Toddlerhood, watch out - here comes Izzy!

We have had an exciting morning! Chris has arranged his work schedule so that he is off every other Friday, which he usually spends playing with Izzy. Sometimes the two of them bring me to work, then pick me up again in the evening and we go running around in Charleston. Tonight we going for an overnight visit to Parkersburg, so they dropped me off and went back home to commence their day o’play.

While Chris was feeding Izzy his cereal, Izzy stood up in the highchair, as he does pretty much every meal now. He stands up, we say, “No stand. Sit.” He sits, then does it again. And again, and again, and again. Yes, we could strap him in, and sometimes we even remember to do so. After the second or third time during a single meal that he stands up, we say, “No stand, Izzy. Bad baby,” because he could fall and seriously injure his noggin.

So he stands up in his highchair this morning, and Chris says, “No stand. Sit.” Izzy crouches down in his seat, cocks his head to one side, smiles and looks up at his daddy and says, “I bad. I bad baby.” Can you believe he said his first sentence?! Well, I’m a little skeptical too, but Chris said it was very clear. My first response upon Chris telling me this was, “Oh my God! Did you tell him he’s not a bad baby?!!!” But, of course, he doesn’t know what a bad baby is, he just knows that’s what we say to him when he’s attempting a dive into the floor.

Isn’t this so exciting? Chris said he bragged all over him for saying a sentence. I can’t wait to hear what his next one is going to be. Maybe he’ll bump his knee and scream, “Mother *#$%er!” I bad mommy.

One of his first words was actually “bad.” That’s because he hears us yelling at the dogs fifty times a day, “Girls, that’s enough. Bad girls!” Now, when they’re barking like idiots, he’ll chase them through the house hollering, “Bad! Bad!” Mommy’s little enforcer.

Every single day there is some new development. He is growing up so fast that I’m suffering from terrible growing pains. Yesterday, at mom’s house, he was trying to get in a little drawer in her end table. She kept telling him no, and pulling him away, but he was very insistent. Finally, she just let him open it so she could see what it was he wanted so bad. He pulled open the drawer, rummaged around a little, and pulled out a Burt’s Bee’s Honey Lip Balm. He took the lid off, smeared a little on his lips and a lot on the rest of his face, then put the lid back on it, put in back into the drawer and walked away. Sure, the chapstick got pretty maimed during the whole lid-putting-back-on episode, but I’m still impressed.

It reminds of me of a story about Maddie. She was about 2 ½ years old at the time, and we were all over at MaMa Norma’s. She wanted me to come to her house later, and I told her no, I wanted to go home and take a nap instead. She thought long and hard, and said to me, “Here’s what you need to do. Go home, take your nap, wake up, put your clothes on, put on your makeup, brush your hair, put on your shoes, get on your bike, and then you can come over to mommy’s house to see me!” I was so terribly impressed by her being able to plan every step so precisely. Now, I get to experience that same joy and amazement with my own son. That’s pretty incredible, too.