Daddy Tree: Tiny Footsteps

Willow has been giving us fits for months now about brushing her teeth before bed. She's usually better brushing her teeth in the morning, meaning it's less like wrestling an alligator for me, but at night before bed, she turns into the Tasmanian Devil. We've tried making the tooth-brushing as fun as possible for her, but I usually end up holding her against her will while I try, mostly in vain, to pry the toothbrush into her clamped-shut mouth. Sometimes we give up. We've tried singing to her. Dancing. Story-telling. Tickling. Nothing has really worked. But Mommy might have hit on the solution. A singing toothbrush. Yesterday Mommy brought home a toothbrush that belts out Queen singing "We Will Rock You." This toothbrush ROCKS! And Willow loves it. We tried it out last night, and on the inaugural brushing, Willow brushed her teeth successfully all by herself. She danced the whole time too. And I stayed bruise free (I also, surprisingly, had more energ...

Well, you all know the big news now: Willow is going to have a baby brother or sister soon. The baby is due at the end of May. We don't know the gender yet, but we're going to find out soon. Cherish and I will let everyone know what we're expecting. Now I have to be honest with you. I'm on a roller coaster of emotions here. My hormones are dipping and rising as fast as Cherish's are right now. Of course I'm happy to have another child on the way. I can't be happier, really, but on some days, when I'm having a tough time with Willow, I get tired. "Oh, my God! There are going to be two of these things running around soon!" I feel like collapsing and just staying there, prone on the floor, sleeping for a very long time. Of course, I don't know what I'm in for, but if I don't get too wrapped up in the running-around-and-chasing-the-toddler-and-her-baby-sibling thinking, and accentuate the positive, I can fend off those tired though...

Lately, I've been having problems with Willow clinging to me, not wanting to be left at the YMCA's Y-Play child care area while I work out. Today she was a little clingy, but not too bad, just a few whimpers, then she was off. No, today's problem was getting her the heck out of there when I was showered and ready to go home. I was patient, though, and went under the stairs with her to chat with her, play with her and reason with her that she wanted to go home too. That's where I met her new friend, a 4-year-old boy, who was graciously sharing a parking-garage thingy with my 18-month-old. Willow loved this boy. Loved him. She chortled every time he spoke, and I mean that, CHORTLED, no little giggle here; she'd throw back her head and bellow out happy snorts, just like her mommy. From what I could tell, the boy only tolerated Willow, but he did a good job at it, complimenting her when she pushed Matchbox cars up the ramp, for example. I had a mission, so I got to ...

When Willow says the word, it drips from her lips like honey. And it lands on my and Mommy's ears like honey, soothing our tired and achy cores. It's the sweetest thing, when Willow does something she likes, such as dancing in circles to my rendition of "Ring Around the Roses," then looks up to me with those big baby eyes, taps out the sign with her hands and utters in her angelic voice, "more?" She wants more, and Che and I will do anything to give more to her, especially if this sweetness keeps oozing from her. Willow has been doing the sign for "more" for months. She doesn't do the sign correctly, but we don't care. The sign is tapping the tips of your bunched up fingers together. That's the way I perceive it, though I'm sure it's probably the same sign a TV producer gives to a news anchor encouraging her to "stretch it out" for just a few more seconds until commercial break. But that's not how Willow does ...

I think Willow made a friend today at the YMCA's Y-Play, which is a free day care available to Y members. Willow is 18 months old, so it comes as no surprise to the kind ladies at Y-Play that she has a hard time parting with me nowadays. When we started at the Y, Willow ran from my arms to go play in this new and magical place of toys-aplenty. Not anymore. She holds on to me tighter than Krazy Glue to beams in those 1980s commercials, and she undams rivers of tears. I always return an hour or so later and struggle to get her to leave the place; the Y ladies say she forgets about me within seconds of my leaving to go work out. When I returned today to drag her from her fun, she was playing with a blond-headed girl about her age and size at the play kitchen, which is Willow's favorite spot. Willow had a toy cash register, and she was repeatedly ringing up the purchase of a tiny purple pony for her playmate. In and out of the register drawer the pony went. Ka-ching! The playmat...

