Hello, I like to speak to whoever is in charge of turning my little baby boy into this GIANT PERSON. I am dissatisfied with the speed at which it is happening and would like it to slow down immediately. Thank you.

There’s nothing like bringing home a new baby to make your old baby seem, well, old. Although some of it isn’t just in my head – I ask Little Evan to help out a lot more than I used to and so he’s learning responsibility pretty fast. I know “go throw this diaper away” or “bring mommy her iPhone” isn’t rocket science but it’s still cool to see him understand and follow through. Most of the time. Sometimes he gets weirdly possessive of the dirty diapers and cries when we throw them away. And sometimes he throws them at my face. Oh, toddlers.

In “things I really dislike” news, we’ve officially reached a point where I can’t help comparing my kid to other kids and worry about his development. Why doesn’t he talk more? Should he be saying more words? Why doesn’t he know his letters or numbers? Which of course leads to mountains of Mommy Guilt – although some of it might be just a little bit deserved. If I haven’t really been teaching him letters and numbers how is he supposed to learn them? I’ve been so focused on words (and words that actually SOUND like the words they’re meant to be) I totally skipped the alphabet. I guess I thought we had some time before I needed to start on that sort of learning, but based on my Twitter/internet friends we’re now way behind. And although I love his babbling gibberish I’m starting to feel like people are judging me in public because he doesn’t speak more clearly or say more words. One of my goals this month is to write down a list of all the words he DOES say so at his 24 month check-up I can ask the doctor if he thinks we should look into speech therapy.

Luckily the BabyCenter milestones for this month don’t include language skills so I can try to stop worrying for a little while longer. Oh! Although I have news on the block-stacking front! The other day I caught him making HUGE towers of blocks upstairs in the playroom, so I guess I no longer have to be bitter that he missed all those previous block-stacking milestones. TAKE THAT BABYCENTER.

22 Month Milestones (from BabyCenter as usual)

Mastered Skills (most kids can do)
• Kicks ball forward – He’s a soccer player in the making.
• Follows two-step requests (e.g., “Get your doll and bring it here”) – Yes! He could probably follow a three or four step request. Understanding language is not our problem.

Emerging Skills (half of kids can do)
• Does simple puzzles – Does this mean the wood cut-out ones? Because we’re working on those and he’s getting there but he loses interest pretty fast.
• Draws a straight line – Maybe accidentally. He likes coloring in theory a lot more than coloring in practice.
• Names several body parts – Yes. Especially my boobs.

Advanced Skills (a few kids can do)
• Puts on loose-fitting clothes – Sometimes, although he has a problem understanding pants and shirts are not the same. Also that pants are not hats.
• Might be ready for a big bed – I’m planning to make the switch for his 2nd birthday. The problem is it involves a lot more than just switching the crib for a bed because the room isn’t very childproof and if he got up to play he could ruin a LOT of stuff before I noticed. But I’m hopeful that the actual transition to the bed will go well.
• Understands opposites (e.g., tall vs. short) – I don’t know? He understand enough differences that I can ask him to bring me one of two similar things and he gets the right one but I’m not sure we encounter a lot of opposites.

This morning in a desperate attempt to calm a temper tantrum I let him try out the piano for the first time and he loved it. He clearly heard the differences in the notes and loved sliding down to press the lowest ones and then reaching up to the highest ones. He also taught himself that pressing one key at a time made a different noise than smashing down a whole bunch. I’m not saying he’s an OMG MUSICAL GENIUS or anything, but it’s nice that he enjoys it.

Hmmm...time to write my materpiece!

Definitely need some of these notes up here

Brilliance has struck!

Stop bothering me while I'm composing!!

Now for the BIG FINISH

That's it! I shall touch it no more. My work is perfect.

If you follow me on Twitter you’ve already heard the 140 character version of this story and I apologize for making you hear it again.

