Dada had to work late last night so at bedtime last we all piled into Tyler's bedroom. Gavin, Chili and me. This was a long but fun change of pace bedtime. Gavin is so into Tyler. He reaches up to grab a hold of any part of Tyler he can get. The catch is explaining to Tyler that it is not okay for him to do the same to Gavin. Last night while cooking dinner, with Gavin in the exersaucer and Tyler by my side helping me measure and pour the ingredients, everything seemed surprisingly under control. I was cooking a full on meal. Tyler was helping nicely (although it was hard coming up with enough things for him to help with) and Baby was entertaining himself. Too good to be true, I thought. Just then, Tyler jumped off his chair and ran over to the baby. I figured he was going to give him a kiss or something, after all, Tyler dishes out the kisses all the time. But suddenly Gavin whimpered and I turned just in time to see Tyler pull the baby's hand out of his mouth. I walked over and asked Tyler what he did, looking at Gavin's hand and seeing a big bite mark on his poor tiny finger. "Bite baby," Tyler sang in his sing song voice as if there were nothing wrong with what he had done. Hearing his innocent declaration of guilt, it dawned on me then that he really doesn't retain things I repeat thousands of times each day. So for the umpteenth time, Tyler was told that we don't bite. It's not nice. You hurt the baby. Although, you'd never know it by looking at Gavin who still dished out big smiles at his big brother.

We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. You're thinking I mean technical difficulties with this blog site. I could only wish. I mean technical difficulties with Tyler. It's like he just got bit by the terrible two's bug and became infected with the uncontrollable desire to throw a tantrum over nothing. He goes into a complete trance-like state. Screaming the same word over and over. Saturday it was "Book," Sunday it was "Mama," yesterday it was "chair." Giving him the word he's repeating just leads to more chaos. He throws the book as hard as possible, he flops his flailing body out of the chair, or out of my arms, or tries to strangle me, all while his face is deep red, his hands shaking, his voice hoarse and his eyes filled with tears that pour down his burning cheeks. Yep, that kind of technical difficulty. Shawn and I have whispered to each other our thoughts about Tyler's mental capacity. "Dude he's crazy," I think were my exact words as I watched Tyler try to throw his body onto the ground. At least he hasn't started banging his head on the concrete again. The comments about his mental state are most applicable after the tantrum is over, when normal sweet Tyler suddenly returns acting as if the fit of rage never happened. This is very bizarre.

I don't know about you, but I prefer to ignore the bad stuff and emphasize the positives. So, this may turn into Gavin's Blog until Tyler is over this psycho phase. At 5-1/2 months, Gavin is a roly-poly these days and can roll from the living room to the kitchen in less time than the 60 seconds it takes to make his rice cereal. He's got the greatest gummy grin there is, especially when food is involved!

Last week Tyler was blowing my mind with his ability to form sentences. He was constantly asking "What's that?" and pointing at every little thing, so we patiently answered with every little word, like "that's the spine of the book," or "that's a piece of fuzz." Little things, but lots of them. This week he's reverted to moaning. I can't put into type the sounds he makes, but it reminds me of the same sound I make when trying to cry like a puppy...only faster and not quite as high pitched. Yep, that's the sound Tyler makes these days. It's as if he thinks we can read his mind and the moaning/whining is the signal for us to begin reading his mind. So, mommy & daddy are constantly saying USE YOUR WORDS! I have a feeling the relentless question of "why?" is coming soon, then we'll wonder who's idea it was to ever encourage him to talk.

Tyler is the sweetest brother ever. He must kiss the baby 25 times a day. It makes Tyler's day when baby reaches up and touches Tyler on the face, hand, hair, wherever. Tyler will take the baby's hand and put it on his chin, then declare "Touch chin!" At daycare, their teachers do their best to give Tyler the same freedom to interact with the baby that he gets at home. Meanwhile, they are constantly telling the other kids to leave Baby alone. I'm sure this is a frustrating thing for the teachers, and am so grateful they believe in maintaining the same boundaries (or lack of boundaries in this case) at school as there are at home. But lately I'm beginning to think that sneaky Tyler has caught on to the fact that he is allowed to do something nobody else can do. I see him excessively giving the baby hugs and kisses, which warms my heart, but then he looks up at his friends standing around them, ready to pounce if they so much as point to the baby.

