Dual Use

Who knew that a tummy time blanket would also make for a good parking lot?

Ah, the perils of having big brothers.

I'm an Alligator

A few months ago, Brady comes out of the bedroom crying really hard and saying Luke bit him. I can tell from the way Brady is crying that he is feeling some pain, but I'm slightly confused as Luke has never bitten anyone before.  He didn't go through a biting stage when he was younger, and he just turned 3, so it's a bit late to start that. I take a look at Brady and sure enough there's a pretty good red mark on his shoulder. I ask Brady if he did anything to provoke Luke and he said, "No, I was just sitting there and he just walked up and bit me." Very odd, I think to myself. Luke gets called in for questioning:

Me: Luke, did you bite Brady?
Luke: Yes.
Me: Why did you bite Brady?
Luke: Because I'm an alligator.

Perhaps I shouldn't put him in this shirt quite so often. A short discussion about how it's okay to pretend to be an alligator but not to bite people was followed by an apology from the alligator to his victim. I'm happy to report no additional biting incidents since then.

Lather Rinse Repeat

Last winter Luke went through a phase where it took him a long time to fall asleep after he went to bed.  He was always allowed to sit in his bed and look at books or play with toys until he fell asleep though.  Unbeknownst to us, one evening he took to roaming around the upstairs of our house.  It turns out he can be very quiet if he wants to.  About an hour after bedtime we finally hear him moving around upstairs and it sounds like  he is playing in the bathroom.  Instead of going upstairs to check things out, we tell him from the bottom of the stairs to quit playing in the bathroom and get back in bed.  He's a pretty compliant kid, not prone to get into things and we never heard any running water, so no need to go upstairs, right?  Luke protests a little more than usual, some whining, a few tears, and some unintelligible complaints, but after a second warning he heads back to bed.  At this point, not much of a story.  About an hour later, we hear Luke wake up and begin crying hysterically.  He comes downstairs and we find this.

Apparently his bathroom adventure involved spreading shampoo on the top of his hair.  I guess he wanted to give himself a bath.  Because we sent him to bed site-unseen, by this point the shampoo had dried and hardened into a helmet-like coating.  I guess that is what woke him up and upset him so much.  As you can see in the pictures, Luke is quite upset while I was laughing so hard I was crying.

Surprisingly, there was no mess at all in the bathroom, in fact, we couldn't even tell the shampoo bottle had been disturbed.  Ryan said it took a long time to get all of the shampoo rinsed out of his hair.

BFFs

Somehow Brady and I got on the subject of BFFs the other day.  I asked him if he knew what a BFF was and he said, "Yeah, best friends forever."  I then asked him if he had a BFF.  He paused for a second then said "My dad is my BFF... (at this point Ryan and I are saying 'aww, how sweet')... until I get a new one."  And precious moment over.

There's a Bat in the Garage

Listening to the sounds the other day of what we think may be a squirrel living in our attic reminded me of another wildlife encounter we had about 4 years ago in our old house.

Ryan came home one day and said "There's a bat in our garage."  I give him a look that says "Are you crazy?" combined with "When is the last time you ate?"  I think my actual words were something like, "Surely not."  He responds with, "No really, come look."  I follow him to the garage where we carefully crack the door open to find...nothing.  No bat to be seen anywhere.  Ryan says something about it probably hiding in the rafters.  I check his forehead for signs of fever.  Fast forward to a few days later and I pull into the garage, get out of the car and start to walk around it to get what was a then two-year-old Brady out of his car seat, when I see a bat lying on the garage floor.  Hmm, maybe my husband isn't going crazy after all.

Now at this point, the normal, prudent response would have been to exit the garage and call animal control or a pest removal service, but then, since when have I ever responded normally to anything.  The first thought that entered my head was to check and see if it was dead or alive.  I creep over to the golf-ball-sized bat, lean down and can tell it's breathing.  It is also kind of hunched over/curled up in a ball on the concrete floor, not healthy bat behavior, but does that enter my mind?  Nooooo.  My next thought is to take Brady inside before the bat starts moving.  I grab Brady from his car seat, make a wide circle around the bat, and get him inside.   Again, perfect opportunity to call someone else, we're both inside, the bat is outside.  Nope, at this point, I decide I need to remove the bat from the garage and what better to do it with than an old butter dish.  It might have actually been an old sour cream container, but I suppose that's not critical to the story.

