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Dear Holly: Your Brother Feeds You Yogurt Better Than I Can

1 year, 6 months.

Dear Holly,

While I am extremely grateful we are past the days of preparing and cleaning bottles of milk for you, I will admit: It’s not one of my favorite things, to feed you yogurt.

At least twice a day, you’ll walk over to the fridge, pull on the door, and speak in your language what would translate as, “I want yogurt, Daddy.”

That’s when I respond with a face palm and, “Ah man, really?”

By the time I am finished feeding you, you have a fu manchu of Trader Joe’s yogurt, which seamlessly blends in to your runny nose.

You also love for me to prepare you organic instant oatmeal twice a day as well, to accompany your yogurt.

After I clean you up, the stains on both of our clothes consists of a mysterious mix of “Is it yogurt, mucus, or oatmeal?”

It makes me think of the DNA test I did this summer, but instead of ethnicity, we would be testing the stains on your clothes:

43% yogurt

27% oatmeal

10% mucus

Fortunately though, we stumbled into a wonderful discovery:

Not only does your brother love to feed you the yogurt, but he’s much better at it than I am. You respond better to him. You think it’s more fun to eat the yogurt when he feeds you.

And somehow, none of the yogurt seems to make its way to either of your clothes.

If it were up to me, I’d always have your brother feed you yogurt. He enjoys doing it, too.

It makes me wonder what else your brother could do more efficiently than me. I recognize the special relationship the two of you have- and I respect it.

So even though I didn’t immediately think it was a smart idea to let your brother feed you yogurt while wearing one of his brand-new shirts, the two of you quickly proved me wrong.

Love,

Daddy

 

 

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Dear Holly: Your All-Business Approach to Having Nonna Take Care of You

1 year, 6 months.

Dear Holly,

Last weekend I took you and your brother to Alabama to spend time with Nonna and Papa, which gave Mommy a chance to get caught up on work back in Tennessee. I was there with you, of course, but I couldn’t help but notice you chose to rely on Nonna for your needs instead of me.

Whenever you got hungry or felt you needed a diaper change, you simply took it upon yourself to walk over to your travel bag, pull out what you needed, then make your way across the room to Nonna.

With no words necessary, you simply looked up at her without even a smile on your face; but with a diaper in one hand and a fruit pouch in another. It was simply implied:

“Alright, Nonna. You’re the head matriarch figure in this room so I guess I’m supposed to bring this stuff to you. Let’s go ahead and get to work then.”

It’s slightly fascinating to me that you’re wired to having the most mothering person in the room take care of your physical needs. Whenever it’s just you and me at our house, you obviously solely depend on me for these things. You know good and well I am more than qualified to serve you.

But apparently, I become the 2nd most qualified person for the job if Nonna is in the room.

Obviously, you’re not old enough to comprehend that Nonna is actually my Mommy.

That doesn’t matter. You just know you’re better off having her open your bag of organic cheddar crackers instead of me.

Or maybe, this is your way of giving your Daddy a break. Maybe you’re just that intuitive; to realize that Daddy wouldn’t mind being off-duty every once in a while…

Nah. 

You know me too well. I’m always on the clock for you.

Love,

Daddy

 

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Dear Holly: Your Monster Feet Slippers

1 year, 5 months.   

Dear Holly,

Grandma got you some fun bedtime slippers to wear with your pajamas. They turn your cute little feet into huge monster feet!

For the past couple of weeks, Mommy has been trying to get you wear them while she reads you a bedtime story. You have been quite skeptical, only leaving them on for a few seconds each night.

But perhaps that is changing, now that you are really getting into shoes. Even when we’re not about to go outside, you still walk over to the closet and insist on picking out a pair of shoes for me to help put on you.

It’s a normal thing for you to be playing with your toys in the living room, while wearing your pink Nike running shoes; not because you need them, but because you are a shoes girl!

I think in your mind, you’re not fully dressed until you are wearing shoes, even if you’re just hanging out at the house with us.

You are forming your identity. It’s becoming obvious that shoes are a part of who you are.

So, even if the “shoes” are actually funny monster feet during your bedtime story… you are recognizing, they are still shoes!

This past weekend you decided to go public with your monster shoes. And by public, I mean that you decided to walk out of your bedroom during story time and show your brother and me.