Willow and I were playing with Mr. Potato Head in the bonus room when the drier downstairs kicked off and the alarm beeped. Willow chimed, "WazZat?" "That's the laundry," I responded. "Do you want to go down with me and do the laundry?" Willow shook her head no. I stepped over the barriers at the top of the stairs (a large kitchen set and a heavy tote filled with baseball cards, a combo that has kept Willow penned upstairs for months now because a baby gate doesn't fit) then looked back and asked again, "Willow, do you want to help with the laundry?" Again she shook her head no. "OK, I'll be right back." Willow continued playing with Mr. Potato Head, and I hopped down the 10 or so steps to the main floor of the house. As I emptied the drier and folded the towels, rags and underwear, I heard Willow chirping playfully up in the bonus room. A couple of minutes passed, and I neared the end of the folding job, ...

I while back, when I had just a few months service as a stay-at-home dad, somebody asked me what had been the biggest surprise. "The bottles," I said. "Good God, the bottles!" You see, back then, I thought I spent half the day in the kitchen preparing and washing and preparing bottles for Willow. The bottles are nicely tucked away in a plastic box in the attic. They've been up there a while, actually, but my answer to the same question isn't all that different. The busy has relocated, that's all. Willow turns 18 months tomorrow, and to me, she and I are as busy as ever. Actually, it seems to me every day has been busier than the previous since the day she was born, or at least since she was a week old (that first week is brutal). Let me share a few topics of busy with you. Dishes These things never stop coming. I feel like I'm hand-washing dishes at a Golden Corral ... AND I'M USING AN ELECTRIC DISHWASHER! I have no memory of how we di...

I want to show you two pictures, but a little later. First I want to introduce you to chaos (or at least what I consider to be chaos) via a handy, dandy list: I am sitting at a laptop, pounding out a blog's letters as quickly as I can think of them. The laptop is only three months old, yet some of the keys stick sometimes. These sticky keys are the ghostly reminders that a toddler's sticky fingers have been pounding on them. Four loads of laundry lie in various states of "unfinish." One load is wet. One load is wrinkling. Two loads await their spins. A fifth load already has been tucked away in drawers, cabinets and closets (then untucked by a toddler then tucked again by me). Cups, plates and bowls hang for dear life to a hastily stacked pile of dirty dishes in the sink while a clean set of dishes sits in the dishwasher. A pile of pictures and postcards blanket the floor beside the desk in the guest room. This was the work of the sticky fingers that pounded on...

Willow, Cherish and I have joined the local YMCA. The membership will be good for all three of us: It gives Willow a place to go to play with other kids and to burn off energy that I just don't have the energy to help her burn. It gives me a place (and the time) to go to get my daily workouts in. Believe it or not, it's hard to get in my runs while being a stay-at-home dad. The bigger payoff, though, is I get a little time to myself. It gives Cherish a place to go on the weekends to get away from the "Crazy, Stupid Husband." It gives us, as a family, a place to go swimming all year. To be honest, the biggest benefit is Cherish and I have a place to go to get a break from parenting. No liars here. But we also like that Willow has a place to go play away from Mommy and Daddy. She gets a chance to be with other kids off all ages. But there are problems with that too. On our trip to the Y on Monday, a girl not much older bit Willow on the hand. The bite left a ...

Willow is fearless. Absolutely fearless. She and I had a banner day at the park on Monday. She hit the swings, the slides, the see-saw and the rope swing, and we explored the leaf-littered picnic grounds. We also watched the fish and turtles at the pond Willow likes. But probably the highlight of the day for Willow is when we climbed a big hill and watched a trio of boys, all roughly the age of first-graders, disappear into a metal chute and zip (at the speed of sound, no doubt) to the bottom of the hill about 25 feet below. They were going fast. Of course, Willow wanted to zip down the chute too. I had no intention of letting her head down the death trap, but I let her explore the entrance at the top of the hill to which the father of the boys said, "You know it goes really fast." I assured him I wasn't going to let my toddler girl go down the chute. The father left with his boys. I guess Willow intimidated them. After Willow explored the top of the slide for a w...

