I Like Big Trucks and I Cannot Lie

Our city hosts a Big Truck Day every year. They have a couple of fire trucks, an ambulance, a police car, a huge combine, a garbage truck, a snow plow, the ice cream truck, a small semi truck, and some other big vehicles. It's basically a chance for kids to come out and actually get to touch and sit in these big vehicles.

Of course my boys were happy to get to see and touch all the vehicles. They were surprisingly patient waiting in all the lines, and the lines were long because the weather was so amazing.


Bee is funny in crowds of people. While normally he's the child who talks with every stranger, when the crowds get big, this kid gets nervous. He was certainly interested in all the trucks, but he didn't want to do anything unless he could be touching me too.

I think the favorite may have been the garbage truck. Moose will be eating breakfast and on trash day will hear a garbage truck go by. He will immediately get up and leave his breakfast to go watch the garbage truck go back up the street (we live on a dead-end street, so what goes down must come back up). And always, "It's a garbage truck!" with as much enthusiasm as the 2.5 year-old can muster. Apparently this is another way in which he takes after his father. His mother tells me that he wanted to be a garbage man for much of his childhood.

The Good Life

I love this view out my back door.

70-something degrees. Sun shining. Low humidity.

Moose and Bee are old enough and my backyard is cool enough that they are starting to be able to go outside without me. I can be inside doing something and they can make their own fun outside. Don't get me wrong...inside doing something means doing something in the kitchen, a room with a great view of of the back yard. And I peek out at them every other breath I take. They are not unsupervised.

There's a little voice in the back of my head that whispers about the possibility of something happening. I do my best to ignore it. I try not be to too "when I was that age..." about raising my own children because the world in 1980-something is not the same world as today.

But in this instance, I get a little "when I was that age..."

I think playing outside with each other is good.  They don't need constant adult interaction. They know where I am if they need or want me, as proven by the handful of times they come up to the door to talk to me. I always ask them if they're ready to come in yet, and there response is always "No!"

They find sticks in the yard and pretend to have magic wands. Bee brought his wand up to the door and turned me into a penguin, then a monkey, then a frog today. There's some world in the sandbox out there where there little trucks are alive and have personalities. The upper deck of their fort turns into a pirate ship and they call down to whoever's on the ground: "Ahoy down there!"

This is one of the things I want most for my kids: to let them be kids. To have unstructured play time where there imaginations are free to roam. To get a little dirty and not worry about it. To allow them to learn that they don't need to be constantly "doing something" and that sometimes the best fun can be had when you aren't doing anything.

A Baby Hippo

Bee has a very active imagination.

He held out his empty hands to me.

"Mommy. Mommy, look!"

"Oh yeah?" I said. "What do you have there?"

"A baby hippo!"

"Where did you get a baby hippo from?"

"In a cave!"

"A cave?"

"A cave! A cave in my bed!" (And yes, he really talks like there's an exclamation point at the end of every sentence.)

Where does he come up with this stuff? Oh well. It makes me laugh.

Big Day for My Little Guy

Today was a big day for my little Moose. Today was surgery day.

The surgery really wasn't a huge deal...I mean, nothing was drastically wrong with Moose. It's just a little something we needed to take care of or face an increased risk of cancer. Since the C word is such a scary word, we of course decided to go ahead with the surgery.

The day started off a bit rough with some poor choices surrounding traffic and getting downtown at 8am. We made it though. We were late, but we made it.

Moose did great for a long time. Playing happily with the toys while people came in to talk to us and verify everything 1898 times. But after about the 23rd person came in, he got suspicious and his demeanor changed. No longer did he want to play with the toys. No longer did he want to cooperate when someone asked something of him. No longer would he even look at someone when they were speaking to him.

The surgery itself went just fine. But the 2.5-year-old who came out was a beast. He was so upset. He was like a caged animal fighting for his life to get away from us, to get away from the nurses and to get away from the hospital. Even though he's just woken from anesthesia minutes ago and had 2 incisions in him, he kept trying to get up and run away from us all. We had to physically hold him down while he made the most terrible braying noises in between pleas to put him down, to let him go home, and to leave him alone.

And during all this, I started to feel a little sick. And then I started to feel a little woozy. And so I had to step back and have the nurse get me some juice. Way to go, Mom. Way to be there for your kid.

Once we got the nurses out of the room we were able to get him calmed down so we could get started on all the things we needed to do to get out of there. We got him to take some medicine--but not without a bribe of French fries.

Moose fell asleep on the car ride home. And literally as soon as I went to get him out of the car and his eyes were open, he was looking for his McDonalds. So that's what we did this afternoon: we ate McDonalds and cuddled on the couch.

A couple hours in and it was like someone flipped a switch in the kid. He'd been clinging and wanting to lay on me all afternoon, but suddenly he was walking around, talking, and looking for trouble. And when he started looking for trouble, that's when I knew my little boy was back.

Why, Yes, I Am a Mom to Boys

You know how I know I have little boys in my house?

Because I get to work and pull my laptop out of my backpack. Something falls on the floor when I pull it out. It's a plastic football player the boys got in their Happy Meals last week.

It made me laugh and it made me smile. But what possessed them to put this guy in my backpack? Oh, the mysteries of the universe.

Yes, He's My Kid

There's a trait in my family: prehensile toes. We use our feet like another set of hands. Drop your pen on the floor? No big deal, just grab it with your toes!

Moose is quite the clone of his father. If you compare their 2-year-old pictures, you would swear they were the twins, not Moose and Bee. Moose is also super-mechanically inclined, which is another trait that comes directly from his dear old dad.

I think it's pretty normal for parents to pick out in their kids what traits they get from which parent. For a very long time, I wasn't sure Max was mine. I mean, sure, I carried him and birthed him. But did his father somehow pass on 100% of the DNA? At times it was tough to tell.

And then, he started using his feet for things. And I knew at that moment, he was, in fact, my kid.

(Yeah...pants are not common when we're at home in the summer. Gotta let your skin hang out while it doesn't stand the chance of being frozen off in 2 minutes flat!)