Taking The Animals To The Zoo

One of our (relatively) local zoos does a neat thing for moms on Mother’s Day: they give us a free pass for the day! So we packed up the kids and a host of snacks and drinks, and headed up to the zoo for the afternoon. The weather was great; there was a chill in the air, but that sure beats the blaring hot sun.













Last year my son was only twenty-months-old and he was mainly interested in the bright red and blue parrot. This year his interest extended to the otters, zebra, camel (or “canimal”), tortoises, and the owls. He showed at least a mild interest in all of the other animals as well, but these seemed to be favorites.

The little guy loved throwing food pellets at the ducks. I say “at” and not “to” because, sadly, the ducks showed no inclination to eat it at all. BoBeans didn’t seem to mind their lethargy, as being allowed to throw anything is fun for him, in and of itself. The tortoises were hungry by the time we got around to them, and he did get a kick out of watching them eat their evening lettuce. Those animals are not pretty and seem so rheumatic when they move that it almost hurt me to watch them; they do have sharp teeth though, and had no problem shredding their roughage.


















For my part, I rather enjoyed milling around the goat pen. These are the only animals that a person can get close to at this zoo and the little man, although enthralled at being in close proximity to said goats, seemed concerned about keeping a safe distance. He did attempt to engage one or two in conversation, as he has not yet learned that goats and people speak a different language. He soon quit chatting since the bleated replies were loud and tended to startle him.













There is one more memory that I am obliged to share for the sake of my husband since he kept on about it all evening and well into the night, until he was tucked into bed and safely on his way to la-la land. During my son’s encounter with the zebra, whilst beast and little boy were pursuing each other along the fence, the zebra took a short break to bend down and nibble on some grass; seeing this and wanting to mimic the grandly striped creature, my son apparently bent at the waist and, keeping his back straight like that of his banded mentor, plucked a leaf from the ground and brought it to his mouth.














My husband managed to get a hold of the greenery before it made its entrance into our child’s digestive system, thankfully. After completing his rendezvous with the zebra, the little colt-in-training settled for some french fries instead. The whole day was great: no diaper blowouts, no screaming or crying, no falling down, etc. I even managed to remember to put sunblock on the kids- even though it was cold enough that jackets were required for most of the day and rendered the sunblock totally superfluous. All-in-all, it was a happy Mother’s Day!

Rhubarb, By Any Other Name, Would Taste As Good

I have some very obvious weaknesses. One of them is rhubarb crumb pie. My parents have a large patch of rhubarb in their yard and my mom makes delectable pies that she graciously shares with me. Once that pie crosses the threshold of my home I eat nothing else until it is gone. That’s not entirely true: I generally eat dinner since I have to cook for my husband because he can eat something other than rhubarb pie if it is available. But since I partake of the pie for breakfast, lunch, and all snacks throughout the day it doesn’t generally last for more than three days.

Earlier this week I attempted my first Sudoku puzzle. There is, in my personality, a very stubborn streak of determination. In certain situations I am sure that this would be looked upon as an asset. When it comes to certain puzzles of logic, however, it is very much to my detriment. The children could be screaming and the house falling apart around me and I wouldn’t even notice if absorbed in one of these puzzles. I have to figure it out; I will figure it out! Only, some of them are extremely challenging and can take days at a time to solve.

Another area where I struggle to control myself is literature. If I’m in the midst of a good book it can be physically painful to pull myself away from it. I’m not exaggerating. I lose sleep because the possibility of reading without interruption after the kids have gone to bed is too tempting to pass up; on these days housework really disgusts me as I have yet to figure out how to wash the dishes or clean the bathroom while at the same time holding a book and turning its pages.

It is possible that I have exaggerated a smidge in the preceding paragraphs. I can force myself to put aside Jane Eyre to take care of my children; I just get a little cranky sometimes. There was even one day this week that I gave up entirely on a puzzle because I knew I would be mad at myself if I allowed it to consume my entire day. In one of these instances, at least, I was entirely honest. If there is a rhubarb pie in the house I will devour it. I have been known to eat a whole pie in one day. I do believe that even now, God is filling my pantry in heaven with lots and lots of rhubarb pies: rhubarb and strawberry, rhubarb and apple, rhubarb and blueberry…

Stop The Ride, I Want To Get Off.

