Wordless Wednesday

Flamingo Gardens gift shop -- all flamingos, all the time ....

"Free" ice cream

Today is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's, so I forced persuaded some friends to go with me today. Because a good friend is there when you eat ice cream, but a great friend is there when you have to drive for miles and use lots of gas to get to the closest place where the free ice cream is.

We chose the Ben & Jerry's at Sawgrass Mills Mall, a kiosk near the Colonnade area. That's the White Seahorse Entrance for old-timers, aka the Rainforest Cafe entrance. We were so eager to get our free ice cream that we arrived before the kiosk was open, so we decided to let the kids play in the Rainforest Cafe play area. Except that was closed too. We watched Rainforest Cafe employees clean the alligator pit (fun job!) until someone came and opened the play area.

Before we knew it, lunch time rolled around, and the kids were hungry. I have always wanted to try the casual French cafe in the Colonnade (Paul's?), but we thought the kids would have more fun at the Rainforest Cafe.

My friends and I all agreed we made the wrong call.

We were the first people seated, yet it took about 40 minutes to get our food. We ordered a hamburger, house salad and a cheese pizza. What's so hard about that? The server -- who was unfailingly cheerful, despite my son's food-flinging habits -- came back after ordering to ask me if I wanted the 10-inch or the 6-inch pizza. The 6-inch was fine -- but it turned out to be from the kid's menu, not the nice four-cheese pizza on the regular menu. The server didn't explain that. So basically, I paid $6.35 for the Chef Boyardee special.

Eating out with toddlers, time is everything. They don't like to be strapped into high chairs or booster seats in the first place, and you can distract them with toys for only so long. If you don't feed them when they're hungry, they make everyone in the restaurant pay by shrieking and wailing! Sitting and waiting for 40 minutes for food to come, and then eating (er, throwing food on the floor), and then waiting for the bill to come .... That's a lot of sitting for a perpetual-motion creature with a short attention span. And even the Rainforest Cafe thunderstorms, fish aquariums and animatronic gorillas can't help you then.

Eventually, we did get our free Ben & Jerry's cones. And made a donation for a good cause.

But next time, ah, next time, I'm going to Paul's.

Maybe without children.

Fun with peacocks

All work and no play makes families dull, not to mention they want to strangle one another or at least pull one another's hair out.

Not that I'm speaking from personal experience, of course.... Ahem.

This weekend, our family went to Flamingo Gardens for a little play. We hadn't been there in a while, and we wanted to get our fix of peacocks. That's right. Because a place called Flamingo Gardens should totally be known for its pea fowl.

We came at the right time of year, apparently, to see the peacocks putting on an impressive show for the peahens (aka lady peacocks):



Even tail down, the peacocks were fun to watch.



And I thought I'd treat any possible readers to the seldom-photographed backside of the peacock:



After watching the peacock show off his feathers, was it wrong of me to tell him I was so impressed that I would go out with him?

You can lead a toddler to food, but you can't make him eat

My son is a good eater.

Except when he's not.

Some days, he will chow down everything on his plate, and I gladly give him seconds, plus dessert (usually a graham cracker or a little whipped cream).

Other days, he'll eat something the size of a button and declare the end of his meal by pushing away his dish -- or, most likely, dumping it on the floor.

Like today for breakfast. I gave my son some fresh, delicious blackberries and a mix of his favorite cereals.

He flung his plate like a Frisbee. (GRRRR!)

At lunch, I served up dainty pieces of turkey, some home-cooked pasta and peas. Surely by now he'd be hungry because he hadn't had a decent meal since dinner last night. Right?

My son tucked a few handfuls of lunch into his mouth and waved away the rest.

After his nap, I cut up a sweet organic apple for a snack.

And do you know where I found him?

Hoovering up a few little pieces of cereal I missed cleaning up (from breakfast), which had by now stuck to the table.

I can't win.

And some day, maybe I will find out why he turns away from actual, real food (his favorites, no less!), but find a stick on the ground and start gnawing on it.

In which I overcome my pettiness (sort of)

So my husband says to me, "Did you see the article I left out for you?"

"No, where?"

"There on the kitchen table."

"What, this city magazine?!" I asked in disgust.

"Yes."

"You know I don't read that!" I said.

And the poor man ducked into another room.

Our city mails us a glossy magazine every quarter, which I promptly put in the recycle bin. I refrain from even opening it because I once applied to be the city's communications person who would have worked on said magazine, and the city didn't hire me. Spurned by the city, I decided to never look upon their verbiage again.

Yes, apparently I am that petty. (I'll show them! I'll never read their magazine again! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!)

My pettiness came to an end, though, when I glanced at what my husband left out for me.

Residents urged to be cautious of urban coyotes



"...most residents would be surprised to learn that the City is also home to some urban coyotes.... To date, no incidents have been reported."

