eh-ka!” We took pictures of him with his knapsack (you can see how shy and terrified he is…) and then we set out in the car. About 1 minute into the drive I realized why he had been so excited; unable to contain himself any longer he finally asked excitedly “Ga-Ga!??!!”

He thought we were going to Grandma’s house.

And who WOULDN’T be excited to go to Grandma’s house with your backpack full of all your favourite teddy bears, blankets and sippy cups? OBVIOUSLY he was going to spend some quality time there.

I guess the only time we say we’re GOING somewhere in the midst of packing up and making a big show of things is when we’re actually GOING somewhere - -which is usually to either Grandma’s house.

So what a shock to the poor guy when the usually long drive ended 5 minutes down the road and he was dumped into the arms of Ruth instead of his beloved Grandma.

The last thing I heard after PRYING him out of my arms, was Ruth coaxing Toby to wave “bye-bye” to me. He didn’t even turn to look. He was NOT impressed.

Rob and I consoled one another by going out for breakfast. After that we went our separate ways to run some errands. The funny thing was that we kept bumping into one another in town. It was as if we were both absentmindedly wandering around in complete oblivion, but I’m sure Rob–the-always-and-ever-so-uber-organized would disagree and claim that HIS trajectory of errand running made COMPLETE sense. It just happened to keep intersecting with my erratic-not-so-well-thought-out-trajectory.

In any event, the minutes ticked by slowly until FINALLY 4pm arrive and I got to go and pick Toby up.

It took him 10 minutes to even LOOK at me because he was busy pushing Dillon off the couch so he could get a front row view of Baby Einstein that they had JUST put on. (Or so they claimed.) After another 10 minutes of pointing out all the amazing toys like BALLS and HOUSES and SHOES that they had there, I managed to convince him that he DID want to come home because Daddy had missed him a lot.

The INSTANT we reached the car he began asking, “Gaga!”

Nope - -he hadn’t forgotten…NOW were we going to Grandma’s house?

So we all survived…and the only difference I’ve detected so far is the neatly combed hair (they always comb their hair after naps time…) and his newfound skill : spitting.

The finished product!

After hours of hard work (mainly on Rob's part...) I am pleased to say that the swing set is DONE. I don't REALLY understand why something so complicated and expensive doesn't come with a little elf who builds it for you - but I guess I'm lucky to be married to such an elf that can do the hard work himself.

Toby LOVES it. He loves that his head touches the tree "TEE!" when he swings. And he loves that he can throw gravel down the slide. And he loves that he can cover himself in sand in the sand box. And he loves hearing mommy freak out when he runs from end to end of the tree house, threatening to jump off by the rock climbing wall or the ladder while I yell, "GO DOWN THE SLIDE!!! GO DOWN THE SLIDE!"

It has already provided hours of entertainment and so far, no injuries.