There is something worse than having to take a child for shots: needing to take them for blood work. My poor, sweet little girl isn’t gaining weight as fast as the doctors feel she should be. Even though she was two weeks early she still weighed in at seven pounds, four ounces at birth. Her first birthday is only one month away and she still has not passed the fourteen-pound mark. The pediatrician is fairly confident that her teeny-tiny-ness is a combination of genetics and how active she is. However, with the amount of food the child consumes it just seems odd that she gains only a few ounces every month.

Hence, the command was issued to have blood drawn to check for a reason as to the abnormal weight gain. Keeping in mind the fact that I wanted to get in and out of there as fast as humanly possible, I waited until I thought the lunch hour rush would be over. My timing was a little bit off, however, as one of the phlebotomists was at lunch. Anytime blood needs to be drawn from an infant it requires two technicians: one to do the stick and one to hold the baby’s arm down.

So there I sat, for twenty minutes, waiting in dread and wanting to be at home drinking tea or reading a book, or even plucking my eyebrows. Little Cheekers just straddled my lap and pointed out the lights and watched the cars drive by outside the window while munching an occasional Cheerio. Finally the time came to walk down the hallway of doom and sit in the horrid blue-padded chair of pain and suffering.

As infants, my kids are the type that only needs a stranger to look at them in order to start wailing, but once we were seated and the rubber band was applied to her arm the crying started in earnest. It was my job to hold her other arm down, keep her feet from kicking and to restrain her upper body. I held her tightly while she screamed and wriggled. After what seemed like an eternity the phlebotomist declared that she could not get anything out of the left arm and they would need to try the other. Oh. My. GOODNESS GRACIOUS! I had suggested they try her right arm in the first place!

Lord help me, I thought I was going to start crying myself. There are few things that are more heart wrenching than having your child cling to you in desperation and being unable to relieve their troubles. So the life-squeezing rubber band of sedition was placed on her right arm and the blood was drawn. As if the whole experience wasn’t horrific enough already, the flow was so slow that it took a ridiculous amount of time to get enough for two large and two small tubes. I tried to sing to her and kiss her head, anything to distract her. Nothing worked and by the time it was over she had practically cried herself to sleep. A full ten minutes had passed since we first sat in the chair.

It was everything I had feared it would be and more. Please believe me, I sincerely hope that all of the tests come back normal. Considering how terrible the experience was, how badly she bruised, and how traumatized she must be, I am fairly confident that it will all come to naught and that the whole incident could have been avoided. At least she still loves me.

Choose Your Weapon

There are in existence many ways in which to kill a large spider or other sordid insects that find their way into the home. Some people squash them with shoes as they make an attempt to flee; others swat at them with brooms. I have been in situations where the person endeavoring to deal with live-bug-removal just runs around in circles while screaming.

When my husband encounters something that belongs outside in the comfort of the home he generally feels the need to call a family council to discuss how to deal with said intruder. This isn’t a “should I kill it or let it loose” assembly, but rather a panicked “what should I do, what should I do” type of deal.

Over the weekend he spent some of his time down in the basement cleaning up and organizing his plethora of tools and other assorted, inherited junk. Our basement cannot be accessed from outside, and there are but three small windows that let in a very minimal amount of light. Regardless of this, all sorts of bugs and spiders manage to find their way in. (During the summer months we run a dehumidifier, which cuts down on the number of bugs tremendously).

My husband hadn’t been at the task for long when he shouted up the steps to announce that there was a giant spider with him, and asked, please, how he should go about slaying the beast. Because, really, what is a mere mortal to do when faced with such a formidable foe? I told him vaguely that he should kill it, as I am quite convinced that spiders of gigantic proportions are possessed of some sort of brain and it would probably find its way up the stairs, under the basement door, and into the kitchen where a lot of terrified bellowing would take place and smelling salts would be required. Or the baby would find it and decide that it was much more fun to hunt and kill her own food than to be strapped into the highchair and handfed Cheerios.

After searching for a contrivance with which to kill the spider my husband picked up a hammer; with this hammer he dealt a mighty deathblow and smote the monster. I felt that such a tool should make an awful mess of a thing like a spider. He corrected my assumption by informing me that as long as a person regulates their strike accordingly, it is a fine alternative for a shoe. Of course, it’s always handy to have a Shop-Vac lying around to suck up the mess with.