I've been doing really well with my health this year. I've managed to keep off the 50-plus pounds I lost, and I'm as fit as I've ever been, even fitter than I was in high school and college. But I'm still a few pounds overweight, and I haven't lost any weight since late July. I want to lose 10 pounds by the end of the year. And I know who's going to help me, my No. 1 coach and inspiration. Ms. Willow Rose Dunn. Of course, she'll have me running all over the house and the yard and the mall and the zoo for her, and she'll have me picking up everything in her destructive path. She's getting more active, and she's running all over the place at a higher and higher clip. I figure that's good for 5 pounds or so. The other 5 pounds, I'm going to really have to work for (and I ain't dieting anymore, Jenny Craig!). Willow is going to help with that extra work. She's going to be there (if only spirit) when I wake early every morni...

Let me say this first: I don't want Willow to hate anyone. I want her to respect other folks regardless of race, creed, politics and nationality. I guess you can say I want her to live up to her hippie name, love and peace and harmony and all that. But let's be real here. My love can go only so far, and even though I want her to be a better person than I am, I wouldn't begrudge her this one little hate that I have. Yes. I want her to hate the St. Louis Cardinals. Stop snickering. This is serious. I don't care if she roots for the Yankees or the Braves. I'll be fine if she roots for the Volunteers or the Gators. Heck, I'll even be OK if she stands behind the Blue Devils or the Tar Heels (I'll grit my teeth the whole time, though). But I will not tolerate any good feelings toward the St. Louis Cardinals, the team that boils my blood. Let's put it this way: If the unimaginable Reds' loss to the Giants (who were dead and buried, by the way) opened...

Willow is climbing on everything. She pulls herself up onto the chairs around the kitchen table, onto the couch and the love seat and onto tables and trunks throughout the house. She pulls herself up and down the steps and stairs all over the place. Her latest feat? She can pull herself onto the tall chairs at the kitchen bar. These chairs are roughly twice as high as the chairs around the kitchen table. No matter. She somehow plops her stomach onto the seat of the chair, grabs the opposite edges of the seat and starts shimmying her legs all over until she's pulled her buttom up. With such an effort this morning, she earned the right to eat breakfast with Daddy at the kitchen bar. This was a messy affair, but no more messy than if she were in a high chair (except that I usually avoid getting fruit cocktail syrup all over my arm when she's in a high chair). I'm going to have to get used to it, though. I know better than to think this is just a phase. No. Willow is growi...

Most of Willow's first year on the planet, she said one word more than any: "da-da." She said it with an angelic innocence, like a tiny bell ringing on a Christmas tree. When I heard "da-da," my heart warmed a degree or two, and any anxiety I had melted away from the tension in my back. "Da-da" lifted me, and the world, it seemed, into a peaceful place. Willow doesn't say "da-da" much anymore. That angelic utterance has been replaced by a much more guttural one: "mom!" That's right. Not "mommy" or "ma-ma." And there's no angel's tone or Christmas bells in there either. When Willow bellows "Mom!" I detect the raspy saltiness of a Bostonian lobsterman (as in, "Mom, I left the behr in the cahr! Fetch it for me, willyah!" And Willow's intentions aren't far from that lobsterman's. An example: We have a foot stool in the bathroom now, so Willow can step up to the s...

Today I owe Willow a trip to the park. Since Tuesday, old Dad has been anchored to the house by a cold (Willow had the same sniffles, but she seemed to muster through it a lot better than I did). I promised Willow yesterday I'd take her to the park today because I was feeling better. And today I'm feeling much better, down to a few nose blows and a small sinus headache. I think it's time to get out the house and go sliding, don't you? We're also going to the library and to the store. Willow will have a whale of a time.

Last week, Willow took a huge step in her quest to become a big girl (she's abiding by her plans, not Mommy's and Daddy's, who want her to stay a baby forever). Willow and I went to the playground for a morning of play and a picnic. Willow's idea of "a morning of play" is usually spending A LOT of time on the swing. Up to last week, if she wanted out of the swing, it was to walk over to another, better swing. Then back again. Last week, things changed. I put Willow at the top of a tot slide and started cheering her to let loose. I readied to keep her from tumbling off the bottom of the slide. She let loose, scooted down the slide and stopped just short of the edge. She shimmied off, smiling and took off after the steps to go back up. She clamored to the top of the slide (this set of slides had one "top" with the option of going down three slides: a straight one, a curvy one and a tunnel one). Willow reached the top, sat down, scooted her bottom t...