When I pick them up in the evenings, Tyler and his partner-in-crime Carina always bicker about this very thing. As I'm buckling Gavin in his carseat, Carina likes to watch and talk to the baby. Tyler is right there saying "No Carina!" if she touches the carseat, and he tries to position his body so she can't get near it. Then she yells "No Tyler!" back at him. It's good fun. They act like they're married or something. Carina moves up to the next classroom in two weeks. Tyler's teachers are already expressing concern that he will be crushed when she's not around. As they prepare her to move up to the 2's classroom, she gets to spend an hour or so down there each day. Ms. Jaclyn says the entire time she's gone, Tyler just stands by the classroom door looking around and asking for her. She's 25 days older than him, so for 25 days, Tyler has to live without Carina in the classroom. But, knowing her presence will make his transition to the 2's room so smooth is a big reassurance!

Tyler and Gavin went to their first Kings game together! Although it went well past his bedtime, Tyler was very good, sitting on Daddy's lap the entire game. He loves to watch the Kings on TV and yells "Go Go Kings" so I knew he would get a kick out of this experience. As we were walking towards the arena, Shawn told Tyler "This is Arco Arena," to which Tyler replied "Carina?" (If you say Arco Arena outloud you'll see how he made the connection) After assessing everything the first half, Tyler clapped when everyone else clapped, he was yelling "Go Go Kings" and even learned a new chant: "De-fense!" which he says quite clearly! This was a great time for all of us. Gavin was also well behaved, sitting on my lap watching the game most of the time, and entertaining the women behind us with his gummy smiles the rest of the time.

"Ty do it" is the phrase of this phase! Whether it's handing me the dirty clothes to put in the washing machine, putting the wet clothes into the dryer, feeding the dog, feeding the baby, sweeping with the broom, pushing the vaccuum, cooking dinner, Tyler is doing it. Call me a pushover but I'm letting him do whatever he wants to, primarily to avoid a tantrum because I can sense how passionate he is about "doing it." So, I'm getting creative about what we eat for dinner so that we're making things Tyler can do. Like clockwork, when I announce it's time to cook dinner, he goes and gets a chair to stand on, pushing it up to the counter.

Trying to come up with food he can safely help me prepare is not all that creative since cooking with Tyler can't exactly be done over the stove or with sharp knives. So, Tyler gets to put the chicken nuggets or fish sticks on the baking sheet. He's learning to pour ingredients out of a can. He's getting really good at putting the vegetables, 1 at a time, into the steamer (this buys me a lot of his time if we're having peas). He is learning never to touch knives. He calls raw chicken gross. He declares "Ding Dong" when the microwave beeps to tell us it's done cooking. I have found a new joy in cooking, and it's cooking with Tyler!

I can recall being maybe seven or eight years old, reading the book How to Eat Fried Worms wondering what sorts of strange things I might have eaten when I was younger. At some point or another, every kid probably asks their parents if they ever ate anything gross when they were little, like dog food for example. Well, Tyler, when you are older and reading this, let me be the first to tell you that yes, you ate some pretty gross things when you were little. You have a particular affinity to dog food. Iams Chunky Bits, to be exact. Lucky for you we have the sweetest dog in the world who doesn't growl or snarl when you approach his bowl and grab a handful for yourself. I have pulled many pieces of dog food out of Tyler's mouth and sadly must accept the fact that for every five pieces I remove, he probably swallows one piece. YUCK! Now I know why Chili inhales his food so fast these days.

There must be some ingredient in soap that Tyler is attracted to. In fact, he is a known soap thief. When I'm bathing the baby, Tyler grabs the bottle of baby shampoo and runs away, giggling, down the hall and around the corner where he tries to hide and eat it. I thought it must be the aromatic berry scents I douse the baby with. But, Tyler does this with Dove soap as well. When we're blowing bubbles, Tyler prefers to catch the bubbles with his mouth instead of his hands. He asks to blow the bubbles himself, dips the wand into the soap and promptly sticks the wand in his mouth. Yummy.

While reading our bedtime story the other night, Tyler kept rubbing his eye. I looked and saw an eyelash had fallen out. I showed Tyler the eyelash on my finger. "Ty pinky?" he asked, holding out his pointer finger for me to put the eyelash on. He gave a little chuckle as he contemplated the tiny little eyelash on his tiny little finger. I told him we could close our eyes, make a wish and blow it away. His big brown eyes looked at me with interest.

