I’m sitting here watching television, searching for articles for my literature review, and what do I hear? Monkey is just outside of my bedroom, calling for me. When I go to see what is wrong (since it is 10:45 p.m.), he tells me “I can’t find anyone to snuggle with!”
So the two of us head back to his room to find him someone to snuggle with. Luckily he has about 5 stuffed dinosaurs in his bed. We got him settled back – for a bit. I hear the screaming heading my way again…
Have I mentioned that I convinced the monkey that only the white ice cream truck has good ice cream? There was once a white ice cream truck that visited our neighborhood. It has since been replaced by a much rougher looking green ice cream truck. The green one seems to be the only one that comes by now – but monkey is trained well. When he sees it, he says, “EWW! The ice cream from the green truck is GROSS!”
Great right? Saves me from having to visit the ice cream truck, saves money, allows me to continue giving him only “healthy” ice pops. All of that almost fell apart on Friday. Our little neighbor boy was visiting. Visiting might be a generous description of the event, but that’s a story for another day. We’re all hanging out in the house, monkey and neighbor are playing trains, when the music starts outside. Neighbor says, “YAY! It’s the ice cream truck!!” Monkey says, “Oh no, that’s the green truck, its ice cream is GROSS!” (Mind you – monkey is only two and neighbor is five). They argue about it for a while and I appease the neighbor by saying that though the green truck does have ice cream, it’s not the kind of ice cream that we eat at our house. We only eat the special ice cream that is in the white truck.
This seemed to ease the tension and both boys went back to playing with the trains. That is, until monkey decided to read his friend a book. Then the argument was about what animal was in the book…. Maybe it’s more trouble that it’s worth to have the neighbor come over to play. 🙂 (Not really – I think one of monkey’s first words was the neighbor’s first name… he loves the little boy…) *Do other two-year olds try to read their friends books? Or is that just because he’s the son of a librarian??
This gallery contains 4 photos.
Monkey finished his swim lessons today! I’m so happy it was only two weeks. Getting up at 6:30 each morning during vacation is just a bit much for me. Especially with all of the rushing around to get ready, pack … Continue reading
I have a serious pain in the neck. Really. It’s so bad that I’ve been taking pain meds about every 4-6 hours for a week or so. Last night at about 10:00 it disappeared. Now the muscles in my neck are extremely sore and I’m afraid that the pain is going to come back. It’s all the result of a car accident I was in about 15-16 years ago. Weird how some things just stay with you. Ugh….
I’ve had a million, okay maybe not that many but still quite a few, ideas for topics for the blog. I guess I need to keep a little notebook to jot down ideas. Otherwise they disappear. Life is crazy as usual. Even without working, I feel a bit on the overwhelmed side. Blogging is refreshing, I find that writing is cathartic, even if it’s just silly and no one reads it. I think of it as brushing up my writing skills. I know I’m going to need to work on them quite a bit in the coming months… fun times ahead.
Off to read more about quantitative methods or maybe library instruction – I can’t decide which seems more exciting right now. 🙂
Today was my first official day of summer break. What a wonderful feeling – even though I have tons of school work to do, I still have that ‘freedom-is-here’ summer break feeling. It’s wonderful. If you’ve never had a summer off from work, I highly recommend taking one off.
Since it is nearly summer, and I’m on vacation, I signed the monkey up for his annual swim lessons. Yes, I know he’s only two. BUT he has been in swim lessons since he was about 8 months old. He’s rather a good swimmer. And since we live in Florida, drowning capital of the US, I’m very paranoid about his ability to be comfortable in and around the water. I was a wee bit worried because he and I went swimming together a few weeks ago and he was quite scare of the water. Today he had no such problem. Other than wanting to get out of the water, he did swimmingly. 🙂 His instructor thinks he’ll only need a couple of weeks of lessons this year. Soon – later this year or early next – I think he’ll be able to begin to learn various swim strokes. Very cool.
After swimming, we headed to the golden arches for a reward breakfast. The reward isn’t actually the food, but the super cool playground. The monkey always asks to go into fast food restaurants to play on their playgrounds, but I rarely let him. Today was the exception. He had a great time. I realized that we need to find a different playground as a reward. The food is most certainly the same as it always has been, I had just never realized how incredibly greasy and bad for you it is. Ugh.
After all of this fun, we still managed to get to the grocery store. I wanted to go to the zoo too – but when I asked monkey he said that we couldn’t go. “The lions are closed, the monkeys are closed, the elephants are closed, and the dinosaurs are closed,” he says. I ask, “Why are all of the animals closed?” In his standard ‘my mom is an idiot’ tone he says, “The elephants have poop stuck in their butt, so they are closed. We can’t go to the zoo!”
