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It's not a secret that every parent finds their child hilarious at some point and, for most, a large contributor to the laughing comes from how words are pronounced as they're learning to talk... or rather mispronounced as evidenced here. Random words often act as speed bumps in the middle of toddler monologues where we, as adults, are forced to slow down by the abruptness of it all while we try desperately to swallow a chuckle so we can hear them out. 

Colors aren't an exception either and I find myself smiling every time I hear them. I'm sure it won't be long before she's enunciating each one perfectly so I figured I better document them while I can which tends to be the entire goal of this little blog anyway, so here goes...

And her favorite color...


TRANSLATING TODDLER TALK : COLORS

April 30, 2014

We knew before we asked yet we asked anyway. Her mother and I exchanged a nonverbal glance as the words fell at her feet and before they collected themselves into a complete question she had already answered. For the last month or so we’ve eaten at a little place with noodles in its title and in its bowls and we’ve done so at least once a week because, for now, this is her favorite place to eat.

She has the buttered noodles with some sort of seasoning sprinkled on top while her mother and I rotate selections from the menu for the sake of something different; when we’re done we all split a cookie or two. We soak in the structure of our surroundings yet block out the humming chatter of fellow patrons as we twirl our forks until the perfect bite is held hostage by the prongs. We eat. We eat until we’re full and we talk and we break a large round gift from heaven’s kitchen into thirds allowing chocolate chips to melt on our tongues before we gather our things to leave.

The other night on one of our weekly trips, the room contained more occupants than normal so I quickly scanned the seating options before selecting a table next to a young couple with an aisle between us. I situated Madison and took a seat next to her while Allison positioned herself across from us. We removed the paper protecting our straws and picked up the conversation we set down to order when I noticed the female half of the couple staring at me. She caught my glance and maintained eye contact so we shared a polite smile then I looked away.

When I casually looked around the room a few minutes later, I saw her whispering to the male companion she was sharing a table and a meal with while her eyes and smile were still pointed in our direction. He turned around. He smiled, too. They began to whisper again and I nervously texted Allison, a discrete effort intended to inform her of the prying eyes in our vicinity. Should I be self conscious? Was there something on my face? They didn’t look familiar, but should I recognize them somehow? We ate, we talked and we split our cookie and when we got up to leave that young couple stopped us as I adjusted Madison within my arms. The same uninterrupted stares and the same bright smiles remained although I realized they weren’t directed at me, they were focused on the toddler I was holding instead.

“She’s beautiful,” the young lady said.

I left her with a wide smile of gratitude and an audible thank you that seemed much slower and heavier in delivery than I intended. Of course, I agree with her sweet observation but it’s nice to hear it from someone else and from a complete stranger nonetheless. It’s also grounding and humbling to know that this exchange wasn’t about me. I’m never surprised to find the constant reminders of this lesson along the way, a lesson I learned the day this child of mine was born. Parenting, by definition, is all about the children and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

NOODLES

April 27, 2014

I'm not sure if these are amusing to anyone else or just Allison and me since we're her parents, but I have a feeling we'll look back one day enjoying that we captured some of Madison's random little comments (click here for more).


She crawls into our bed on a random Saturday morning...
MADISON:  Wake up! It's time to eat cookies.

--

She screams from the backseat...
ME:  What's wrong?
MADISON:  I can't hold my eyes open.
ALLISON:  Are you sleepy?
MADISON:  Yes. They keep closing!

--

Holding her while running to get out of the rain...
MADISON:  Oh no! I dropped my toy.
I step back, pick up the toy and start running again...
MADISON:  Oh no! My boot.
I stop, pick up her boot and start running again...
MADISON:  I'm sorry, Daddy. I'm falling apart.

--

She got a new toy for Easter...
MADISON:  Open it. I'm psychic!
ME:  You're excited?
MADISON:  Yeah! I'm psychic.

--

Counting the steps as we go upstairs...
MADISON:  fifteen, sixteen, eleven-teen, eighteen

CHATTY PATTY, VOL. 8

April 24, 2014

We smiled as she pulled the paper from its roll. We laughed as she threw a streamer across the couch and we both said faster as she spun until she was covered like a mummy and the roll was an empty cardboard cylinder in her small hands. I helped her onto the couch as she asked and immediately searched for my phone to capture the moment; her mother would be home shortly and this was one of the many milestones in parenting where joy wins the battle over anger and it is impossible to be upset. I took more pictures than I would ever need to frame that day and sometimes I catch myself looking back through them like a short film, a movie where the actress pauses for effect between every scene, a comedy where the child on screen steals the show entirely.

