A Rite of Passage

This morning as my husband and I were walking our toddler out to the car to go to daycare, our son ran so fast, he tripped over his own feet, fell down, and skinned his knee.  It HURT.  Not just him, but me.  The wound was already raw and bleeding in the few seconds it took us to pick him up and examine it.  And the tears came on just as quickly.  We put down our purses, briefcases, and lunch bags and hurried back inside to administer first aid.  He is a tough little bird, because he was already *poking* the raw rash and saying something akin to "ouch" in toddlerease before we could clean it up.  A swipe of triple antibiotic ointment and a Big Bird bandaid later, and a smile had already returned to his face.  I wish I could recover from skinned knees as quickly!  I know that it wasn't his first skinned knee (we have quite the collection of "incident reports" from daycare thanks to state reporting requirements), but it was the first one that happened in my presence.  In addition to the skinned knee rite of passage, we've already reached such other lofty milestones as the "first time he fell off of mommy and daddy's bed" and "brown recluse spider bite."  Ah, parenthood.

Dancin' Queen and Peacocks

This title has you intrigued, doesn't it?  Last Friday, my husband and I raced home from work to take our son to the St. Louis Zoo (one of our favorite places, especially now that we have a toddler) for the Friday night "Jungle Boogie."  For those of you not in the know, it's basically a chance to walk around the zoo later than usual and listen to a live band.  The weather was hot, but with a breeze, it was bearable.

You would think the highlight of the evening would have been our little animal-lover getting to touch the stingrays in Caribbean Cove.  You would be wrong.  $8 later, he spent five minutes splashing his hand around the water before giving us the baby sign for "all done" and running for the exit.  Or you might think it was having the Butterfly Room all to ourselves.  Except that the reason we were all alone in the exhibit was because we didn't know what apparently everyone else in the Zoo did--that the butterflies were all "asleep" except the one or two Monarch-looking types that were sort of bobbing around.  I couldn't blame him for being skeptical about the wonders of the butterflies that time around.

The highlight of the night came as we were eating the deep-fried, over-priced zoo food (or I should say, as my husband and I were sharing the kids' meal corndog that our son refused to finish).  The area directly around the live band was packed solid, so we settled for a set of tables just within hearing range by the sea lion exhibit.  No one else was sitting there, probably because you couldn't see the band and could barely hear them, but with a toddler, sometimes isolation and seclusion is better.  Even though our son could barely hear the music, as soon as the band's rendition of "Dancing Queen" came on, he threw down his half-eaten corndog and swayed out to the middle of the empty tables around us and began to dance.  His dancing is a series of sways and dips, but hey--for an 18 month old, he's got moves.  And in true toddler fashion, he realized that I was filming him with my IPhone, so he turned around and cheesed for the camera a bit.  Sounds cute, right?  Judge for yourself:

 

The second highlight of the night followed the dancing.  As my full attention was paid to my 'lil dancer, my husband whispered to me, "Amy--don't move," which, by the way, is a horrible thing to say to someone without explaining further.  One of the zoo's resident peacocks with an appetite for deep-fried, over-priced zoo food had come up behind our table and was sitting underneath my chair!  It was a miracle that I didn't freak out and had the sense of mind to pick up the half-eaten corndog and leftover fries.  I threw pieces of them down away from my chair, and she gulped them up in seconds.  Once the threat of being pecked by a peacock had passed, it was kind of awesome to be that close to a peacock.  Once we finished tossing her the deep-fried, over-priced zoo food leftovers, we moved onto my son's goldfish crackers.  He even got to toss a few goldfish to the peacock.

So, the moral of the story is never underestimate how "up close and personal" things can get at the zoo, and always bring plenty of extra goldfish crackers.

Sand in My Swimsuit

Note to readers:  I'm currently halfway through a beach vacation with my husband's family, so I thought I would take a few quiet(er) moments and dedicate this latest post to beach vacations everywhere.

I've always loved the beach--lounging in a beach chair, toes in the sand, peacefully listening to the sound of the waves crashing to the shore, with nothing to worry about except my tan lines (or burn lines as it happens to be in my case).  Then, I went to the beach with my kid.  Talk about a game changer...

