A kiss, and a hug, and a lip

Whenever I leave for work in the morning, the boys go out on the porch to wave goodbye. Lately, Nate has been demanding that I give him "a kiss and a hug and a lip (kiss)." If I forget -- or if I fail to do all three -- he gets very upset. Not only that, but now I must give Theo and Dada a kiss and a hug and a lip. Sometimes I tell him that I don't want to kiss Dada, but he makes me do it anyway.

In the evenings, Chuck leaves to do work at a coffeeshop, and Theo, Nate and I squeeze together on the porch steps and wave goodbye to him. Nate insists that he give each of us a kiss, a hug, and a lip again. Theo will gleefully wave and say, "bye! seeyasoon! missyou!" And then we'll look at the moon and the stars, and I'll corral them inside so we can get ready for bed.

I know there will come a time when the boys won't even look up from their iPhone/laptop/whatever-gadget-exists-then to acknowledge that one of us is leaving, so I cherish the enthusiastic goodbyes and sloppy lips kisses while I have them. They'll be too cool for me soon enough.

Our physical genius and his shoe fetish

Always trying to keep up with his big brother Nate -- who's been known to chest-bump him as a sign of his superiority -- Theo is advanced when it comes to physical skills. Mamma Daley first coined the phrase "physical genius." Just after his 1st birthday, Theo saw that Nate's t-ball set was turned over. He proceeded to put the t-ball stand upright, place the ball on top of it, pick up the bat, and HIT THE BALL! Some kids can't even walk at a year old, yet Theo can play ball with the preschoolers. Physical genius. Since then, Theo has proven his supreme physical abilities by unscrewing and re-screwing the caps of water bottles, removing batteries from all of our remote controls, and running shoelaces through beads.

Another interesting quality of our youngest is his affinity for shoes. He hates being barefoot, and will bring us his shoes and tell us, "On! On!" Sometimes, even as I'm putting him to bed, he'll see his shoes on the dresser and reaches out to them, begging me to put them over his pajama feet. But even better, Theo LOVES wearing his mommy's high-heeled shoes and boots. He'll bring them to me and ask me to put them on him, zip up the boots and clip-clop down the hallway like a real lady. For some reason, he never wants to wear Chuck's shoes -- and the fancier the women's shoes, the better. Chuck insists that it's only because I wear a size 5 and so my shoes fit better (it's true - I'm pretty sure he'll be wearing my size by second grade), plus they make more noise. And a few weeks ago, when Chuck got his shiny new sneakers, Theo caught sight of them and had to put them on immediately. Of course, they just fell off, so Theo opted to put on my fancy green sandals instead.