Since the weather is still mild-ish and the toddler is still grumpy-ish, I dragged us out of the house for Stroller Strides this morning, even though I don’t usually make it on Mondays. But I have way too much to do today to deal with a napless child and Stroller Strides + playground = guaranteed afternoon nap >2 hours. BAM. Baby algebra for the win.

Unfortunately I forgot to factor in 8 months pregnant + bottle of water – bathroom facilities at the park, so by the time we made it home I was doing the don’t-pee-your-pants shuffle while dragging Little Evan, the diaper bag, the wet bag, jackets for both of us, a blanket, two sippy cups and a half-deflated football (because this: BUHBALL!! BUHBALL!! NOOOOO!!!! BUHBAAAAAAALL!! is what happened when he saw me trying to leave it in the car) into the house. I dumped everything – including the child – on the kitchen floor and sprinted to the bathroom just on the other side of the baby gate.

Less than 2 minutes later, I came back through the gate to find Evan standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a weird yellowish rock in his hand, looking at it in a puzzled manner. I walked over to see what it was, thinking “Wow, it was so nice to pee without someone watching me for once. Maybe I’ll do that more often!” when I realized what exactly he was holding.

POOP.

A GIANT PIECE OF POOP.

I screamed so loud he dropped it (OMG) on the kitchen floor (OMFG) and stumbled backwards against the cabinets.

“POOP!” I shouted, as if this would somehow activate an emergency response team trained to handle just such a situation. “THAT’S POOP!!!”

It only took another second for me to realize I was alone in my kitchen staring at the horrible turd and no hazmat team was imminent. Also, the dog had jumped off the couch and was starting to sniff around and as bad as the current scenario was, if the dog…No. I’m sorry. I can’t even finish that thought.

About 400 baby wipes later, I had safely transferred the poop to the toilet, wiped up everyone’s hands and felt disinfected enough to drag us both to the sink for a thorough scrubbing followed by half a bottle of Lysol applied to the floor. Crisis averted, it occurred to me this was really more of a mystery than a horror movie. WHO did the poop belong to? WHERE did it come from? WHY was the baby holding it? WHEN did my life turn into this?

Ok, that last one isn’t such a mystery. But back to the weird parts. Little Evan was fully dressed – diaper, corduroy pants buttoned at the waist, socks, shoes, shirt, sweatshirt. He looked exactly the same as he did when I dumped him on the floor 2 minutes earlier. I did change his diaper after I stopped hyperventilating and it was dirty (TMI ALERT) with several smaller poops that seemed to belong to the same, uh, family. But HOW did he get the one giant one OUT?! Was it from an earlier diaper? How long had it been…loose?  Could it have been hanging around for………No, seriously, I can’t think about this anymore. I’m not strong enough.

My sister-in-law has a similar story about a mystery poop, found in the middle of the nursery one morning while a fully dressed toddler slept in his crib. Before kids, I thought she was probably exaggerating.

I KNOW BETTER NOW.

I know people are torn on the ETrade baby and whether or not he’s weirdly creepy and stupid or adorable and hilarious, but after the most recent commercial I fall squarely in the adorable category.

Because this baby? Is clearly related to BabyEvan.

19 Weeks and already BEST FRIENDS

Dog Love

LOVE DOG

So every time that commercial comes on, E and I laugh our head off. Then we started shouting the “frowned upon” part. And then Little Evan started actually trying to ride the dog. Which we discouraged.

If by “discouraged” you mean “helped him ride the dog”.

Wheeee!!!

I gave Brutus ALL my pizza crust tonight to make up for this. He hasn't pooped in my shoes yet, so I don't think he minds.

For at least an hour after nap time today, Brutus lay on a blanket on the floor while Little Evan leaned against him and drank two sippy cups full of milk. It’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen and it reminds me that adopting Brutus four years ago wasn’t just luck – it was one of the best things we’ve ever done.

(Apologies for blurry iPhone photos – I had the memory card for the DSLR in the computer so obviously it didn’t work so well when I tried to use it.)

(Uh, and for the record, this post is not in any way sponsored or approved by ETrade.)