Party Manners

This past weekend a friend of mine had a birthday party for her youngest who had just turned one year old. She decided to have the get together at the home of her husband’s grandparents; dependent on the weather the party was to be held out of doors. It had rained the night prior, and not being sure how that would affect the set-up I decided to put my son in wind pants and a long-sleeved tee just in case the kids would still be playing outside.

I did consider dressing him in good clothes, but I was pretty confidant that if I did then he would most certainly be outside and rolling around in the mud. So, as I said, I took what I thought was the safer road. We piled the kids into the car and began the thirty-minute drive.

When we exited the highway and made the few turns that took us closer and closer to our destination, the homes became larger and larger and larger still. A glance into the rearview mirror confirmed that BoBeans was still wearing the windpants. Not only that, but his shirt was still too big and his bed-mussed hair stubbornly stuck up in places even though I had tried to force it into submission with a comb and some water.

When my husband stopped the car in front of the biggest house mansion I have ever laid eyes on I just knew that the kids would not be playing outside. I’m not sure what emotion I was feeling, but it was pretty close to mortification. God uses all kinds of situations to keep a person humble. At least my little guy behaved himself admirably. I’d rather belong to a messy looking child with good manners, than a fashionable toddler who throws himself screaming onto the floor when he doesn’t get his way. However, next time I think I will aim for nice clothes, freshly cut hair, and good manners. It never hurts to try.

Flying Toddlers and Whale Talk

This morning the little guy was watching “A Snoodle’s Tale” and decided that it would be fun to try his hands at flying. He would stand on the second or third step and flap his hands (not arms) furiously as he leapt from the stair. Over and over again he tried to obtain liftoff from his platform.

Anytime he sensed me coming to remove him from the area he would take me by the hand and lead me into the living where he wanted me to sit and watch his video, or he would push me in the tush and command me to go into the kitchen. His next experiment was to launch himself from the arm of the couch, to which I put an immediate stop.

One of the neat tricks his Daddy has taught him is to make his food talk. My food is just ordinary and plain and has never talked to me, nor have I ever been under the impression that it has any desire to do anything other than be eaten. There must be some charm in my son’s hands, however, because as soon as I handed him a piece of sweet bologna torn from my sandwich it immediately morphed into a whale and began to sing “Figaro”, like Willie the Whale in “The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met”.

I would like to leave you with one of my husband’s famous quotes. I am in the process of compiling these in an attempt to bring joy and laughter to the world. Please, feel free to astound and amaze your loved ones with the profundity of the statement: “I didn’t forget; I just didn’t remember.”

Is There A Band-Aid In The House?

My son has figured out that he can open the refrigerator door all by himself. He will go in to get his cup of milk all by himself or to unwrap some leftover pancakes from yesterday’s breakfast. Thankfully he hasn’t tried to play catch with any of the eggs yet. This afternoon he came into the dining room and plunked down a container of Spaghettios to eat for a snack.

I had another moment the other day when I marveled at the fact that I can still behave like a brand-new mommy. The kids and I were out shopping; when we left the store I looked down at BoBeans and noticed that he had blood smeared all over his face and also his left hand. “For Heaven’s sake!” my mind screamed, “What is going on? He isn’t crying and he’s acting perfectly normal! Is he delirious?!” (I’m not generally this insane at the sight of blood, but I was so startled that I misplaced my proper reaction. To my credit, I did stay outwardly calm). I first examined his head to make sure the blood wasn’t originating there. It was much more concentrated on his hand, and I quickly saw the reason for the mess.

He had chewed on a hangnail. A person wouldn’t think that a little finger-chewing could produce so much blood, but there it was. One would also think that someone who has been doing this mommy thing for over two-and-a-half years would carry Band-Aids. Especially when the toddler is a boy. Think again. The poor kid continued to bleed while I stood there applying pressure to his boo-boo with a baby wipe.

After a few minutes I gave up and we made our way to another store in the promenade that I hoped would have some type of bandage simply because it sold children’s clothing. While the store did not keep Band-Aids on hand one of the employees happened to have bandages in her purse that were left over from a recent trip she had taken.

I guess I’m going to have to buy a larger bag in order to keep everything on hand that I seem to find myself in need of these days. Perhaps I can just take a class and learn how to fold things into tiny little squares: that way I can just fold up the whole house and take it with me everywhere I go.