Devil's Den

Monday marked the boys’ very first hiking trip at a state park.  We woke up to a clear blue sky and a temperature in the mid-eighties, so it was a perfect day to get outside.  Gage actually complained about it being too cold!  After a long drive to the park, Tamara dumped us out by the Devil’s Den self-guided trail and off we went.

The older one immediately assailed me with questions about how long it would take to get to the cave, but those were quickly silenced once we reached our first rock formation.  Griffin was all over the place, climbing and poking around the many crevices that lined the hillside.  Gage enjoyed his fair share of climbing too, but was more enthralled with the oversized acorns that dotted the ground.  After the first four, I declined to carry anymore, so he made due with stuffing them in the waistband of his shorts.  I’m certain that if he had pockets, his pants would’ve been dragging the ground by the end of the day.  EVERY acorn he came across got added to his collection.

At times, it was a nerve-wracking experience for me, watching a six year-old and a three year-old, with so many sheer drops and steep slopes.  I was constantly herding them by hand and by voice as we traveled through some of the more dangerous areas.  It was during one of those times that the following conversation ensued:

Griffin:  Did you see that big hole up there?

Me:  Yes, that’s really high up, isn’t it?

Griffin:  Yeah!  I know what this is called.

Me:  What’s that?

Griffin:  It’s a buffalo.

Me:  I think you mean a bluff.

Griffin:  Yeah, that’s it.

Then a little further down the trail, with Gage in the lead:

Me:  Gage, be careful.  Those stairs are steep.

Griffin:  Yeah, it’s a buff.

Gage (with all the indignation a 3 year-old can muster):  I KNOW WHAT A BUFFALO IS!!

Me:  It’s ‘b-luff’.  The word is ‘bluff’.

Griffin:  Yeah, that’s it.

Griffin next to his 'buffalo'

By the end of the trail, my boys were starting to get a little hungry.  We crossed the street and found a nice shaded picnic table to enjoy our meal on.  While we ate, we watched kids playing in the water and throwing rocks.  This proved to cause an insurmountable setback with the boys finishing their food, so I packed it all back up while they shed their socks and shoes and hit the water. 

It didn’t take way too long for the kids to find a snake happily making its way through the shallows, with a minnow in its mouth.  I came over and knelt down as we watched it struggle through the water, desperately looking for a place to make shore that wasn’t covered with people.  Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a large rock hurdled over my shoulder and slammed into the small reptile.  The fish was jolted loose, and the snake disappeared.  I looked to see who the assailant was, only to find my oldest son standing there.  “Griffin,” I said, “I know that Mammy doesn’t like snakes and kills every one she sees, but I don’t want you killing them unless they are trying to hurt you.”  He thought about this for a moment, then replied, “OK.  But it was hurting that fish.” 

“Yes,” I said, “But that snake has to eat something, and as long as it’s not you, I don’t want you trying to kill them.”  Then I added, “That was a really accurate shot, by the way.”

His reply:  “Of course it was.”

We walked to the store, had some ice cream, and then the boys wanted to hit the trail again.  So off we went to scramble about the hills until it was nearly time for Tamara to pick us up.  With nothing else to do, we found our way back to the picnic table and then down to the water for more rock throwing fun.  Griffin and Gage immediately went over and introduced themselves to two college guys and tried skipping rocks with them.  At one point I looked up to see my youngest pointing over at me and announcing, “That’s my daddy over there.  His name’s ‘Daddy’.”

Being thusly introduced, I made my way over and helped them skip rocks until our ride showed up.  It turned out to be a wonderful day!

Tired, Dirty, and Happy!

Pop Goes The...Elbow?

One incredibly annoying problem inherent in all babies is the inability to communicate.  The best they can possibly do when something is amiss, is cry for all they’re worth.  While this can roughly let the parent know that something is wrong, that wrongness could range from a wet diaper, to an empty stomach, to the vocalizing of displeasure at having her hand stepped on by the dog.

Therefore, it is quite a relief when they reach that age where they can accurately relay these important messages, and take the guesswork out of the whole parenting equation.  This is something I was very happy about this past weekend.

On Saturday, Tamara’s grandmother had her 91^st birthday.  It was a great party with smoked ribs, mac & cheese, and some of the best birthday cake I’ve ever had.  We had fun talking, doing a little archery, and playing football in the front yard.  My two boys also had a ball terrorizing Aunt Francis’ dog and cats.

It was during one of these canine play periods that Gage ended up falling to the floor and injuring his arm.  The boy was inconsolable and couldn’t use his hand to grip much of anything.  A couple of Tamara’s cousins work in the field of nursing, and they looked the boy over pretty closely.  There was no swelling or discoloration, but they advised us to get him some motrin, ice it down, and let him rest for a while.  At this point, we honestly didn’t know if he was really, really hurt or if there was just a good measure of tiredness involved.

