'unconqer'd hope, thou bane of fear' cervantes

hello all! mom has been at me for some time to write on this blog and to be honest after i tanked the first two that i wrote i have been apprehensive. now i seem to be out of the woods. i attribute it to something i call getting caught in the crowning. something similar to a deer in the headlights. when first time fathers, speaking only for myself, see the face of the child they helped to create appear from the woman that they create this child with linear time ceases to exist. all of a sudden there is a complete and total understanding of the big bang. because fathers don't have this child growing inside them the first 9-12months after the birth is spent trying to put linear time back into an organized fashion. the one thing that will never find its way back is trying to recall your life without your child. it's as if they have have always existed. por su puesto: carrie and i new of each other in high school, and had some brief encounters with some chit chat. i remember a couple of instances, but now when i remember talking to carrie when i was 19 emery is now included in that memory. it's a weird i know. my advice to future fathers is that unless you are a trained proffesional, i.e. obgyn, nurse, midwife or mormon, stand with the mother and see your child for the first time together.
having given my disclaimer i would like to reintroduce myself. i am adam and i am emery dean's father. in this little human beings life i am the alpha, of course carrie's the omega and together we are the alpha and omega. as parents we rule the school. we don't have litmus test or some chart to tell us how we are doing, so what do we have to rely on? the personlity of our son. his happiness is a direct correlation to how we are doing and man if we aren't the most kick ass rockin parents. our son is so happy, so kind that whenever anyone gets around him, even the most sullen of sorts, they are boosted into a happy glowing smile. a lot of people will do the normal 'oh cute kid' routine, but then emery catches them off guard because he starts to interact and then they are both interacting and it becomes a tennis match of smiles. my favorite quote having to with this was at bar gernika, "why mister toothaker i believe your son is flirting with me." why yes yes he is.
emery is amazing he is just a sponge to the world around him and his growth is amazing. when we first brought emery home he fell asleep on my buddha and as i held him i took a mental note of his size. head under the chin, feet and butt at the belly button in the fetal position. now he's huge and he'll only getting bigger. he's also starting to do the toddler talk, using sign language, flipping through pages of books and saying,'lur lur lur' as he looks at each page, running until he trips then getting up and running again and smilling all the time. he never stops smiling only intervals of rest. he's also determined, supremely determined and that is very refreshing to see that quality as well. there is much more that i want to write, but i need to save my material for future blogs, not that there won't be a cascade of new material yet to come;however, brevity is the soul of wit.
i was hoping to start an interactive game with the blog readers at home. it's called 'where in boise is emery dean toothaker'. emery and i have a set list of places that we go: the ymca, bar gernika(a basque restaraunt) the boise art museum, the library, the zoo and camels back park. bar gernika and the y are usually same day visits. what the reader will do is get a di and in the order listed above a destination will correspond with a number on the di. you the reader will create a pot of what ever you want it to be and role the di. save the numbers of your group, because you will need more than one person, and when the next blog comes up you will read of our adventure. the winner of course will get the pot of what ever you want it to be and a story of emery's adventure. pictures of course will be included. some pictures have already been taken so you get to see our son in these environments. some those pictures are now on a cd in moms care and will eventually be posted. to our friends in seattle you are sorely missed and we long for your influence in our sons life. hopefully one day we can remedy that, but for now i would like to end on a quote by george burns, "happiness is having a close knit extended family that lives in another state."

Our little post Christmas gathering at the Toothakers since they were in Italy for Christmas this year. Emery thoroughly enjoyed unwrapping more gifts and spending time with Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle James- they were sorely missed this year! 

Dad and Emery had to hike in a bit to get to the cabin, good times! 

Man is this kid spoiled! 

Out with Uncle Scott 

Adam thinks Emery looks especially like me in this picture. I'm not sure I see it, but it's a good one anyway. 

Always a sucker for the cute girls 

Gobble gobble! 

Hangin' with the kids. I'm sure he went for that beer next...:) 

Thanksgiving dinner, yum! 

Reading with Dad 

Yummy cherrios 

 

Hangin' out with Grannie Annie in the cabin loft. 

I love that cute cheesy little smile! 

Fat lips and teething, not a good combo...

Yes, it has been a difficult week to be Emery. His eye teeth are coming in and they are not making him very happy. Actually they have turned my usually somewhat sweet natured son into a biting, pinching little hellion bent on nothing but destruction. He's constantly going for the no nos, throwing dirt out of the plant pots and gravitating toward the toilets at every turn. I don't know how my mother survived the week with him, I have barely survived the mornings, evenings and this weekend. And yes, I'm not all too pissed about the prospect of work tomorrow.

Poor guy, I do feel sorry for him though. He's eaten it twice this week and given himself a fat lip twice on the upper lip. The first one occured when he tripped and fell into a pot I have on the floor that holds miscellaneous scarves and stuff by the front door. He fattened up the middle of his lip real good on that one. I'm not sure how the second fall happened and I was even sitting right there watching. Must have hit a toy or something. But that one got the side of the same lip. For the next two days he looked like he'd had a collagen injection gone arwy. He couldn't even suck on his precious binky for a day after that one which made going down for naps and night night time a real pain in the *#s for all involved. Anyway, the lips looking better and he's back to the binky again thank goodness!

Hmm, what cute little Emery thing can I write about today? I've got two. First, his new thing is to go into the other room and grab these little pillows that I have lying around. He brings them into the front room, throws them onto the floor and make this "grawo!" sound. Very gutteral and little boy like. Then he flops onto them kind of like an attack and rolls over smiling. He also likes to have these pillows thrown at him. That's at least five minutes of a great time!

The other cute thing he did today had to do with his diapers. I have a diaper genie as well as a regular wastebasket in his room, one for the pees and one for the stinky poos. He decided that all of the diapers in the wastebasket belonged in the diaper genie. Then he took that last diaper and went into the bathroom and tried to put it in the toilet. I thought that was pretty darn smart, he's not into putting just anything into the toilets these days (besides his hands just to piss me off), but he knows where the pees and poos are supposed to go. I was very impressed, if not a little concerned since I'm really not into pulling out sopping wet diapers three times their normal size out of the toilet. But he sure is a smart little guy!

Well, we're going to be very busy the next couple of weeks since yes we are moving yet again! It's a very cute 4 bedroom duplex in my favorite part of the northend. And I am very excited to live there, just wish I could skip the moving part- arrgghh! Anyway, I'll post pics and stuff after we get settled. For now enjoy the remaining holiday pics I finally got from Grandpa Toothaker (yes, guilt can work wonders :) )... Bye for now!