Last fall, I wrote several times about taking Willow on long walks with me. Depending on the weather (and it was warm throughout the fall and winter), she'd accompany me on walks in the neighborhood and at parks throughout the Midstate (and even went on a walk or two with me at a nearby mall). She seemed to enjoy the walks and never complained or fussed. She liked seeing the dogs and the ducks and the kids, I think. Sometimes she fell asleep in the stroller (those made for especially long walks for me). As time passed, I walked farther and faster, and Willow was there every step of the way. In March, I graduated into running, and I've been Forrest Gump ever since. Even though I was getting better at running (and enjoying it more and more), I think I lost a simple pleasure of these outdoor jaunts: I had stopped taking Willow with me. I was waking early in the day, sometimes as early as 5:20 a.m., so I could go running "unencumbered" by Willow. I have to admit that...

Willow's vocabulary and friend-making skills took big leaps forward this week. At the zoo on Wednesday when Willow and I hopped in the newly renovated tot mat, she quickly became friends with a toddler boy and girl. Soon they were off an running, zipping back and forth from side to side, plopping their heads in synchronization onto the padded seats on each side. The trio giggled and giggled and ran and fell and got back up and ran and plopped and giggled. I had fun just watching. The toddler girl could talk pretty well, and I think that inspired Willow to talk a little more than she usually does. Of course, most of Willow's talking is gibberish, but sometimes she blurts out a recognizable word or two. Once when she was trying to get up on to the padded seating, she said (I swear to it), "I wan up!" She hasn't said that phrase since then, but she's said, "Up!" several times. Since that visit to the zoo, she's also uttered such words as: Ow-w...

I'm not going to spend much time on this or try to write all fancy and stuff, but sometimes the best moments in your life are the silly ones. And sometimes the best moments you share with loved ones in your connected lives are, yep, the silly ones. Willow and I just had a complete and utter sillyfest of laughing fits during lunch just now. This video shows just 37 seconds of the fun (believe me, we were hooting for a good 15 minutes solid): Precious. Willow had another silly and precious moment over the weekend while I was ziplining at Mammoth Cave Adventures (my family and I are obviously into doing silly things recently). Remnants of Hurricane Isaac were settled over the area, which meant we spent much of the ziplining in a driving downpour of very fat drops of rain. While I was zipping through the woods and the very fat drops of rain, Willow was splashing around in the monsoon. When I got back, she was soaked. I was soaked too, so I joined her in the rain. I couldn...

Busy and (yawn) tired. It has become quite obvious to me lately that that is the state Willow prefers I be in, busy and (yawn) tired. She doesn't want me rested and alert (or at least coherent). No. She wants me on the move (move, move, move, move, move) and ragged. That's the Daddy she prefers: The Daddy whose world is not at all sharp and in focus; she wants the Daddy whose world is all fuzzy around the edges, a blur. She wants me to be one of those stupid humans in the Liberty Mutual Insurance commercials ("Humans. We mean well, but we're imperfect creatures ... It's amazing we've made it this far.") Here's the commercial: Well, Willow has it her way: I am, indeed, a stupid human. Here's a few examples, just in the last two days, of how she's accomplished the task: I chased her around the house, quite in vain, trying to pull her nightgown off over her head yesterday morning. Exhausting. She dropped her Cheerios, one by one, over ...

I've never really paid attention to the way Cherish puts lotion on, but Willow has. Willow observes everything. After a shower over the weekend, Cherish put lotion on her legs, and wee Willow was there to watch. As Mommy started dressing in the adjacent bedroom, Willow grabbed the bottle of lotion and acted as if she were squeezing lotion on her hands. Then she clapped her hands together, bent over and started rubbing the imaginary lotion up and down her legs. Willow did it over and over, squeezing the lotion on her hands, clapping her hands, bending over and rubbing the stuff up and down her legs. Cherish and I cackled while Willow worked diligently on babying her baby skin. I pointed out to Cherish that Willow was clapping after putting the lotion on her hands. "Do I do that?" Cherish said. "I don't know, but you must." Of course, Cherish is a bit self-conscious about it now, and she claims she paid attention while she put the lotion on her legs t...

