Besides, the hectic periods are tempered by long stretches of staying home. For the Tyler-Langdon clan, that's a brownstone in New York City, and Tyler describes their life there in touching, stream-of-consciousness detail: Milo's daily world—and, by extension, hers—currently revolve around making morning smoothies, reading (Hairy Maclary's Bone is a favorite), and playing music (he tings away on a toy piano while his dad plays the real thing). He's obsessed with helicopters, Scooby Doo, trains, animals.
Partly out of a longing to indulge this last passion of Milo's—and partly to get away from the paparazzi—Tyler has considered leaving New York for a place in the country. "I'd love for him to have pets and chickens to take care of," she says. "And I want to give him all the tools to be the best man he can be. For me, so much of that has to do with being in nature and really using your hands when you're a kid." As for her own childhood, Tyler describes it as having had "so much love"—as well as a good deal of upheaval. Although she is the daughter of model Bebe Buell and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, she spent her early years with her aunt and uncle in Maine ("My mom was around, but she was young and struggling"). She later lived with her grandparents in Virginia and her mother in New York. Because of Steven's wild lifestyle back then, Buell looked to another father figure for her daughter: Tyler was raised to believe musician Todd Rundgren was her dad, and knew Steven only as a friend of the family. Before her teens, Tyler figured out the truth when she noticed the resemblance between herself and Steven?s other daughter, Mia.
"I'm still working through my issues, which I always will be," Tyler says of those years. But parenting has also given her a new perspective on her mom and dad(s). "I had the ideas we all had as teenagers, of Well, I'm gonna do it this way. Then suddenly you're living it, and you have a lot more empathy for every other parent in the world."