We took him home, gave him the drugs, and put him to bed.  The boy went out like a light, and slept all night long.  However, the next morning, Griffin woke me up about 6:00 and said Gage was calling for me and he couldn’t get out of bed.  We got him up and Tamara took him to ProMed as soon as it opened.

The doctor examined him and suspected that it was a dislocated elbow, but took some X-rays just to make sure.  After all, you don’t want to go yanking around on an arm if it is, in fact, broken.  Gage thought it was pretty cool to look at the pictures of his bones, and the films ended up confirming what the doctor thought.

Gage had a dislocated elbow, and it was merely a matter of popping it back in.  It will not be an experience that ranks very high on his “All Time Favorites” list, but Gage was immediately able to move his hand and arm again.  His first item of business was to console himself by picking up his green blanket and rubbing the tag on his lip.  That’s our boy!

I’m so glad he was able to tell us where the pain was and what actions caused him physical discomfort.  It made it possible to quickly get him the help he needed.  I suppose we should enjoy this while it lasts.  For some reason, we tend to grow out of that phase where we can express our pain.  Physical pain, sure, but the stuff that eats us up from the inside we tend to just keep to ourselves. 

It could be because of pride, though when you sit down and think about it, that’s a pretty silly reason to live in misery.  It might be that we think we’re the only one going through an issue, which again, is a somewhat ignorant assumption.  Everybody has problems, everyone needs a friend, and at many points in our lives, we all need help to make it through.

This was really highlighted for me at Sunday night’s church service.  We had communion, then spent some time talking and praying with different individuals.  It almost seemed chaotic watching people randomly walk all about the church and meet in small groups to share and pray, but there was no chaos to it.  It was a deliberately choreographed event where people followed the urgings of God’s Holy Spirit.

I’m thoroughly convinced that we weren’t meant to fight through life alone.  Even though most of us can make it through a crisis, it’s the day to day living that tends to eat you alive.  We all have problems, and I think most all of us have friends that care enough to help us work through them.  It’s really up to us to point to where the pain is and tell them how it hurts.

Say What II

Once again, it’s time to chronicle the funny things my kids say.

This first one we’ve been trying to correct for a while.  It was very cute when he first blurted it out, but it has really seemed to stick, and now he’s passed it on to his brother.  A while back, Griffin was at the store with his mother, and she bought the kids some toy dinosaurs.  On the way home, the oldest boy wanted to know what type of dino he had:

Griffin:  “Mommy, is this one a Ham-eater?”

Tamara: “A what?”

Griffin:  “A Ham-eater.”

Tamara: “Oh, you mean a ‘Meat-Eater’.”

(It is of interest to note that up until this point, we pretty much only had ham for sandwich meat at the house.)

Gage is at that age where he provides a wealth of humorous quotes: 

Only recently have we been able to persuade him that Chick-Fil-A is not called “Chicken-Bell.”

When he plays basketball with brother, they shoot the ball into a “Basketball Gold.”

One of his favorite breakfast foods is ‘Yogurp.’

He loves looking at reptile pictures in books.  Most specifically ‘Al-digators’ and ‘Croc-o-dye-yules.’

Griffin has begun his first foray into joking and intentional humor.  The other day, a joke was told, at his expense.  His reply, “Everyone’s a Chamelion.”  We think he meant to say “Everyone’s a comedian,” but the mental picture we get from his version is so much funnier that we’ve started using that one ourselves.

Gage has picked up an interesting little phrase that we don’t quite know what to do about.  It is either a mild toddler curse or an expression of excitement.  We think this because he uses it both when he’s frustrated and when he’s stoked about something.  Observe:

Me:  “Gage, go pick up your toys.”

Gage:  “Oh, spanx!”

Also,

Me:  “Gage, are you ready to go to Chuck E. Cheese?”

Gage:  “Oh, spanx!  We’re goin’ to Chuck E. Cheeses!”

Finally, there’s one last interchange I’d like to leave you with.  This happened last Saturday while the boys were playing outside.  Gage came in because he had to use the potty, and after he had been in there a while, I heard him call for me.  I went into the bathroom, and the following conversation ensued:

Gage:  “I have more poo-poos to push out.”

Me:  “Do you need me to wipe you, or are you finished?”

Gage:  “I can do it by myself.  You’re not the greatest.”

(Stunned silence from me)

Gage:  “But I love you.  You’re still my dad.”

Me:  “Umm, you just call me if you need any help.”

Gage:  “OK, I just need to push the rest of my poo-poos out.”