I was excited when one of my favorite blogs highlighted the fun by featuring one of my favorite pictures of Madison, one of our favorite moments to date BUT imagine the excitement when Michael from Life to Her Years asked to include that same moment in his book!

Life Lessons for Dad: Tea Parties, Tutus and All Things Pink (in stores May 1, 2014 or available from Amazon here) is a collection of photographs and corresponding captions chronicling the special dynamic of the relationship between father and daughter. Featuring tips and lessons and advice that every father will come to model his parenting style after, this book will undoubtedly bring the underlying emotional journey of raising a little girl to the surface and with it... a few tears among a sea of smiles. For years, Michael has illustrated that fathers are an integral part in the childhood of their daughters -- the foundation of adulthood -- by posting pictures and inspiring quotes on his blog and now that same parental motivation is captured in book form to be flipped through and referenced and treasured in person. This is for the fathers of daughters and daughters of fathers and mothers married to fathers of daughters and parents of sons who now have daughters, in short this book is for everyone in one way or another. It's simply perfect. You'll read it front to back, you'll glance through it during the commercials of your favorite show, you'll read a few pages to her before bed, you'll share it with friends and family and then you'll read it all over again.

When our copy arrived and I turned to the page holding Madison's picture, I'm not sure what I was expecting her reaction to be but what I got was the same reaction I get every time she catches a glimpse of that image, the snapshot that sits framed on the coffee table in our living room...

I love that toilet paper picture, let's do it again.

ROLL ON

April 22, 2014

The night before Easter, my wife and I wanted to do something exciting for the toddler in our home. We knew the endless photographs offering suggestions on Pinterest would inspire us, but before we resorted to pinned pictures from the boards of strangers we remembered this idea we stumbled across several weeks ago. However, we modified it a little. 

Thanks to a day or two of rain we were left with a soggy yard showing no signs of drying up before sunrise, so we opted for an indoor translation using “bud vases” and Nerds candy as our soil, we then let her plant three jelly beans in each and the next morning the jelly bean seeds had bloomed into lollipops (with the help of Easter Bunny magic, of course). 

She won’t always find these little moments as entertaining as she does now so I figure we better take advantage of them while we can and spark her imagination in the process. It may or may not be a coincidence that her mother loves jelly beans and I the Nerds so this tradition-in-the-making is a win/win for everyone involved.


BLOOMING BEANS

April 21, 2014







For her, Easter started three days prior during preschool festivities when she mastered the hunt by returning from the playground with a bucket of plastic eggs. She sat at her designated seat surrounded by her classmates and nibbled on a Peep before devouring a cupcake. She practiced patience this weekend as her mother and I prepared our kitchen for the beginning of a tradition, for the coloring of eggs we plan to do again this time next year and the year after that. She woke Easter morning with an excitement in her belly, eager to see the evidence contained in a basket that an imaginary bunny left behind while she slept. She received a blue fish, a fish in a bowl delivered by a bunny, a solo fish she named Sassafras. We watched a movie the majority of the world has already seen and we pinched apart cinnamon rolls as our screen was filled with snow and ice from the animated palms of a newly crowned queen. We saw family and friends and sang Happy Birthday to a little boy who she says is cute every time his name is mentioned. Madison wished sentiments of Happy Easter Birthday whenever the opportunity presented itself slightly confused by the joining of two occasions within the span of 24 hours. We ate chocolate and cake and chocolate cake and we soaked in another day we have together all made possible by a stone that was rolled away, by a Man that had a cross to bear and a mission to return, Someone we pray to every night when we rest our head to pillow.

Happy Easter... it was happy indeed.

HAPPY EASTER BIRTHDAY

April 20, 2014

As the weather whispers promises of warmth and the grass shows signs of green from months past and flowers start to bloom and all around the season is changing, this small piece of land we own is revealing itself to be covered in eager growth; the Earth's way of letting us know another day is just a sunrise away. A desire to be more, to be better, to be taller and wiser is apparent in the stretch of the trees out our window… and in the little girl that turns three years old in just under sixty days.

