Bonnie & Clyve: Emmett at 15 Months

***Emmett is now 19 months, but I'm reeeeal behind***

Our baby is quickly turning into a little boy. He runs everywhere he can and lives to have fun. I’ve tried to be very gender neutral in how we raise him. I want him to know it’s perfectly acceptable for him to play with baby dolls and makeup or trucks and balls. But he honestly prefers the balls. He even uses the baby dolls head as a ball. We got him a book called “My First Book of Feminism” that teaches him it’s ok to feel emotions and to clean up after himself and be kind to girls. It’s the cutest little book, but his favorite part is pointing out the different balls on each page.

He is extremely sweet at 15 months. He says “yes” with a little lisp, but he doesn’t say no. He’ll just shake his head back and forth. And I love it so much, because what is worse than your baby saying “no” to everything you say to them?

Our friend LaShonda was so nice to get him a Target gift card for his 1^st birthday since we were moving and didn’t need more toys to move. We got him a little basketball hoop that also has bowling and soccer on it and it makes noises whenever you score. He didn’t really love it at first because he was still figuring out how to walk. But one day, he all of a sudden started shooting the basketball into the hoop and he will honestly do it all day long. I think he saw Billy and I playing on my parents’ double shot arcade game and then realized what he had to do. If anyone watches my Instagram stories, then you know he literally will practice all day long. And his form just keeps getting better and better. He’ll even look at himself in the mirror and practice the form of his shot without a ball. And then when he’s actually shooting, he’ll just stare at the hoop and sometimes bounce up and down for a while before he finally shoots it. He tends to overanalyze every shot—I wonder where he gets that from?

He loves any sport involving a ball, not just basketball. My dad and he play this cute game where my dad tells him to “go deep” and he runs all the way to the foyer onto the front rug. Then he turns around and my dad throws him the ball and he screams in delight. And makes no attempt to catch it. He also loves “racing”, which is really just anytime I say “on your mark, get set , GO!” and he’ll start running. We’re still working on his reaction time, because sometimes he won’t move for a full 5 seconds before he starts running. He’s even started saying “set, set, go!” to try and get a race started himself.

My parents’ driveway is pretty long and windy, so every day, we’ll walk out to the mailbox to get the mail and it ends up taking about an hour. Emmett will stop and play with the walnuts that have fallen from the walnut tree, or splash in a puddle, or throw rocks into the road. He would spend all day outside if I’d let him.

My dad still takes him on a golf cart ride almost every day—rain or shine. Emmett actually prefers it when it’s raining. He especially likes if he can spot some deer or “dee dee” as he calls them. There are a bunch of deer that live in my parents’ backyard, so we see a ton everyday.

My dad’s home office is in the basement and he spends a lot of time working down there. We have a baby gate up so Emmett won’t fall down the stairs again. Much of Emmett’s time is spent yelling through the baby gate “Dadad!” for his Granddad. He’ll even throw balls over the gate and down the stairs for my dad to bring back up to him. I think he thinks my dad lives down there.

We are trying to teach him manners, so we’ve taught him that if he wants something, he needs to say or sign please. We’ll say, “how do you ask?” and he usually ends up doing both—he’ll say, “peez?” while rubbing his belly with his hands. And it makes me want to give him whatever he’s asking for. Except the other day when he was politely asking me to hold the hot curling iron. We are also trying to get him to say “sorry”. He hasn’t mastered it yet, but he’s said “saw-wee” a few times and it’s the sweetest noise I’ve ever heard. He’s also learned to give big hugs, or “tight squeezes” where he wraps his little arms around your neck and squeezes so hard. It’ll melt your heart every time.

He’s still not great at playing with other kids. He loves watching them play and he thinks older kids are hilarious. But he gets overwhelmed when there is a lot going on and he’ll just venture off on his own. When we moved to Utah, we took him to this indoor playground in the mall, but it was chaos, and he kept escaping back into the mall where there was more space to roam and it was a little quieter. What kid runs away from a playground?