Willow was in a bit of a sour mood this morning, so we strapped on our shoes and headed to the backyard. After swinging for a bit, Willow whined and tugged at her constraints. Odd. She'd been swinging only about five minutes (she usually logs about 30 minutes before I pull her kicking and screaming from the swing). She made a beeline for the deck and the water table it holds. The problem was I wanted at least one day off from her getting wet and caked in sand, so I started thinking fast. I needed something to keep her calm but not remove her from the outdoors on such a pretty and cool morning. So I grabbed my bicycle with the child seat fastened to the back and loaded her up. Now I'm not sure how my body is going to treat me the rest of the day because just an hour earlier I returned to the house from a 2-mile run, but for Willow the bike ride was the perfect antidote for a fussy morning. When she spotted the bike, she lifted her arms into a touchdown sign and wanted up in...

Up until now Willow has enjoyed the company of other tots her age only in the sense that where they are is where the fun and the toys are. That is to say she likes the toys and the gyms and the swings and if she has to be around these other toddlers, so be it. That's with kids her own age. She LOVES older kids, but they don't care much for her (other than "she's a baby," and Willow can't keep up with them, though she tries). Her older cousin, Rett, for example, hung the stars and moon in her opinion, so she'll just about do anything he does, including cozying up with him on the chair to watch a movie. And he does like her more than the typical older kid does. But as far as all the toddlers and babies roughly in Willow's age range, she doesn't have much use for them. She's not mean to them. She'll let them take a ball from her hand, for example (as some say, she plays well with others). But I can tell you, most definitely, she just doesn...

I guess it's official. This morning, we witnessed the kiddos hopping on school buses and heading to school. That marks the end of summer, I suppose, and the end of summer seems to come a little earlier every year (even though the actual warmness of the weather keeps creeping later and later; are we going to have winter this year, anyone?). Call me silly, but I like to think of the end of summer as that day on the calendar that falls in the middle of September, after my birthday (my birthday, Sept. 16, is in summer, but it has never, ever felt that way even though I know it's always hot on my birthday). This marks my 39th summer if you count that first one I was born during in 1974, and I'm sure many of them seemed really long or really short depending on how old I was. For me, it seemed like the summers of my childhood lasted FOREVER. Now it seems like they zip by. In a flash. Especially this one. It's been a busy one, filled with lots of travels, family visits and...

Well, here we are, one year later. On Aug. 1, 2011, Willow, Cherish and I took deep breaths and ventured down an unsure road. Aug. 1, 2011, was my first full day on the job as stay-at-home dad. "Unsure road" isn't really a fair way of putting it, though. We were sure about what we wanted to do. We knew the road we wanted to take. But the road was so different from any we had taken in our lives, we weren't sure where we'd end up. We even reserved the possibility we'd have to turn back. We haven't turned back. And we're well on our way. We even found a lot of the happiness we thought we would, and you can't beat that. I don't want to mislead you. All has not been sublime. The road we chose has had some rough patches along the way, but I don't think these rough patches carry any more weight than the ones we might have encountered if we had taken the more traditional route. The roughest patch hasn't been what we expected it would be:...

Willow's playtime universe continues to grow. Rapidly. Witness. In the midsummer heat, I take Willow out to our shaded backyard in the morning to play. And play she does. She climbed into her swing first. After I pushed her for a while, I got her out of the swing and put her in her wagon so she could help me convey bags of sand from the garage to the backyard to fill her sandbox (part of her new swing set) and her water table sandbox. She took rake and shovel and played in the sandbox for a bit. Then she waddled over to the deck and started to climb the steps to get to the water table. She played in the sand a bit, but most of her time was used dipping water up and out of the water part of the water table. Most the water ended up all over her. After that she wanted off the deck to go back to swinging. Instead I retrieved the new tricycle Cherish procured from a Franklin recycle center and cleaned it up. Willow loved the trike, holding on to the handle bars while I pushed her...

We're back from Beach Trip No. 2, this one to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Everyone had a good time, and we all enjoyed our time with family. Even though that was the big highlight of the trip, time with family, for Che, Willow and me, Willow might bend your ear more about another thing that happened on the vacation (if Willow could say more than "dadadada," that is). Che and I know spending time with family was Willow's favorite part of both our beach trips, but her second-favorite part of the trip to the Outer Banks wasn't the sand or the toys or the pool or the surf or the sun or the bike rides. No, siree, Bob. If our little chatterbox could actually put together sentences that you and I could understand, she'd go on and on about the hulking gray puppy dog of a great dane we saw at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. We saw the pup as we were getting pictures in front of the lighthouse after some of us climbed its 257 steps (then dizzyingly descended those ...