As winter becomes spring, I can’t help but notice the toddler I share with my wife transitioning into the next season of her life. The clearer speech and expanding vocabulary, the longer legs and leaner knees, the quick wit and vivid imagination, the curl in her hair threatening length with every day that passes is all a part of this journey we’re on. This path of parenting where she allows me to hold her hand along the way, an opportunity I’ll seize regardless of the season for as long as summer stands between spring and fall, for as long as I’m her father. After all, even with the teenage years and adulthood looming in the distance, she’ll always be my little girl and there isn’t a fallen snowflake or dust of pollen that could change that.

THIS SEASON

April 16, 2014
















The hearts, tied together by a single string, still hang from their door with a painted message welcoming me into their house, the house that easily represents my home away from home, a visual reminder of my childhood and proof that grandparents are the most amazing people a child is lucky enough to know. I still feel their presence when I step foot across the threshold of the home they inhabited together. The smell of nostalgia is thick as the dust that has accumulated on the belongings they’ve left behind, a museum of a life they shared with three children of their own that still continues a journey through their children, through me, through our children and one day through their children.

A dining table sits holding memories in place of the plates we ate from every Thanksgiving crammed elbow to elbow, cousin next to uncle next to brother next to niece, we sat and laughed and unintentionally took for granted the time we had together. Now within the walls that watched meal after meal throughout a lifetime hold those same smiles paused between the four edges of frames, pictures of moments frozen, illustrating a time when we were all physically present to pass Grandma’s homemade biscuits and her cucumbers soaked in a pool of vinegar and pepper.

Year after year we shared a space, their space, with the same people we share a last name with… at Easter and birthdays and random occasions in between and when the year threatened anew we gathered ourselves in the living room at the front of their house reserved for Christmas and the decorations and the lit tree that accompanies the celebration. Some sat in chairs, most sat on the floor (my chosen spot as the youngest and, at the time, the smallest member of the family) while they took their places on the cushions of a couch that felt the warmth of very few others and hardly ever on another day than the 25th of December. We exchanged gifts and gratitude and glances full of unspoken feelings that went without saying but now linger like the aftertaste of bitter words one is forced to swallow when all they want is the opportunity to let them out. 

After they passed, numerous questions arose with what to do with their belongings. The dishes and pots and pans she spent so much time with preparing food to fill our bellies on a stove where the behavior of the burners was memorized and the knobs were far more temperamental than accurate. The candy in mason jars and bags left open on a table beside the chair he often occupied in front of a television sharing thoughts of Perry Mason by day and the hopeful guesses of wheel spinning contestants by night. The stool in the den I jumped off with a tattered housecoat tied around my neck like the cape of Batman before my age became double digits. The endless collections of two people who built a life in the same home where they built a family and extended an open invitation for us all to enter whenever we wanted, they were the backbone of a familial body with far more limbs than they could have predicted yet they formed a relationship with every single one of us. 

They tied our hearts together by the strength of a surname and left us hanging on the door of a home full of love they left behind. Those hearts, tied together by a single string, that still hang from their door with a painted message welcoming us into their home and into their lives proving that grandparents really are the most amazing people a child is lucky enough to know.

THEIR HOUSE

April 14, 2014

I'm not sure if these are amusing to anyone else or just Allison and me since we're her parents, but I have a feeling we'll look back one day enjoying that we captured some of Madison's random little comments (click here for more).


Giving Allison a check up Doc McStuffins style...
MADISON:  I have a diagnosis. Mama, you have pretty girl-itis.

--

After passing a cup of milk back and forth several times...
ME:  Do you want this or not?
MADISON:  Not.

--

Strapping her into her car seat...
MADISON:  We're going to town!

--

While using the potty she looks around her bathroom...
MADISON:  Hey Daddy, let's put some Christmas lights in here.

--

On her pretend/play phone...
MADISON:  Sorry Orange Blossom, I have to go. I have another call coming in.