Butter (sour cream?) dish in hand, I creep back out to the garage and throw the container upside down over the top of the bat who still hasn't moved.  I hadn't realized I was holding my breath, but at this point I begin to breath again.  Okay, so now I have a bat on my garage floor under a plastic container.  What to do next? If you were familiar with our old house, you know that we had quite a bit of asphalt driveway and concrete in all directions from our garage door, more than your standard driveway width, and I decide that attempting to scoot the bat across the driveway and into the yard would take too long and would possibly be inhumane.  Looking back on this, I wonder why I thought I needed to move the bat all the way to the yard and not just leave it in the driveway, but I digress.

 I decide at this point to attempt to slide the lid to the butter dish under the bat, effectively trapping the bat in the container and allowing me to pick the whole thing up and move it.  I slowly slide the lid under the container and pick it up without incident.  While walking the bat over to the yard, container held with arms fully extended straight out in front of me, the bat starts to wake up and pokes it bat wing/claw/hand things out between the container and the lid.  Yikes.  I walk faster.  If any of you are wondering what Brady is doing at this point, I have no idea.  I like to think that he was possibly asleep the whole time and I had laid him on the couch, but it's more likely he was running amok inside the house while I played do-it-yourself pest removal service.  Mother of the year I am not.  I make it over to the yard and unceremoniously dump the bat out on the ground.  It rolls onto it's back where it spreads its wings fully out, appears to grow to 10 times it's size, opens its mouth open widely to show a full set of sharp teeth, and moves its head back and forth Godzilla-style.  I think it was hissing at me in sonar.  I scream and run back into the house looking behind me the whole way as if I expect the bat to chase after me and attack.

Incident over, I think to myself. Problem solved.   As the afternoon wears on, I begin to think more about the bat and its less than bat-like behavior.  I've seen bats in the wild, they hang upside down, not huddle on garage floors.  They fly, not lay on the ground and act like Godzilla.  I turn to Google, the best anxiety-creating invention known to mankind.  I read about the behavior of bats with rabies. I decide the bat has rabies.  I read about the way rabies is transmitted to humans - bites, scratches, etc.  I review my bat removal escapade and don't recall any bites, scratches or any other contact with the bat, but Google tells me that sometimes bat bites and scratches are so small people don't see or feel them.  Great.   I read about an incident in some cave somewhere where there were so many rabies infested bats in such a small space that some spelunkers contracted rabies through the bats breathing into the air.  Oh no, I think, this bat definitely breathed on me during his Godzilla move.  I am convinced I have rabies.  I go back out to the yard to look for the bat in the hopes of recapturing it and sending it in for testing (thanks again to Google for the suggestion) but the bat is no where to be found.  Lovely.

By the time Ryan gets home that evening, I am a mess.  I tell him the whole story and that I am sure that the bat gave me rabies.   He gives me a look that says "Are you crazy?" combined with "When is the last time you ate?" He checks my forehead for fever.  He spends the rest of the evening talking me down and assuring me that if the bat had indeed bit, scratched or even spit on me I would have known it.  He reminds me that the bat's behavior could be attributed to being trapped in our garage for several days without food or water, not necessarily rabies.  But he breathed in my direction, I say, and remind him of the unfortunate spelunkers.  He counters with the fact that a bat hissing at me outside is not the same situation.  In the end, the logical side of me wins out and I decide that I most likely did not contract rabies from the bat, but it was a long time before the nagging thought completely left the back of my mind.  Four years later, I think it's safe to say the only thing I got from the incident was a good bat story.

By the way, I've decided I won't be going after the squirrel with a butter dish....it's not nearly big enough.  I do have a gallon ice cream bucket however...

So THAT'S How it Works

Attempting to explain nursing a baby to Brady the other day and he says "So, you have a cow inside you?"  Hmmm.  My response - "Something like that."  He's either going to need therapy when he gets older or fail biology.  Possibly both.

Welcome Caleb

Caleb William was born on August 17th at 6:46 pm, 7 lbs, 9oz, 21" long.  The boys are enamored with their little brother and so are mom and dad.  He's a content little baby who is already fitting right in.

Another quick update to the blog name and here we go.  The way I see it, three times the boys means three times the adventures, right?