I was going to clean the bathrooms during Willow's afternoon nap, but after much thought on the matter, I've decided to contribute to the blog instead. Aren't you guys lucky? God knows Willow loves her naps, but it's hard to convey this to other parents without having a solid anecdote to share. The stories don't get any more persuasive than this: Willow started tugging on my shorts just a few minutes ago. She'd had a nice snack, some milk and some play time already (and she didn't care to get in my lap, thank you very much), so I leaped to the next possible conclusion. "Willow, do you want a nap?" Willow is getting to how to say a word here and there, but they're no more complicated than "Da," "Ma," "bir(d)" and "Doug" (ducks, dogs or Dougs but not dug). Anyway, her answer to my question was as clear as a mountain stream. Heck to the yeah. Willow whipped her head toward her bedroom and took off at h...

As Willow grows (and those little teefers start filling her mouth), Che and I can't help but notice how she looks like this person or acts like that one, how she looks like a young Katee on this day and how she reminds of us toddler Bristol on that day. At any given moment, she can look like Che or me or Gran or Mimi. But there's one striking and quite specific trait that's standing out right now -- "the strong face," aka "the cold face." This is right out of cousin Rett's playbook. A few years back, when Rett was a toddler and we were at Myrtle Beach with my side of the family, we had a grand time getting Rett to do the face. I'm not confidently sure, but I think my sister called it "the cold face." I called it "the strong face." She'd ask Rett to do it, and he'd tense up his arms in front of his body as if he were trying his darnedest to conjure up a spell, and he'd clench his teeth and shake a little. To me, ...

I almost did it! Several times throughout the first months of Willow's life, I was able to get her from the car to her room without waking her, but that was when I was carrying that handy-dandy car seat with a handle on it. And she lay sleeping in her car seat in the floor of her room. She has long graduated from that car seat, moving up into a much larger one, and one without a handle. Since then, I've gotten her asleep from the car into the house, but somewhere along the way to her room, she always wakes up. This morning we ventured to Kroger to pick up some produce for a meal Che is cooking Wednesday night. On the way back home, Willow fell into a slumber. I got her out of her car seat constraints, into my arms and up the steps into the house without waking her. Then I tiptoed through the dining room, kitchen, living room, hall and into her bedroom. So far so good. I even placed her on her back in her crib and took off her sandals (these have buckles, so no easy task ...

Willow didn't like the water hitting her in the face, but she loved the wet stuff everywhere else. Earlier this week, Willow got her first taste (really quite literally) of backyard sprinkler fun. It was a scorcher of a day (and we were back from the beach so Willow was craving some time in the water because I could see it in her eyes), so we headed out back, and I dug the sprinkler out of the garage and hooked it up to the hose. I turned on the water and waited for the fun to begin! But you know how a sprinkler is ... slow ... and never pointing at the right spot. Eventually, I got the sprinkler facing the correct direction, and I got Willow (the victim) in the right spot. And I waited for the fun to begin! But you know how sprinklers are ... slow ... and Willow walked off out of watershot. Okay, so eventually, I got everything aligned and ready to go. Et voila! Willow got a good spray right in the back of the head. She didn't care ... until she turned and the wa...

 At first Willow didn't like the sand between her toes. We're back! Willow, Che and I had a wonderful time at Panama City Beach with Katee, Aunt Coco, Gran and Pop. Willow absolutely had the time of her life. Thank you Gran and Pop for making the trip possible. One of the many, many highlights of the trip (venture over to my or Cherish's Facebook page if you want to see the dozens of pictures Che posted in addition to the ones I have here) was when Che and I took Willow down to the beach and the surf. Waterbaby Willow loved it! As with about everything she tries, her first taste wasn't that pleasant (she gets this from her mommy), but her second taste was cosmic and her third taste was divine. When her feet first hit the sand, a what-the-heck-is-this-stuff look flashed on her face. It's the same as when she tried grapes or peas or applesauce for the first time. But soon she couldn't get enough of the stuff. She buried her little footsies in it, then s...