CHATTY PATTY, VOL. 7

April 10, 2014


She’s been in a “daddy mood” this week. She gives me extra kisses when she rests her head on her pillow at night adding so much to her bedtime I love you after her mother and I tuck her in. She asks for me as soon as she wakes in the morning and she runs to stop me as I’m leaving for work screaming waaiiit so I’ll pause in my tracks kneeling for one more hug before we part ways only to greet me with the same enthusiasm when I return hours later. She insists that I play with her and I do, we play with dolls and blocks lost somewhere in her imagination. She holds my hand and rests her head on my shoulder unprompted and whispers that she wants to cuddle and I drop everything to let her. This little girl has quickly become one of my most favorite people in the world and if this last week is any indication of how she feels then it seems the feeling may be mutual... I only hope she remembers this moment as our lives continue collecting the years. I know I will.

DADDY'S GIRL

April 9, 2014

This weekend, as almost all others that have come before, seemed to end rather hastily leaving additional hours desired between the hands of the clock that rush us along reminding us of the constant countdowns to bedtime, to tomorrow, to the work day, to the unknown that lies ahead. For a brief moment between the setting sun of Friday and its expected rise Monday morning, Madison sat and exclaimed she just wanted to sit for a little while. So I sat, too. For that brief moment, she caught her breath while I lost mine. Completely mesmerized by the amount of space she inhabits in my chest, the sheer volume of my daily thoughts that find themselves dedicated to her, the way her name seems to rest on the tip of my tongue threatening to initiate a conversation with her centered as the topic at any given moment, the happiness from within that holds my face hostage with a smile I’m often unaware has spread… I wanted that brief moment to last forever. 

Before the tears I knew would come, as they almost always do anytime I allow my heart the opportunity of speaking in unison with my head, before those tears crawled up from the deepest parts of me and threatened to run a parallel race down my face she climbed down from the chair she just settled into and the moment was over. Like witnessing a rare bird in the wild focusing on the wind under their wings until it pauses to rest and the perfection that lies under every feather is able to be seen for just a fraction of time, I’m constantly amazed by the person she is and promises to become. I have to remind myself to breathe in her presence because it’s unbelievably easy to forget the most simple of things in fear of losing the chance to soak in the beauty of life for I had no idea what it meant to really live until she entered mine, until she blessed me with her presence and the front row seat I’ve taken to witness her flight.

SEAT TAKEN

April 6, 2014


This weekend, for the first time in a very long while, Allison and I treated ourselves to margaritas. However, instead of spending $5-8 per drink at the hands of a bartender and the demanding guidelines of a restaurant we decided to make them ourselves from the familiarity of our kitchen to enjoy from the comfort of our couch while the glow of a netflix lit our living room. Date nights at home, romance at its best I say.

INGREDIENTS:
tequila (anything except Jose Cuervo)
triple sec (cointreau)
fresh lime juice
simple syrup (sugar water)

DIRECTIONS:
Add ice then one part tequila, one part triple sec and one part lime juice followed by half part of simple syrup. Shake (or stir, depending upon preference). Salt rim of glass, if desired, then pour drink and make a toast if the occasion calls for one... enjoy.

MOVIE NIGHT MARGARITAS

April 5, 2014

Sometimes I’ll hear a word wrapped in the exceptionally sweet tone of a toddler voice and for a few seconds my world stops spinning until I’m able to translate or decode the letters she put together that sound like other words or sometimes they sound exactly like those four letter words that we, as adults, try to eliminate from our vocabularies. Sometimes this happens in public and I can feel my face displaying every shade of red from pink to maroon, my ears burn and I let out a slight chuckle followed by the correct pronunciation of the word in a volume loud enough for all surrounding parties to hear. I’ve learned several lessons in the last 2+ years of parenting, one being how to translate toddler talk.

Rest assured, my two year old does not have the mouth of a sailor but more so a learning curve when it comes to pronouncing certain letters combined within a word. I’m convinced this will correct itself in time. Meanwhile she's keeping me on my toes every time we're in a restaurant and she asks for her fork and spoon which sounds surprisingly like please pass my f*cking spoon. Or we're in the grocery store and she asks that we get sprinkles for ice cream later which sounds remarkably like get pickles for my ice cream. Or when we're in the yard and the neighbors are within earshot as she cries out for help because she lost one of her Crocs, her pleas for assistance sound alarmingly like I can't find my c*ck. There's never a dull moment in this whole parenting thing, not even for a second, and it's probably the most fun I've ever had.

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TRANSLATING TODDLER TALK

April 1, 2014

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