Bliss absolute

Friday morning swim lessons

If you give a toddler some frozen yogurt...

..he will want more and more of it.  

This afternoon, I took Wessy on a little date.  Since they are predicting heavy rains for tomorrow, I was eager to get him out of the house and active as much as I could this afternoon.  I pushed him on his new scooter (PATIN!--pronounced "pateen") to the town square.  He preceded to take several laps.  In a fairly short period of time, he has managed to learn how to first push himself, then to push himself and then lift his feet to glide, and now he has learned to stand up in the seat and put one foot down and use the other to push himself.  It's still nice to have the handle on the back for me to steer him--he hasn't picked up on that yet--but I'm wondering if it's only going to be a few short weeks before we lose the seat and just let him ride it like a real scooter.

After many laps, it was getting dark, so we went to Easy Breezy, which is one of those self-serve frozen yogurt places.  Since I am more or less like a labrador at those kinds of places and will just eat as much as I can as often as I can, I have restricted myself to going on the weekends.  Most weekends, I forget to go, so effectively I go about once a month, which is not terrible.  Anyway, Wessy was a willing date.  

I purposely got lots of BLUBEEZ (blueberries) and mochi on my frozen yogurt.  My little date perched like a bird beside me and willingly accepted little bites.  If the steady stream of offerings slowed or ceased, he would lean forward and say in a heart-squeezing baby voice "peas?," and then, if not heeded, "PEEZ??!"  He also knows how to say mochi now, which he pronounces with a Spanish accent (mo-CHEE).  

My resolve not to give him refined sugar has crumbled before the awesome power of being able to bribe very effectively with a very small amount of treats.  Tonight, after our frozen yogurt date, I told him he could have mo-CHEE if he went poopoo in the bacinica (potty).  I took off his pants and his diaper and he paced around the bathroom a bit and played with his shape sorter, but when the time came, he announced "POO POO!" and walked over the potty and got the job done.  

He is a bit demanding as a date and definitely not the most easygoing, but I would go out with him again :) 

Looking back

I'm seeing a lot of posts on social media that are saying good riddance to 2016, mainly because of the election of a malevolent fraud (The Economist's language and I wholeheartedly agree) to the US Presidency.  And it's true, 2016 did see not only that but my beloved Tarheels, led by Marcus Paige, losing the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship after a shocking hail-mary buzzer beater.  BUT, as I told a wide-eyed Wessy tonight in the bathtub, 2016 was a big year for him.  Or as I might say, a big year for a little guy.

During 2016, Wessy went from a smiley little grub to a miniature human being.  He went from subsisting on warm milk and sleeping most of the day to an ambulatory, verbal, perceptive and opinionated little person.  He had too many firsts to count or remember and there were too many moments of pure love to even fit on the internet.


January



February
 

March


April



May

 


June



July



August



September



October





November



December



And there you have it...every month he got a little bigger, a little bolder and a little shaggier.  Until November, when he got a haircut.  You can see the transformation from laying down, to sitting, to pulling up, to crawling (briefly) then to standing.  Now he's a running boy who runs forward, backwards (new skill) and can climb stairs though he still struggles with getting down.  Today he said "calle" (street) and also asked for "Puffs, please" (sounded like PUH PEEEE).  Other firsts include starting to consistently string together two-word sentences (MAMA BANYO--when i went to the bathroom, and NO NO POO POO--when he went to the bathroom).

So, despite it all, 2016 has been good to us and we are grateful for a year of happy memories with our wonderful little guy.