As Willow, Che and I zip through this year's summer of dreams (we're getting busy, busy, busy!), it's getting harder for me to find time to drop by here and write a line or two, but I'm going to try to come by here as much as I can (but not on my two beach trips ... NO, NO, NO!!!). I've had a ton to write about, but I can't recall any of it, it seems, which is probably why I should stop by here as much as possible. So I guess I'll just write about today. Willow and I had to skip Gymbo's place today because our little angel started showing signs of a head cold yesterday evening. Her nose was running, then she got a little stuffy, then she coughed and sneezed a little bit. It's not a bad cold, but as you and I know, there are no good colds. Our trouper has been fighting on and playing with all her might, if not as loudly as usual. She had a tough time sleeping because, well, she's never had a stuffy nose in her life, so traversing her regular sl...

Willow has been opening doors. Literally. She's been closing doors for a while now, but on Wednesday, she waddled into the guest bedroom and shut the door behind her ... then she opened it. I was going to retrieve her from the room, and I saw the handle on the door turn downward, and the door opened a crack, then a lot, as Willow peered out and smiled. I can't rightly say if her smile was mischievous or proud, but I fear it was mischievous. She then closed the door. And opened it. Then closed it. And opened it. And so on. For a long, long time. See the video below. Before long, she was closing and opening doors all over the house. And on Thursday, she turned her newfound talent into lengthy practice sessions. Again at the guest bedroom door, she closed and opened it for minutes at a time before taking a break to play with a toy then returning to close and open and close and open. She did this for longer than an hour (I was fine with the closing and opening because it gave...

Willow and I ventured to the park Monday morning to feed the ducks some leftover pancakes from the weekend. When we arrived, nary a duck was in sight, but we made do with what we had: little and big fishes and little and big turtles. The ducks missed all the fun. Actually, I was going to hold on to the pancakes for another day when I spotted a behemoth of a turtle near the shore at the bottom of the pond we were at. This guy was huge, and he had a big head. I threw a piece of a pancake his way, and the fish (that were nowhere in sight when I pitched the hotcake) mobbed the food. The swarm captured the turtle's attention too, and he slowly rose to the surface. I can't say for sure what kind of turtle it was, but it sure looked like the huge alligator snapping turtles I've seen in aquariums (with the pointy shells and the big head and beak). Before long, the turtle was snapping up whatever came close to him, snatching pancake bits (and tiny fishes) from the surface of the ...

The Village Idiots tore up the 2012 Mudathlon course. This stay-at-home daddy trekked away from home this weekend to attend something crazy called the Mudathlon, leaving Willow and Mommy all to themselves. And Daddy, Mommy and Baby all had a blast. I don't know what Willow and Cherish did while I was gone mucking through the mud, but I'm sure it was all icky girly stuff that was much yuckier than my stepping knee-deep through the mud (I've attached the before picture to this post and I'll post the after pictures once we get them back from development). I also know Willow and Cherish had a great time (maybe even more fun than I had at the Mudathlon) because Che all too eagerly asked that I go away again so she could have another girls weekend. A deal has been struck; I'll be back in the muck!

Willow loves her water table. Two major events have happened to Willow in the past few weeks coinciding with her first birthday: the swift and large expansion of her toy universe and the growth in independence of her dining habits. These two events have truly changed her life. The fact that she's growing is obvious and unavoidable, and we can't do anything about it. First the toys, my God, the toys! In the past few weeks, Willow has obtained the following: A Cozy Coupe. This little doozy of a car has her zipping all over the house, with me pushing! A super-duper wagon. When I'm not pushing Willow in her Coupe, I'm pulling her all over her world in this souped-up wagon, complete with an umbrella to keep the sun off and a cooler to keep the drinks cold. A water table. Willow especially loves the lifeguard who came with this genius idea for a toy. She likes splashing the water and dipping her tiny lifeguard in the water (I think she's trying to drown her,...

As all good parents know, sometimes you have to do things on your own, take a little time for yourself. I'm carving out time for myself each morning by becoming a runner. I'm training myself up to a 5K, which I should be able to do by the time my family and I head to the Outer Banks in mid-July. I enjoy the time to myself, having a true-blue hobby all my own and getting fit (a state of being I haven't experienced since college, when I shirked studying for playing lots and lots and lots of basketball). I've lost almost 50 pounds here, people! But my racing career begins tomorrow with a truly and amazingly stupid thing, the Mudathlon, a 3-mile jaunt through woods and creeks and mud pits and lakes (with 40 obstacles to climb over and through to boot). I'll be running with Team Village Idiots out of Georgetown, Ky., a group made up of my sister and her husband and a few of their friends. The Mudathlon should be exhausting ... and a whole lot of fun. I should have a mu...