So I grabbed his finger, told him to close his eyes, said outloud "I wish Tyler can sleep through the night," and blew on his finger. We opened our eyes and it was gone! At that moment I realized Tyler would likely spend the next half hour talking about what he just witnessed and asking me to do it again so I quickly went back to reading his book outloud. He started digging in his eye trying to figure out how to get another eyelash but thanks to the giraffes, elephants and bisons in the book, he fell asleep before he could give it much more thought.

This morning while saying goodbye to him at school, I saw another eyelash that had fallen out. I put it on my finger and showed it to him wondering if he would try to blow it away. He was far more interested in the orange slices and pancakes on his plate than he was on the silly eyelash on my finger.

My wish hasn't come true yet. I should have specified which night I wanted that to start.

Tyler is all about doing things himself these days. He's doing his part to save us money on our electric bill as he goes around the house turning every light switch off. He isn't tall enough to switch the rockers on, just off. It's making me realize how bad Shawn & I are at turning lights off when we leave a room. He's also very into helping with the baby. If I am giving the baby a bath, Tyler thinks he should be doing the same thing. Problem is, Tyler can't reach the baby in his baby tub so every time I'm bathing Gavin, I'm also struggling to keep Tyler from climbing into the tub with him. I keep promising Tyler someday Baby will be old enough to take a bath with Tyler.

We recently began feeding Gavin rice cereal. I gave in pretty easily to Tyler's persistant requests to feed the baby. "Ty do it" he says over and over. Tyler is somewhat careful as he steers the spoon of cereal into the baby's mouth. He doesn't stick the spoon in too far for the most part. Baby thinks this is fun because he gets a spoonful from me and a spoonful from Tyler. We're learning to take turns while Baby gets fed twice as fast. Of course, Chili is right there to lick up any of Tyler's spills as he walks with the spoonful from the bowl to Baby's mouth. It's a family affair!

Tyler sure can play shy-guy. Grandma Wan and Grandpa Neb are visiting and even though Tyler was anticipating their arrival, he turned instantly shy and needed about 30 minutes to warm up to them. Once warmed up though, he sure was happy to see them. Papa asked what Tyler got for Christmas and Tyler didn't seem to understand. So Papa rephrased the question, asking Tyler to show him one of his presents. Tyler headed straight for the Christmas tree and grabbed one of the unwrapped presents sitting under the tree waiting to be given to it's recipient. So very literal this boy is. As much as he's shy with hellos, he sure does love to dish out goodbyes. He can't leave school without singing bye bye to everyone. And if they don't wave back, he repeats himself, waving his hand in their face. Bye bye Carina. Bye bye Bober (Ms. Amber). Bye bye Din (Dylan). Bye bye Shawnee (Ms. Shawna). Bye bye Baby. Nice try Tyler, Baby goes home with us!

We recently took the longest road trip of Tyler's life. We drove to Orange County for Great Grandpa Obritz's funeral. Tyler had only met his great grandfather once when he was four months old. I'm really glad he did. Anticipating the road trip, we grew very anxious over how the kids would do. I always find it helpful to imagine the worst and then I may get pleasantly surprised. So, I imagined an uncomfortable drive with my arm cocked behind me in the backseat holding the baby's binky in the entire drive while Tyler whined, cried, and made many messy diapers. This last thought came to me based on a real-life experience with a separate road trip Tyler and I took with Mack and Valerie where Mack exploded in his diaper and began sticking his hands in it before we could figure out where the smell was coming from. So, with these visions in my mind, I was quite happy with the reality. Baby slept almost the entire time. Tyler slept half the way and hypnotically watched Elmo movies on the laptop the other half of the way. For the first time, I can see why Shawn is so intent on purchasing one of these in-car TV sets we see in so many family cars these days. Anyway, Tyler saw his great uncles Dick and Chip. As luck had it, these are easy names for him to say, so he did a lot of his announcements as we sat around the table visiting. Mid-conversation, Tyler would blurt out: Mike! Kristin! Mmmammma (that's Grandma)! Papa! Dada! Mama! Dick! Pip! Funny boy.