Which led me to wonder: if no incidents have been reported, how does anyone know there are coyotes roaming around? Did they show up for story time at the library? Were they seen at the drive-through window at Wendy's? Were the coyotes standing in line trying to get tickets for a Panthers game?

I take my son to parks all over the city (all over the county, for that matter), at almost all times of the day, and we have never seen a coyote.

We live next to a park that's along a major canal, and we have never seen a coyote.

The cats that wander the neighborhood haven't seen any coyotes, either. If they did, they probably wouldn't be here to vouch for that ....

So have you seen a coyote in South Florida?

And isn't my husband great for pointing out such news to me?

As for the magazine, it included information about a South Florida punk band, so I guess the person who stole my job the person who runs the magazine can't be all bad ....

Wordless Wednesday

Historic landmark Stranahan House in Ft. Lauderdale on the New River

Earth Day at the Tropic of Mom

Here I was all proud of my new blog (one week old already! almost a veteran!) and how I planned to post every week day. (Whoever thought weekends were for relaxing got it all wrong. My weekends are crazy busy.)

And then BellSouth ruined my plans! Yesterday, the phone and the Internet service just crapped out on our home. When we called, BellSouth said it was a quote-unquote major outage. Oh, yeah? How come I didn't hear about it in the news, then?

Anyways.

It's probably just as well to post this post today instead of yesterday, because today is Earth Day! Even though weekends are busy, I took my boy to a nearby park this past weekend where there was a fun Earth Day festival happening. Well, it was either an Earth Day festival, or it was a Girl Scout sing-along/dance-a-thon where they give out plants and show off crocodiles and alligators and the vans in the parking lot say, "Bluegrass music is happiness in motion" but there's a truck with Georgia plates carrying plants to give give away while parked on top of clumps of native fakahatchee grass. Yeah. Nice.

So not only did my son get to see a crocodile and an alligator, but we also saw a great horned owl:



And I got to hold a baby gopher tortoise:



Overall, a pretty cool day. And I scored a couple native plants for free -- some blue porterweed, which attracts butterflies.

What a way to love your mother!

Another mom's junk is, invariably, my treasure

Our next-door neighbors are expecting their third boy in a couple months. Making way for baby, they have been putting out stuff on the curb almost every day. ("We're too busy to have a yard sale," Mrs. Neighbor told me.)

The first day, I eyed the table they put at the end of their driveway. I thought it would be perfect for my son because he's learning how to use crayons. It turned out to be an end table -- a little too tall -- but would he know the difference? It's not like he watches those home decorating shows. If the height turns out to be a problem, maybe I can get my husband to cut the legs down.

Yes, apparently I am that cheap. But I tell myself it's recycling and I'm just doing my part to save the planet.

The next day, it was an Elmo activity toy-play-table-thingy that probably makes a lot of noise, including that Elmo laugh.

Last night, it was my husband who did the treasure hunting.

"Come here," he said as soon as he came home.

He led me outside to the street, where light shone down from heaven upon a blue toddler drum set, waiting idly to be banged upon. I squealed because we had been thinking about giving our son a drum set for his next birthday. Now here was one headed for the landfill but wishing for a home, and my husband and I were happy to be the drum set adoption agency.

My husband told me it was my turn to take the haul from the neighbors'.

Without hesitating, I went to their door.

Mr. Neighbor greeted me with, "Yes, help yourself to anything you want."

Because that's how transparent I am. Hi, just your crazy neighbor asking for your stuff again.

"We also have a nice twin bed," he said.

"Oh, that's so nice!" I told him. "Our son's not ready for a bed yet, though." I'll take a flat-screen TV, though, I thought.

If any of our other neighbors were looking out their windows right then, they would have been treated to the sight of me awkwardly hefting a tiny drum set across the lawn and through our doorway.

My husband, who was now inside our home to watch our boy, inspected the drum set as one of our new treasures.

"Maybe we should just tell the neighbors to start putting their stuff in our yard."

You gotta love a place where sharks cause traffic jams

How cool is it that the week I start Tropic of Mom (which has a spiffy new look, no?), the Miami Herald sends me an e-mail saying it has a brand-new online forum for South Florida parents called MomsMiami? Oh, those reporters are good. Too good -- it's like they're going around inside my head! Sorry, reporters -- my boy takes up enough of my mindshare. You'll have to get a scoop somewhere else!

Speaking of the Herald (or the Hrelad if you can't spell), I loved its article about how a shark caused a traffic jam on Lower Matecumbe Key. A fisherman was doing a catch-and-release deal with a lemon shark, and apparently hordes of people driving by just stopped their car on the road to go over and see what he was doing with the nine-footer! Sadly, though, the people trampled some native plants that was a poor Eagle Scout's now-ruined project. If that was my son, I would be so mad!