Every time we return from a trip, whether it be one as a family of three or one to the grandparents, Willow seems to have grown just a little. Take our trip to my mom's house in Georgetown, Ky., over Memorial Day weekend. Willow spent many, many hours playing with cousins Rett and Bristol, 5 and 3, respectively. She also spent some time in the lake, time at family feasts and time chasing my sister's dog, Bailey. When we returned Monday night, the change in Willow was quite noticeable. She stood a bit taller. She walked a bit bolder. She played a bit more, er, playfully. She jibbered and jabbered and smiled and laughed and pointed a bit more big girlish. I'm sure it has more to do with her spending all that time with her older cousins than with harassing poor, old Bailey. But whatever the cause, the results are unmistakable. Our baby has stepped into full-blown toddlerhood (and Mommy can't do a thing about it!). And today she's been an absolute angel. I've b...

Willow, Che and I are heading up to Georgetown for Memorial Day weekend and to celebrate her birthday with her Mimis, Papaws, aunts, uncles and cousins up there. The weekend also will give Che much needed rest and relaxation from the grueling few weeks she's put in at work. The folks up in Kentucky haven't seen Willow since she discovered she can get up and walk around to her heart's content (she even ran a few paces this morning at the park, trying to get a very reluctant goose). Willow is going to turn the house upside-down, and she's going to terrorize the ducks out back, I can guarantee you that. But I'm sure the big highlight of the weekend (other than the toys and clothes bestowed upon our yearling) is going to be Willow's time with her cousins Rett and Bristol. Rett's a fiver now, and Bristol has calmed down from the ferociousness of her terrible twos, which is to say she's a sweetheart. Bristol is the closest in age of Willow's cousins; th...

All along, I've said I have the plum job in our family. I am a stay-at-home dad, which I know and many of you know is a tough job in its own right, but as long as I am a stay-at-home dad, I'll never say it's a tougher job than that of my wife, no matter what job she has. And I know from experience she has a very tough job now; she's a low-level manager. That, my friends, is a tough, tough job to have. I won't go on and on about why being a low-level manager is hard, so here's a summary: You get crap from everyone below you in the chain of command, and you get crap from everyone above you on that same chain (and somehow all the crap that's not in the chain of command somehow finds its way to your desk). And if you find yourself in the predicament my wife is in, working 12-13 hours a day with more than two hours commute each day, that pile of crap is an awfully hard pile of crap to shovel through, especially with no compensation for the extra hours or the co...

Willow was the only tot to show up at Monday afternoon's Gymboree Play & Learn class. She took full advantage. Willow had the whole gym to herself. Last week I had a little head cold that prevented me from taking Little Miss Willow to her Wednesday afternoon play date at Gymbo's Place. I made it up to her by taking her to a class on Monday, but no other kids showed up (they must have all been sick even if I didn't give them the bug). Undeterred, Willow took advantage of the situation, claiming the entire Gymboree gymnasium to herself. There were no other buggers around to interfere with her play. Nosireebob, Gymbo. Willow bounced on the trampoline, which is usually overrun by little rugrats. She walked across the bridge. She crawled through the tunnel. She climbed the wedge. She dribbled the balls (and made a few baskets too on the tot-sized goal). Little Miss Willow had some big-time fun. And I did too. Usually I pocket my camera phone because I'm ...

As Cherish whispered to me last night after the lights went out, "This weekend was perfect." And it was. We didn't do a whole heck of a lot, or a lot of busy, chore and errand-type stuff, but we did do a lot as far as family goes, just the three of us. Friday night was perfect because it was one of those Fridays that came at the end of an especially tough week (and yes, Cherish and I had tough weeks last week). Cherish and I finally got to catch our breaths Friday night. I don't recall much of what we did, but I do know we had time to kick back and relax. And Cherish got some much-needed Mommy Time with Willow. We watched a couple of favorite TV shows too. On Saturday we ventured out only once, to pick up odds and ends at Walmart. We spent the rest of the day at home, spending almost all of that time playing with Willow. And on Sunday, we danced and sang and had an impromptu book gleaning upstairs. And we filled the kiddie pool and took a dip with Willow. And we r...