His own man

Though his teen years are still far off in the distance, I have been preparing myself for when that time comes that Emmett realizes that I am not cool at all and wants nothing to do with me. I know this time is coming, but I wasn't prepared for it to come so soon. This summer has been full of me trying to make Emmett like me again. For much of the school year, I was the one who Emmett wanted to sleep with, I was the one who he wanted to have read to him, I was the one he wanted to play with. Now it is rare that I walk into a room where Andrea and Emmett are and not have him say "Nooo! Daddy leave!" or something similar. There are advantages (I have ended up with more free time as Andrea has been stuck doing sleep duty and a ton of other things with Emmett as he wants to do everything with her), but it really would be nice to have him enjoy being around me again. Actually, things have recently gotten back to being very good as long as it is just the two of us, but with the three of us together it is all Mommy all of the time.

I have gotten lots of time to think about why this has happened and how it is affecting him. On Saturday we spent some time at Andrea's school and Emmett was actually having fun with me. He and I went to her classroom as she was busy helping the Friends of the Urban Forest outside, and he started to play with some toy animals she has. The animals are usually one full-sized parent animal and one or two child animals. Emmett spent the whole time having the "mother" animal (polar bear, penguin, etc.) climb in a car and tell her child or children "bye bye! I'm going to get coffee" and then drive off into the sunset. After watching this happen again and again with all different species I have learned that Emmett is convinced that his mom is going to abandon him for her love of coffee and that the pushing me away and fawning over her is all his attempt to try and keep this from happening. Childhood is rough.

Emmett and Andrea met Missy in Sacramento last week for an overnight adventure that involved Fairytale Land, the Railroad Museum, and some toddler amusement park where Emmett got to ride his first roller coaster. They had a lot of fun and I will put some pictures that Missy took below here with no explanation as it was their fun trip and my words would only spoil the memories.





Apparently they ran into another kid from Emmett's school who Emmett recognized and told Andrea who the kid was, but Andrea didn't believe him (I picked Emmett up and dropped him off so she didn't meet many parents and didn't get to know the kids too well). The other child's parents were following after and recognized Emmett, so he was right. It was pretty amazing that he would recognize someone from months ago.

Emmett is still riding his bike a lot. I think I mentioned that earlier, but it doesn't hurt to mention it again. I took a video which isn't that exciting, but at least it shows him in action.


This past weekend I took Emmett to hang with Ethan, Augie, and the dads at a playground in the Mission. It was fun times, but provided the first time that I have been truly scared by something Emmett was doing or trying to do. In the park where we were, there was a rope structure that is intended for much older children. There is a rope structure at another park we go to quite a bit, but Emmett can't really get going up it as it is spaced too wide at the bottom. The one at the park in the Mission however was spaced nicely for Emmett's tastes and he climbed way up to the top. I normally never get worried about things like this, but he climbed pretty quickly and the ropes were spaced so tightly that I had difficulty getting through it at all to where he was. I spent the whole time trailing behind him a ways trying to position myself in locations that he would only fall half the distance to the ground and therefore (in my mind) decrease the possibility of death or dismemberment by a similar ratio. He made it to the top, sat (after his traditional "tah dah" which he learned at day care should be said after scaling most anything), and wanted to remain sitting at the top (10-ish feet up) the rest of the day. I guess in addition to learning to deal with a son who is over me, I will have to do so while suffering through minor heart attacks as he does something that even I think is crazy.

Another thing that I have mentioned before but deserves mentioning again: Emmett loves trains. Serious love. Needs-to-sleep-with-trains-in-hand love. He has a Thomas train set that he spends much of each day playing with. Each day we get assigned roles (Emmett: James or Thomas, Andrea: Percy, me: Annie), and the train tracks now reach nearly end-to-end in our living room. Emmett and I took BART to Berkeley last week and he loved it, and once again he made me realize how much there is to that commute that I don't really think about---for example, the train yard we pass over in West Oakland.

I will try to get back to putting notes and pictures up here once in a while. I will leave with two more pictures I found on our camera from the trip with Missy to Sacramento, and one with Emmett's Elmo head/under-wear