Diapers are NOT magic

Tuesday morning, as Gage lay down on the bathroom rug to get his diaper changed, he uttered one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a while.  I had unfastened his nighttime pullup, and was getting some wipes to clean him.  He pulled the diaper out from underneath him and tossed it on the tile, to which I said, “Gage, don’t pull that off yet, I’m not ready.”  His response was priceless, “I like taking off diapers!  It’s magic!”

As cute as that may be, I’m here to tell you that un-potty-trained diaper removal is in no wise magical.  For proof, I only need to look back at Sunday, to an un-diapering event that will forever be burnt into my memory…

We had not gotten a lot of sleep the night before, Tamara and I.  We were completely exhausted, and the baby woke up extra early wanting to be fed.  Tamara stumbled into the nursery fighting against a migraine that would last almost the entire day, and did what she could to feed the baby.  I took over after that, giving Haven a bottle of formula.

About midway through that bottle, Griffin materializes from around the corner and announces that Gage has poo-poo’s in his diaper.  This didn’t worry me a great deal, because Gage almost always mistakes a saturated overnight diaper for one having poop in it.  “Gage,” I called, “come here.”  A few moments later, my three year old waddles around the corner sporting a bowlegged shuffle that looks like he’s been on a horse for the past two days.  I sent him on to the bathroom.

Had I known two crucial things, at this point, it would have changed the whole course of the morning.  The first thing: Gage was NOT in a nighttime diaper, he was in a daytime diaper.  For those of you not versed in the subtle differences between the two, bear in mind that a nighttime diaper is designed to hold more.  The second: Gage was not done peeing in said diaper.

Like they say, hindsight is 20/20, and without that foreknowledge, I elected to continue feeding sister her bottle.  Upon finishing, I laid her down in the crib and walked toward the bathroom.  Gage was not lying down on the rug, as I had told him to do, but what bothered me more was the puddle growing under his right foot.  I quickly got him off his feet and started pulling his pj’s off.  The bathroom rug underneath him saturated almost instantly.  There was nothing left to do but take a step back, take a deep breath, and decide on the next course of action.  So I did take a step back, right into a puddle of pee.

At this point, I’m pretty thoroughly grossed out.  I pulled a Clorox wipe out from underneath the cabinet, cleaned my foot, and wiped it off on a part of the rug that was still dry.  I told Gage that he was not to get up, and then took the wet pj bottoms to the laundry room. 

Upon my return, I finally started taking care of the heart of the matter.  In my zeal to get the whole ordeal over, I gripped the sides of the pullup and yanked the Velcro tabs away from their fasteners.  My face and arms were instantly showered with tiny specks of urine.  I had no idea that was even possible.  The second tab on the other side did the exact same thing.  It was disgusting, but this far into the process, all that was left to do was wipe my face and move on.

When I lay the pullup open, I could see the liquid washing back and forth inside of it, like waves in a bathtub.  I actually had to go get a second diaper to lay on top of the used one and soak up the excess.

The next 30 minutes was eaten up with giving Gage a bath, washing the rug, and mopping the bathroom floor.  If ever there was a morning to be in bed with a migraine, this was it.

So, you see how I can say that taking off diapers isn’t necessarily a magical thing.  In my estimation, potty-trained children are where the real magic is at.

Who's Your Daddy?

A bit of strangeness has started happening around our house over this last week.  Gage, the newly minted 3 year old, has suddenly switched from calling us Mommy and Daddy to calling us Mom and Dad.

He wasn’t timid or tentative about it, either.  He jumped right in and never looked back, even though our five year old tried many times to correct him.

The first time it happened, it just struck my ears as being wrong.  Part of me sat there waiting for that final ‘E’ sound so that I knew the sentence was over.  It never came.  It was quite a surprise.  I don’t know what I was expecting; after all, very few people move into their adult life and still call their parents ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’.  I should have known it was eventually going to happen.  I suppose I thought that Griffin would come home from school one day and be “too cool” to call his parents by their usual moniker and switch to ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’.  Then, little brother would pick up on the trend and follow suit.

I have absolutely no idea what caused it.  Did he hear it on a TV show?  Did one of his friends at Mother’s Day Out do it?  Did he listen to what Tamara and I call our parents and try to emulate us?  It could be any or none of those things.  Maybe he just wanted to be unique.

One thing’s for sure, he’s our little independent boy, and he blazed the trail into this new stage.  And if I’m being totally honest, I kind of like it!  It makes me smile when I hear such a little boy address me in such a “grown up” way.

Griffin, for his part, still calls us Mommy and Daddy, and I like that too. 

Haven…she just kind of screeches at us, but we’ll work through that.