Bungee Tyler

Tyler Curt

Tyler was fiending for a piece of paper last night. Seriously, he was holding a pen in one hand, running all over the place looking for any piece of paper. I barely rescued my bank statement and instead gave him a piece of paper off the notepad Gavin had just torn apart, and this was why:

Family Weekend

We got an unexpected message Friday that Shawn's Grandma Nell (Great Grandma to Tyler & Gavin) was in L.A. with Aunt Jan and they'd like to see us. They live in Indiana, a place Shawn has little to no desire to visit since he associates living there with some dark times from his youth. We could not pass up the opportunity to introduce Tyler & Gavin to their lovely and kind Great Grandmother who sends the sweetest Christmas gifts each year. Plus, I really wanted to meet them so we whisked off to southern California for a quick trip. Dana, Kari, Jordan, Nell, Jan and us plus Papa Neb & Uncle Tom met up at the beach in Santa Barbara. What a blast that town is to be a tourist in! We rented surreys and rode all over the boardwalk. We showed them the building we got married in, rode up to the harbor, stopped for a ride on the carousel (Gavin fell asleep on the ride!), Papa and Tom took Tyler to see a train and they put two pennies on the track so it would flatten them. Tyler was so excited to show us and then he and Jordan promptly threw the barely recognizable pennies into the fountain. Then we went to Neb & Wan's for a seafood feast Uncle Tom style, featuring tuna, sashimi (Grandma tried it!) and two kinds of swordfish. What a treat. After dinner we went back to the beach for a sunset swim (too cold to everyone but Tyler & Jordan). Then all the cousins took a bath together. So cute! How lucky we are to be blessed with such great family. It was great meeting, visiting and seeing everyone on our whirlwind trip. On the way home, we figured we only spent 26 hours in S.B. but did so much in that short time.

Booty

Tyler's got back. Boo-tay. Tush, bottom, rump, butt whatever you call it, he's got a nice big and round one that does a great job of holding up his pants. It's what I call the Curt Booty. Gavin on the other hand, well he's got what Shawn lovingly refers to as the Smith Butt which is more of an indentation which allows his pants to fall right off. Fat as I may be, I still can take my pants off without unzipping them because I've got no butt to hold them up. Anyway, I was helping Tyler get in his jammies last night and couldn't help myself. It's only natural that I like his butt since it looks just like his dad's right? On a much smaller scale of course. But imagine my surprise when I squeezed his buns and said "Oooh you've got such a cute butt" and Tyler smiled, turned to me and said "So do you Mommy."

$.39 Stickers

I just sat down at my desk after the weekend and am faced with self adhesive stamps stuck onto everything: bills, paper, the printer, armchair, carpet, insurance policies, invoices, the keyboard. Tyler was busy this weekend. He made a craft out of the popsicle sticks he begged me to buy. It was cute. We drew a big boat and then drew two eyes, a nose and a mouth on each stick, colored in shirts and pants, and then glued the sticks to the boat so they looked like pirates. While it was drying, Gavin woke up from his nap and made one too. Tyler got even more creative and began sticking more pirates on his display, this time swimming in the water below, and sliding down a water slide. He was so proud of this masterpiece, he got a lot of scotch tape to stick it to the walls. Apparently the tape was right next to the stamps. Mr. Creative began a new art project with the stamps. So for a while, or at least the next 18 letters, I'll be using a glue stick to make the stamps sticky again when mailing. I wonder if by the time Tyler is old enough to read this, he'll laugh at the fact that stamps were only $.39?

No Food Issues Here

Tyler likes steak. He loves ham sandwiches. He devours chicken. He chews endlessly on beef they way a cow chews its cud. He really likes fish and most of all, he loves shrimp. So I keep wondering if he's put it all together yet that the chicken he eats is the same as the picture of the chicken in our Animal Sounds book or the shrimp he craves is the same as the giant shrimp who ate Grandma Long Joan Silver in our Don't Mention Pirates book. But last night I discovered he hasn't yet put it together. He was telling me about a movie he'd just seen with Daddy & Gavin, The Barnyard and little photographic memory boy was not just summarizing the movie, but rather he was quoting funny lines and describing scenes in detail. Anyway, he was explaining a scene where a coyote was talking to a chicken and Tyler said to me "The coyote was talking to a chicken. Not the kind of chicken you eat, but the kind that lives on a farm. And the coyote was really hungry and he tried to take a bite out of the chicken's arm but it was not the kind of chicken you eat so it was really funny." Ah so now I know Tyler hasn't made the connection between the food he eats and the animals he loves. Last month when Shawn flew home from New Hampshire with fresh Maine lobsters, Tyler even watched the lobsters crawl on our kitchen floor before we cooked and ate them. No food issues here. Just milk issues. Give him a glass of milk and he gives you a look of disgust because he's completely lost his appetite.

When I grow up

Although he hasn't seen her in a couple months, Tyler still loves Carina the most. He was very busy thinking early one morning and began telling me what he had been thinking about.

Mama. When I grow up I am going to move in to a house very close to here so that I can live near you. Mmmhmm and I will live there with my wife, Carina, so that she can live close to her mommy and daddy too. And we will paint my house orange because that's my favorite color. Oh, and we might have to paint some of it pink too because that's Carina's favorite color. Mmmhmm.

I didn't have the heart to tell him orange and pink are not on the Home Owner Association's list of approved house colors. This verified that girls really do mature faster than boys because it was a good year ago that Carina's mom first told me Carina was talking about how she is going to marry Tyler when she grows up. At that time, I was a little shocked by the promiscuity of it all. Now I see how very cute and innocent it is and the truth is, I wouldn't mind one bit if my son lived close by me with his wife when he grows up. Not sure how his wife would feel about that though.