Instead of applying Hawaiian Tropic, we're slathering on Water Babies like our skin has never seen the sun.  And instead of toting one lone beach towel, a cold drink and a trashy beach read down to the beach, we're loaded like pack mules with snack bags, coolers, bags of beach toys, and five different kinds of sunscreen (just in case).  The only ones snoozing in the sun are the toddlers, and that's only when they literally drop in their tracks from exhaustion.  We build and smash sandcastles, hunt for seashells, chase crabs, and eat, eat, eat for an entire fifteen minutes before the first "can we go back up to the pool now?"  But that's okay, given that we have taken to using the pool as a substitute for the outdoor shower as a means of eliminating the inevitable sand that accumulates in the crevices of our swimsuits (because of course they only fall down/stub their toe/lose their toy and want you to pick them up and hold them after they've rolled around in the sand for awhile).  

The highlight of the week so far (depending on which family members you ask) was the night we went hunting for crabs on the beach at dusk.  We had six adults, two toddlers, two flashlights, one net, and one bucket.  We found pint-sized crabs aplenty and soon grew tired of the ease of the hunt.  But then out of the dunes we spotted him:  a behemoth craggly fellow with pinchers the size of my thumbs (okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but he was significantly larger than his brethren).  We chased him across the sand and into the water, snagging him in the net only to have him climb right back out again.  My son was fascinated by the crabs and showed no fear.  He marched right up to the net to take a closer look at the beach monster, took a few steps closer in, and in a split second the captive jumped from the net, scurried across the sand and up my son's leg.  To his credit, my son stood there calmly, without so much as a flinch, and looked down in wonder at his new multi-limbed friend.  But the adults in the crowd screamed and jumped away from our catch, and a well-intentioned uncle ended up pushing my son down into the sand while attempting to save him from the ferocious pinchers.  I'm sure that based upon the sounds emanating from our group, bystanders would have easily mistaken us for a group of middle school girls.  Until the crying started, that is.

Beaches with babies is more challenging in some ways, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.  Hearing that little shriek and giggle when we finally catch the crab and put him in the bucket is well worth the extra sand that ends up in my swimsuit.  We'll just have to be sure and remember to tip the pool guy at the end of the week while we pretend not to notice the dunes that have accumulated at the bottom of the pool.

Adventures in (Temporary) Single Parenting

Inspired by my preggo friend Jill who recently started her own blog, I am finally diving into the world of blogging.  I might not have anything interesting to say, and maybe no one will ever read my blogs, but I owe it to the English major inside of me to give it a try.  The name "Running on Sanders Time" is a nod to my husband's family and its fast and loose treatment of punctuality (love you all, I swear! and the phrase was coined long before I came onto the scene).  Anyway, here goes nothing:

First, let me start out by singing the praises of any truly single parent out there who day-in/day-out tirelessly cares for their child(ren) without the aid of a spouse/significant other/family member/friend.  You are a super hero, rock star, and saint for doing what you do.  That being said...I couldn't do it.  I need my husband.  Steve, not that I think you are plotting anything, but if you ever try to leave me...I will come with you.

My husband has been traveling for work on a nearly weekly basis this past month, and things just aren't quite the same without him at home.  Don't get me wrong--I love having the one-on-one time with Forrest, but Mommy can't make the sound that an elephant makes, and Mommy hates having to take the trash out in the rain.  But despite the shortage of "Da-Da" around here, we've survived and aren't any worse for the wear because of it.

Now that Da-Da has an Iphone, we are able to Facetime with him, which is quite the event.  Forrest seems to have finally grasped the concept of the remote video feed and figured out that the talking head on the screen that looks like Da-Da is "Da-Da!"  So he's moved onto waving at the screen and saying "hi-ya," and kissing the screen (so cute it melts your heart!).  Although, he still hasn't figured out that pushing the "end" button will, in fact, end the call, thus, each session is conducted in multiple acts.

Who knows?  Maybe Forrest prefers life with Mommy:  last night he ate half a bag of SmartPop and a few bites of frozen lasagna for dinner, watched the end of Pitch Perfect and half an episode of Family Guy while Mommy inhaled her lasagna, got to stay up almost an hour past his usual bedtime, and went to sleep with no less than five blankies, one bear, and a monkey.  He did sleep 10 1/2 hours without a peep and woke up with a huge grin on his face, so you be the judge.

Gee, the only thing that this blog entry is missing is some ridiculously cute "Mommy and Me" picture or a picture of some fiasco or chaos that has ensued while Daddy is away...do I even need to explain that I didn't have the time or the presence of mind to capture one?  So instead I will leave you with this:

The Most Interesting Men in the World