Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Oh the might! Oh the fury! Oh the poop!



This weekend began with what Isaiah might describe as a veritable utopia, if he knew those words, that is. We went to the petting zoo! My wonderful mom friend, Tammy, clued me in on a free petting zoo happening in the cities, so we decided to meet there with our kids and have a playdate. Michael's parents also had the day free, so they came with to be extra kid wranglers/paparazzi for us. Isaiah was pleased as punch to see his grandparents waiting for him by the big white tent. He was thrilled to see some of his favorite kids arrive shortly thereafter. But he was beyond ecstatic to be around the animals. There were goats, a zebra, goats, ponies, goats, a llama, goats, a calf, goats, a donkey, oh and some more goats. We brought Isaiah into the tent and let him roam free with the goats. Most of the kids under the tent were doing normal things like petting the goats or feeding them 50 cent handfuls of goat food. Isaiah, however, was not content to do such things. He decided the full potential of petting zoo joy could only be reached by throwing straw at the goats. So he did. For an hour. He picked up fistfuls of straw (laced with goat poo pellets - I know) and threw it onto unsuspecting, and rather apathetic goats for the entire hour we were there. The best part was that he laughed hysterically every single time he did it. I wasn't sure if I, as the mother, should stop him from throwing straw at the goats, but I didn't really see the harm in it. Sure he was getting goat poop on his hands, but I knew enough farm kids who survived to adulthood to worry too much about that. He never threw straw at the baby goats, and he never threw it at the other kids, so I considered the situation under control.

A few other factors that made the day so wonderful for Isaiah were that it was raining, so he got to use his frog umbrella, he got to hang out with his Walz grandparents and uncles, he enjoyed a McDonald's kiddie cone with his friends, and he had pizza for dinner. If I were a kid, that would have been a pretty perfect day for me too. In fact, it was pretty perfect for me even as an adult!

Melora slept like an angel through the entire petting-zoo experience, and she even slept through the part of the day where I was running through pouring rain with her in the sling under my coat and not very well protected by her ladybug umbrella (which she was gracious enough to share!) She's still a really great sleeper, especially at night. We swaddle her before we go to bed, which really keeps her calm and happy, so the past few nights I've been getting really nice long stretches of sleep. The one problem is that I don't wake up to change her diaper because she doesn't cry to be fed. So I wake up at 6a.m. with the realization that I haven't changed her for seven hours, and then I feel terrible for leaving her in a dirty diaper all that time. Sometimes the poop is still contained in the diaper, but on more than one occasion her diaper hath runneth over onto her nightgown and our sheets. This morning, though, was a whole different story. Melora's diaper was fairly dry and clean because she had been changed recently when I got up to go to the bathroom and get a drink. I was just beginning to wake up as the sun rose and filled our room with a relaxing spring glow. Suddenly I heard a low rumble and felt a tiny cannon blast beside me. Still groggy, I reached over to pull Melora closer to me when I realized my arm was wet. In my half-awake state, the solution was to simply use my other hand, which also became mysteriously wet when I touched her. So I pried my eyes open thinking that perhaps she had wet the bed. Nope. In that one mighty blast, Melora had shot poop up the front, up the back, and out the sides of her diaper. I woke up Michael, whose mind is even more clumsy than mine in the morning hours, and together we changed Melora's diaper, her outfit and our sheets. Then, like the second-time parents we are, we laughed about it and then fell right back asleep. If this had happened with Isaiah two years ago, we would have sat up and talked about how gross it was, perhaps taken a shower, who knows. In fact, in a similar episode when Isaiah was two months old, I actually screamed when he got poop on me. It's nice to know I'm not such rookie now, or maybe I'm just grosser.

Isaiah has shown some real acting talent recently. We've been reading a lot of Curious George as well as watching our daily dose of George during lunch. Isaiah began making monkey sounds quite a while ago, but it has grown into full recaps of his favorite episodes. For a long time I had no idea what was going on when Isaiah would say
"Ooo, ooo, aaaa, aaaah! I feed the ducks. Okay George!"
Then he would walk around the house flinging invisible duck food into the invisible duck pond. I sort of just nodded and tried to keep up.
Another time he was acting out a scene from a Curious George story where George apparently did something naughty. Then he told me,
"Sometimes naughty...need a time out." And he walked over to a corner and sat down. I was completely bewildered because I had never given him a time out in his life. Plus I didn't know what naughty thing he had done.
The lightbulb finally went off because we watched a Pixar short where a little girl loses her penny down a drain and makes an angry face to the men who caused her to drop it. Isaiah was eating dinner that night when he put on his best angry faced and pointed right at me.
"Isaiah, why are you angry?"
"I don't have a penny," he said with his accusatory finger waggling.
"Oh! I made you drop you penny down the drain, right?"
"Yeah!" He said as his angry face changed in to a grin. He quickly reassembled his features to be appropriately angry, and we acted out the scene again. He angrily pointed at me, and I gestured that I didn't have any pennies in my pockets to give him. So instead he took my pretend violin and played it until he got some pretend pennies from a pretend passerby and threw them into the pretend wishing well. (It makes a lot of sense if you've seen the Pixar short I'm talking about.) He's also acted out scenes from several other favorite books including Tom the TV Cat, Rainbow Fish, Peter Rabbit, and George goes Camping. It's amazing to me that a little boy can be so much fun every single day.

4 comments:

Christine said...

That does sound like a perfect day! The slings make it so easy to take baby along on adventures. I don't know what I would have done without them.

We swaddled our third baby using a commercial swaddler and found it really does help them sleep longer. I hope I didn't give that away (you can only get it online). I remember it being kind of expensive.

I'm so happy for you! Sounds like everything is going wonderfully! I had to laugh because we changed our sheets everytime baby spit up or anything with our first, then with the others we only changed them if it was poo, and if it was pee we changed them within a day or two. We're probably just grosser too. :)

I would like to talk about the Tourettes. As soon as I feel better, I'll e-mail you. Thank you!

Unknown said...

We enjoy that pixar short as well. And as for flinging poo and straw, Aide did a very similar thing at the petting zoo we were at. He was terrified of the full grown goats, but flinging poo at them made them more tolerable.

As for grocery shopping with 2, it's not as bad as it sounds, I have done it now 6 times (twice with Brandon) Sometimes we go to a regular grocery store and sometimes costco. Basically what I do is I feed Audrey right before we leave and she drifts off to sleep in the car. Next, you must strategically find a parking spot by a cart (so no dragging 2 kids to find one). Then I leave Aiden in the car until Audrey is unloaded and my bag is unloaded and stuff. and I put her car seat in the cart, but not down in, I rest it on the sides of the cart so I can still put stuff in there. Aiden sits in the seat with the buckle, and sometimes I bring along our little laptop DVD player (we don't have a TV at all, but sometimes Aiden likes to watch Curious George at the supermarket) and Audrey sleeps the whole time. If she is awake then I put her in the sling and Aiden in the cart. It's not as hard as it sounds, we usually go in the morning when it's less crowded. Sometimes I wait til the weekend or the evening if nothing is urgent and Brandon will either come with me, or stay home with one of the kids and that's nice too. Good Luck!

Lindsay said...

I just had to stop by and say I think you're doing amazingly well with 2! The fact that you're even getting blog entries in is amazing...not to mention trips to the petting zoo.

Congrats on your beautiful new baby. I was there about nine months ago (with my second) and remember oh so well learning how to do everything with two!

p.s. thanks for hanging out at MOMformation!

Andrea Frazer said...

Wow, what beautiful kids. Congrats on a great day! I had full intentions of getting a care package out, but will have to do it later this week. It is coming soon though!