Wordless Wednesday

Boca Chita Key, Biscayne National Park

So, great weather, huh?

Many people chat about the weather to break the ice or just cover the dead air with another person, but in South Florida, talking about the weather is a legitimate hobby. I think you can even get tax deductions for any expenses related to it. Turn on the evening news, and if not too many people were shot or politicians caught money laundering or fake doctors found practicing medicine, the weather will be the first thing in the newscast.

I think South Floridians are fixated on the weather because any deviation from the usual 94-degree, 90-percent-humidity, partly-cloudy, chance-of-afternoon-showers forecast is just plain weird.

Like today. When I woke up, it was 57 degrees! Even now, in the middle of the day, it's barely 62. And it's the middle of April.

Weeeeeird.

The brisk weather only causes me to be giddy. It's not just the lack of humidity, though, or the fact my naturally frizzy hair actually lays flat (although that's a reason to celebrate right there). No, this great weather sets off a game-show-prize-winning sound in my head because I can dress my son in a sweater! Possibly even a couple of layers! With socks and shoes!

I am a babyclothesaholic, and I enjoy few things more than dressing my boy in cute clothes because I know it's just a matter of years before he is either protesting clothes and running around naked, or wearing nothing but black T-shirts with questionable sayings on the front. That's why this morning it took me a full 10 minutes to figure out what to wear. For him.

I had to be selective because today is possibly the very last day until the end of December the temperature is going to be this low. I settled on a long-sleeved shirt with a fuzzy puppy-soft striped hoody and jeans, if anyone is interested. Clothes he might never wear again, considering how fast he's growing.

Truly, there should be a 12-step program for this . . . .

Poison berries and bad dogs and wasps, oh my!

There's something I need to confess right here, right now from the beginning.

I am a paranoid parent.

I don't really mean to be. When I was younger and hipper and childless, I totally knew I wouldn't be. But I am.

My friend Guinevere and her family are moving into a house (I know!), and I said I would watch her son and my son while she unpacked a couple of boxes this afternoon. The weather is so amazingly beautiful today that the boys and I just had to go outside in the yard and play.

Guinevere's backyard has such a nice, blue, leafless pool and such a nice, green, weedless lawn that I almost want to hate her. But anyway, the boys were playing in the yard (and YES there is a fence around the pool) when the neighbor's dog started barking.

My son, the dog magnet, had to investigate.

The boys toddled over to the chain-link fence and squealed their delight at seeing what truly could be mistaken for a small black bear. I tried not to freak out as images of dog-mauled children and headlines about certain breeds of dogs that shall go nameless (you know the ones) flashed through my mind.

But then I noticed my son had something red in his hand, and I noticed it was a small berry. The perfect size for choking. I looked around and noticed the neighbors with the dog had a red-berry-producing hedge planted on their side of the fence, and several berries were scattered along the ground. Now, I know a lot of plants, but I don't know this one, and so of course I assumed it was poisonous.

So I have a small bear barking on one side of the fence and two rambunctious one-year-old boys picking up berries while giggling at the dog. And then they wanted to put their fingers through the fence to touch the dog (the nerve!), and I imagined fingers being viciously bitten off. I tried to gently pull the boys back from the fence, although I'm sure a bystander would have seen me throwing myself on top of them as if protecting them from shrapnel.

The boys were on the move, running back and forth along the length of the fence, which the dog bear thought was great fun. That clever bear found a perfect spot for viewing the boys where the poison-berry hedge was thin.

And then he stood up on his hind legs. And looked me in the eye.

Right about then, my son found some kind of electrical-stick-in-the-ground thingy and knocked the cover off, causing a swarm of wasps living inside to start buzzing around.

And even though I haven't worked out in months, I picked up one boy in one arm, and the other boy in the other, and I carried 60 pounds of wriggling toddlers back inside the house.

A beautiful day outside, ruined by my paranoia.

I'll probably find out the bear is a therapy dog, and the poison berries are an exotic South American fruit the neighbors make jam out of, and the wasps don't sting. Or something.

- - - - -

I am working on a cool design, so no one has to put up with this blandness anymore....

Predork

I finally have a name for this blog. I have been thinking about it for days. I'd much rather have been writing instead of thinking up some name that hadn't already been taken. Thanks so much, all you clever moms out there, for making this extra hard.

My husband said he would be fine with me writing this blog as long as it didn't cut into the time I spend making chocolate chip cookies for him. Which is practically zilch anyway.

I'm not a superstitious person, but I am a little worried that my word verification was p r e d o r k.

I am not kidding.

So now that I have outed myself as a predork who previously used to bake chocolate chip cookies, here is my blog.