After all of that, we did make it to our neighborhood playground. At about 1:00. In the full-sun. In Florida. In late-May. I’m an idiot – it was a crazy hot walk. Luckily I was thinking a little bit. I brought a cooler with assorted cold drinks and snacks that kept us hydrated.
I can only take pictures at swimming on Friday. I hope to get some good ones to post.
Off to give the monkey a bath. And to remove the pink nail polish from his toenails…. Adventurous days at home when mommy is on summer break. 🙂
Today the monkey and I went to the farm for our biweekly Sunday adventure, and to pick up our produce. There is a small play area equipped with a swingset/slide/monkey bar combo, a couple of bigwheels, and assorted other toys for the kids to play with. Usually we visit the chickens and pig, then we head to the play area for a while before we pick up the produce and listen to the live music. Today as we were admiring the chickens, monkey was particularly concerned with the one that had escaped the chicken area, a little boy we’d met before came up to us.
The last time we’d met the little boy we discovered that he was a boy and not a girl by listening carefully to his mother talk to him. Eventually she called him by his name, Michael, and we (or more-so I) realized that he was a boy. Michael is about 2 months older than the monkey, has very long hair, and is not quite as adventurous (by this I mean wildly crazy) as the monkey.
So Michael and the monkey start looking at the escaped chicken. Michael seems to want to catch the chicken, but monkey calmly and authoritatively tells Michael that they are only allowed to look at it – “We need to leave it alone to do its thing,” monkey says to Michael. Michael seems easily convinced by monkey, and begins to check out the pig. At this point, monkey is tired of the animals and is ready for some play area fun. So we start to walk off. Michael assumes that his is coming with us and starts to lead the way. I find his mother and tell her that he seems to be heading to the play area too. She’s obviously a much more relaxed parent than I am – she says “Oh, okay. That’s fine, I can see him from here.” (The playground is on the other side of one of the growing fields, so maybe she could kind of see him – if she had a set of binoculars…
So the boys and I head to the play area. At this time, I still can’t remember the little boy’s name – so I just keep referring to him as “our new friend.” Monkey doesn’t seem to think the same as me – he calls the little boy “Judy” or “Julie” I couldn’t really tell which. Eventually, like 10-15 minutes later, our friend’s mom saunters over. She starts calling the child by name, thus we now know the real name. Monkey still prefers to call him Judy.
Monkey and Judy get along so well that Judy’s mom heads off to other areas of the farm to stuff. We all play for quite a while and while sitting there I think of five things about the experience:
Today the monkey came home from school with a blowout in his sneakers (the super-cool silver Nike ones that make him run really fast) and without his bento boxes from breakfast yesterday and today.
He had a blowout in his sneakers.
This is probably due to several things:
1. The shoes have been worn regularly since Sept/Oct
2. The shoes make the monkey run really fast
3. The monkey is a BOY.
When we realized that he had a hole in his shoes, I asked him if he noticed it. Clearly he hadn’t by his extreme response. His first reaction was to shoo me away from the sneakers. His second response was to try to repair the damage – “Mommy, quick, go get me a band-aid for my blowhole!”
Somehow I convinced him that the “blowhole” would be okay without a bandage… 🙂
Bento Loss…
Yesterday I forgot to look for his breakfast bento and sippy when I picked him up from school. I took his lunchbox, and as I got to the car I realized that I didn’t have breakfast dishes – but figured I’d just get them in the morning. When I arrived this morning, I was late and it was hectic, so I didn’t look. Instead I just dropped him off with his normal lunch bag and bento box for breakfast. I wasn’t going to forget about them today though — when I picked him up it was a frantic search around the whole school for the monkey’s breakfast bentos – from TWO days. No one could find them anywhere. Curious…
When I talked to the monkey about it, he told me that he tossed them in the garbage. He is only two, so it’s always a toss-up on whether to believe him or not. But in this case, it seems to fit the evidence. His teacher is very upset and worried that I’m mad about the loss of the bentos. Luckily – I do not sent expensive bento boxes with the monkey for breakfasts! The total loss of the sippy and two bentos is probably $5. 🙂 Smart me, since some of the bentos I have are crazily expensive.
Today was my last day of work for 3 whole months! This means many things.
#1. Hopefully more sleep
#2. Monkey starts swim lessons
#3. Monkey can eat breakfast with me (after swim lessons) = no more lost bentos
#4. Homework should never be late all summer long
#5. Monkey is still going to school 3 days a week, since mommy is in school full-time and daddy is in Iraq
#6. Chores can (hopefully) get done in a timely fashion
#7. More regular blog posts
Until tomorrow or later this weekend, have fun and be safe. 🙂
this is just an aside
Mommy of a Monkey (& a princess) 