I’m not quite sure if you fully realize that the monster shoes are meant to be silly, but as you strolled around upstairs in them, you proudly showed them off.

Your fashion show was met by us praising you for how cute you looked in them.

Yeah, you are going to be a shoes girl… even if they turn you into a fury monster!

Love,

Daddy

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Dear Jack: Your Semi-Biographical (?) Portraits of Your Family Members

6 years, 10 months.

Dear Jack,

Sunday evening as Mommy was preparing dinner as I was helping Holly play with her toys, you snuck away to the kitchen table. You eventually surfaced to hand-deliver drawings to the three of us.

You had drawn a picture for Mommy, for Holly, and for me. I immediately saw some inspiration from Pokemon characters mixed with the Mr. Man book characters.

The one you gave you sister showed a cute little person with a pink crown.

The one you gave Mommy showed a person crying.

And the one you gave me showed a person so mad that his hair was on fire and smoke was coming out of ears.

Naturally, I immediately asked you, after thanking you for giving them to us, “Are these pictures of us?”
You insisted they weren’t. But I am thinking there’s a little bit of a Freudian slip in there…

I can easily understand how you wanted to show your acceptance of your sister as the sweet little girl she is.

As for Mommy’s character crying, as she’s just not one to cry, perhaps it symbolizes her need for my emotional support from me; as the husband and father. On a daily basis, you subconsciously observe me carefully listening to Mommy unpack her thoughts from the day.

Whereas for me, I typically don’t have much to say about my day when I get home. Instead, there are times when I walk through the front door after working all day and driving an hour to get home, to find that you and your sister are restless, tired, and hungry.

That puts me into a position where I am managing two young kids while Mommy tries to get dinner made.

So while I would love to be as care-free as Jack Johnson all the time, perhaps by default, I ultimately adopt the character of the mad and angry boss.

Again, I could be looking way too much into why you decided to draw these pictures for us, individually; then directly hand them to us.

You’re a clever kid who has a healthy sense of awareness. I think you made this drawings as a way of categorizing the members of your family.

Love,

Daddy

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Dear Holly: You Assume All Other Adults are Nurses and Doctors Wanting to Give You a Shot?

1 year, 4 months.

Dear Holly,

As our family met up with some of Mommy’s family for Labor Day Weekend in a cabin in Boone, North Carolina for our fall “Road Trip to the Boonies” in the 2017 Toyota Sienna, you were definitely the youngest there.

Your cousin Lucy, the 2nd youngest, was especially intrigued by who she only referred to as “Baby Holly.” It was funny every time I heard her call you Baby Holly because it sounded so much like Buddy Holly.

Lucy, in her undeniably kindness, didn’t hesitate to let you play with her Puppy Surprise dolls. All it took was watching Lucy demonstrate how the mommy gives birth to her tiny puppies, just one time, and you were fascinated.

Needless to say, you adopted the 3 puppies whenever Lucy wasn’t around.

So I guess this means you’ll be needing a Puppy Surprise for Christmas…

You also bonded with Lucy over a game of cards, as well. I’m not sure what the rules of the Spongebob Squarepants card game were, but based on your confidence level in how you dealt and held the cards, I’d say you knew what you were doing.

I enjoyed watching you play cards in business mode, meanwhile your cousin Lucy and Brother Jack played next to you. I think in your mind, you were playing with the big kids.

It was good seeing you socialize, though most of the time in the cabin with everyone, you had to be with either Mommy or me.

But as you get older, and as we meet up with your cousins and aunts and uncles in years to come, it will be fun to see you open up to everyone more.

While your Brother Jack never met a stranger, you’re the opposite. If it’s not Mommy or me, you treat most other adults with the distrust you have to nurses and nurses; assuming everyone is trying to hold you, only so they can give you a shot.

You especially had your Aunt Jenny tagged this way in your mind. Apparently, she must really remind you of one of your nurses.

I held you in my arms, and as Aunt Jenny smiled and said, “Hi Holly,” she reached out to touch you arm. Before she even could even touch you, you immediately tucked your little arm under mine, so Aunt Jenny couldn’t get you.

Yeah, you’ll eventually grow out of this stage.

Love,

Daddy