He loves reading books. He’ll just go grab a book and then bring it over to me all day long. I had to start hiding some of the books that I hate because I was gonna lose it if we read “Guess How Much I Love You” one more time. I know, I’m a terrible mom, but that bunny’s mom is kind of a one upper and it drives me crazy. He’s still a little ADHD with books, so he wants to just turn the page right away and I’m a little OCD so I have to finish reading the page before we turn it. I’ve gotten really good at speed-reading out loud.

We had our first ER trip when Emmett fell down the stone steps at my parents’ house. He’s normally a very cautious kid, but he was using his push walker thing and got too close to the edge and it pulled him over. He had a massive bruise on the front of his head and some squishy spots on the side that the pediatrician (over the phone) thought might mean a fracture, plus he seemed to be in pain, so my dad and I took him to the ER. I was a mess of tears feeling like I had failed to protect my child and caused him pain and then wondering if they would report me and then take him away (this is how an anxious parent spirals out of control). We got to the ER, and Emmett was happy as can be. He loved hanging out at the hospital and all the attention he got from the nurses and doctors. They kept us an hour for observation, but there was no need to do an x-ray or CT, thank goodness. The doctor warned me that if they needed to, they’d probably have to put him to sleep and that terrified me.

Our second trip to the ER was also caused by Emmett—or maybe by me since I have still never learned how to cut his nails—Billy always does it for me. But when Billy was gone for 2 months in Baltimore, that means Emmett’s nails got gnarly long. Which then resulted in him scratching my cornea. Billy was gone, my dad was gone, and my mom was sick, so I had to drive myself to the ER 45 minutes away to go make sure that no permanent damage was done. With one working eye. Thankfully I made it in one piece and there were nice nurses to keep Emmett entertained while they examined my eye. Nurses are seriously my heroes.

Emmett thinks he is a puppy most days and will bark and then I feed him his snacks like a dog. He’ll even climb into my parents’ dogs’ crates. He loves to feed them their snacks and loves to feed them his dinner. He thinks it’s so funny when they’ll eat his mac and cheese off his tray. He especially loves smaller dogs. He would chase Rudy (my parents’ yorkie) around the house and laugh hysterically whenever Rudy would flinch at his presence. I’m not sure Rudy loved Emmett as much as Emmett loved him, We had to teach him how to be soft with Harper and Rudy because he wanted to pet them, but he’d just go up and get so excited and slap them. Harper is the bigger dog and he’s a little more anxious, so I was worried he might snap at Emmett if he slapped him. So, we taught him to pet slowly and softly and he’ll do it and say “saaaaw” for “soft”. I think this all means we will have to get him a dog one day and it stresses me out. Don’t hate me, but I’m not really a dog person. But I’m sure Billy and Emmett will wear me down one day and then I’ll resent them forever.

He still has great hearing. Especially when it’s related to treats. He can hear the pantry door opening, a wrapper from anywhere inside the house, chewing, and ice dispensing. He will just chew a bowl of ice for a snack. I’m sure his dentist will shame me in a few years.

A few times a week, we’ll drive out to the Purcellville library and go to story time. He actually gets very bored with the actual story part, but they do a lot of fun dancing and they have fun props like eggs with beads in them that you can shake and sticks you can hit together. Emmett would get down! But he started to learn that when the music stops, he’d have to give the shakers back, so he would scream bloody murder as soon as the music stopped. And then when I told him to put the shakers back, he would chuck them at the nearest kid in anger. It was actually pretty embarrassing. Why does no one else’s kid do stuff like this?

He unfortunately has got quite a bit of my OCD. If he sees a drawer or door open, he has to go close it. One time he was wandering around the kitchen with a ball and he sees the trash can open at the corner of his eye. So he stopped, turned around and goes to the trashcan and pushes it shut. My parents have a drink cabinet that has all the soda cans and my dad and Emmett would help to organize it. My dad would give him a can and Emmett would put it in the cabinet and push it to the back to make sure there was room for the other cans. It was the cutest thing to watch. He also loves to clean up his toys (most of the time). I know that will get harder the older he gets, but for now I’ll enjoy all the help I can get.

He makes us laugh everyday at his weirdness. If you tell him to get dizzy, he’ll start spinning in circles and subsequently start laughing when he falls down. We love seeing his personality develop and learning what makes him laugh and cry and think. We are, of course, convinced he is the smartest and sweetest baby in the world.