Daddy Tree: Tiny Footsteps

Compared to her sister, Willow hasn't been much of a smiling baby.  She laughs and giggles and smiles genuinely when she's happy, and she seems like a happy little girl, but when you ask her to smile, she puts on much fakery. Up to this weekend, whenever you asked her to smile, she stuck her forefingers in the corners of her mouth and pushed up, or she looked high to the sky and opened up that grin. SMILE!  Things have changed. She unveiled her new smile at the Dixie Stampede pre-show photo session in Pigeon Forge. It's piracy! As in, she looks as if she's saying AAARGH, and the smile leaves you wondering where her parrot is. Here's a pick of her new AAARGH smile.

Willow and I ventured down the driveway to get the mail on Wednesday. The usual stuff came in, junk mail, bills and inefficiencies (when you have a baby, you get bombarded by bills and threats from the hospital, the health insurance company and the employer, the latest being a letter from the employer demanding proof we used the money in our health savings account to pay the birth of an actual baby ... I'd like to invite them to spend a night at our house for proof of said, yawn, baby). Where was I? Oh, yeah. Please forgive me while I shake the tangent fog from my head. After Willow and I returned to the house with the mail, I filtered out the important stuff and gave Willow the unimportant stuff, the credit card offers. Willow spent the next 30 minutes opening the letters, organizing then reading them. Getting letters, no matter from whom, is great fun for her. One particular letter was from Bank of America, hawking a rewards credit card (3 PERCENT CASH BACK ON GAS!!!). I aske...

Newly born Lily cuddles up with Mommy. Whew! Things got crazy there for a while, during the Summer of George (AKA the Summer of Lily). Cherish returned to work today after a lengthy maternity leave (but not nearly long enough), and with that, I returned to my job as stay-at-home dad. We did tons this summer -- Cherish declared it the best summer ever. We trekked to places unknown, ate at places well known, and we uncovered places in ourselves we hope will be better known. We had good times and bad, but almost all of the times were good, and that was a great achievement during this, the Summer of George. I won't recall it all here, but here's a taste of what we experienced: Foremost, Lily came into this world, all 8 pounds, 5 ounces of her. She rang in smaller than her sister, who topped 10 pounds, but she was no less a bundle of happiness. Lily has a touch of red hair like her sister, and she has bright blue eyes (they are smiling Irish eyes, believe me). The sisters...

Whew! What a whirlwind. Lily will be 3 weeks old on Thursday, and any fears we had about Willow adjusting to the little one have been unfounded so far. She loves that little sister! But as some of the more experienced parents in our lives have pointed out, Willow sometimes loves Lily a little too much. What I mean by that, and as most of you know, is Willow tends to crowd the baby and be too rough with the baby. Willow likes to hold the bottle during Lily's meals, but Willow, being a toddler and all, also likes to move the bottle around and tug it from Lily's mouth then plop it back in. Lily tolerates her big sister well, but when that nipple pops in and out of her mouth like that, her sleepy eyes flash open in terror (or pure annoyance). Willow also is a tad, um, forceful with the pacifier (an object to this point Lily doesn't much like in her mouth). Willow doesn't understand why Lily won't take the pacifier, so she uses her long fingers to pry open the baby...

Willow, and a bruised Daddy, climbed to the top of Nashville. On Wednesday, Willow got Daddy all to herself for a few hours, and the time included her first trip to the Adventure Science Center in Nashville. Even though the place was a bit "big kid" for Willow, she loved it. Willow loved three attractions above all others: the tower, the ambulance and the giant water table. She also liked watching other kids, big and small, zipping around the exhibits. The tower. Willow discovered the tower early on, much to Daddy's chagrin. I liked the tower, but if you've been to it, you might know why it was hard for me to keep up with a 2-year-old climbing to the top; tight crawls abound. But I tolerated those tight spots and kept up with Willow the best I could, and we made it to the top (and I didn't suffer too many bruises). Willow didn't want to leave that tower, but I practiced patience and persistence and eventually got her to go exploring elsewhere. The amb...

Willow turned 2 on Monday, and she'll proudly let you know how old she is by chiming, "Two!, then throwing up four fingers (and sometimes her thumb too). Our little tot is getting to be a big girl now. She can use the potty, and she can sleep (rarely still) in the big girl bed. She can push herself around on a tricycle, and she can climb the ladder up to the slide in the backyard. Of course as a toddler, she's Miss Independent and Miss Frustration, but she really does pretty well at tackling those "No, I do it" tasks and in communicating with us (though we had a tough time understanding each other today when she asked for "Nemo shoes," and all I heard was "No more shoes!" She toddled around frustratingly in bare feet for a while). I took her to the zoo for her birthday, and she showed sure signs she was growing up. She preferred walking over rolling around in the stroller (this made it tough for me to keep up with her little butt when she s...

I'm a bit sad. I'm happy Cherish and I have a new tot coming to the world in the next few weeks. I'm elated, actually. But I'm a bit sad my time all alone with Willow is coming to an end. This party during most of the day has just been the two of us. Now a third party is coming. This is the twilight of Daddy-stay-home-with-Willow. Soon it will be Daddy-stay-home-with-Willow-and-Baby-Code-Name-Olive. But time marches on. And Willow and I will adjust to life with a new little one. We will love Little Sister. With all our hearts. We will welcome her to the party. I will make time for both of them. And soon Willow will forget her time alone with this Old Dad. But I won't.