Knock, knock!

Knock, knock!

Who's there?

Neighbor.

Neighbor who? What neighbor? I don't see anyone.... Oh, down there! Hello, Man-cub!

Yeah, that's a hilarious joke. But probably only if you were there.

See, my son has learned to knock on doors. And while watching him push his stroller around in front of our house, he decided to bolt up the driveway of our neighbor and knock on the door.

After trying to explain to Mr. Neighbor we weren't really trying to get his family's attention, my son made his way inside and found their four-year-old son's room full of toys. Toys the Man-cub hadn't seen before or tasted yet. Their son seemed happy to have a surprise playmate.

So I nervously chatted with Mrs. Neighbor, talking about their skylights, the boys and Hurricane Wilma. When my son found a stash of toys next to the family room couch and made a move to dump them all out on the floor, I said goodbye, mentioning our front door was unlocked and it was now dark, and, you know ... serial killers and all that.

Even though I was embarrassed the Man-cub invited us over to the neighbors' -- and yes, even though it was awkward -- I almost had a case of the warm fuzzies. One great thing about kids: they have a way of bringing people together.

Rule number one: Confuse your predator

My son loves a good chase. He loves to have me chase him so much that even when I'm not trying to chase him, he starts running away from me. All I have to do is take a few steps toward him, and off he goes. Great fun, let me tell you....

Today, I was chasing him around and around the house when he suddenly stopped and turned around to face me. This was different. I crouched down and looked at him, wondering what could be wrong.

"Hug!" he said, and gave me a hug. Then, a sweet little kiss from his tiny mouth.

"Oh, sweetie--" I started to say.

But then he was off and running down the hallway again.

Oh, he's good. Very good.

What is the place of this place?

Today I was thinking about what makes a place its own place. (I was also thinking about my belly button. Not in a meditative kind of way, but just remembering how when I was pregnant with the Man-cub and my belly button sort of turned inside out, there was black stuff stuck to it and I asked a nurse if it was dirt or if that's what belly buttons are supposed to look like. She just smiled, which means it was dirt, and now I make a point to really wash my navel.) Now that there are shopping centers with the same chain stores from sea to shining sea, and now that housing developments look so similar that sometimes you can't find your way out to a main road, what really makes a place its own place?

Other than the humidity, heat, palm trees and wild parrots in my backyard, on a given day, how would the fact I live in South Florida have leave marks on my day-to-day life? The way I live might be the same as a woman in North Dakota for all I know. It's true my family might stock up for a hurricane at the beginning of hurricane season, and we've never had to buy snow tires. We have a pool, but from what I understand that's getting more common across the country. And thank you, Bealls department store commercials, I do get to wear my toe rings year-round. But I don't go to the beach much. My husband and I do make a pilgrimage to Everglades National Park once or twice a year (but only in winter, after a fateful mosquito-ridden outing one June).

Maybe summer isn't the best time of year to be asking myself how my life is different from someone's in North Dakota. Maybe I should wait until winter and then ask a North Dakotan. But no matter, right now I'm wondering what geography is doing to my life.

My husband's family has been in South Florida since the 1930s. For my husband, South Florida is the only home he and his family have ever known. Until global warming makes the ocean rise and swallow us up, my husband will probably still live here.

The Man-cub is the fourth generation to live in South Florida. Will he grow up as a South Floridian, or a person from just another fill-in-the-blank place?

And is there anything I can/should do about it?

A toy story: Imagine a revolt

I loved the movie Toy Story when it came out, even though I was kidless then. That toys come to life when you're not looking is something lots of children imagine.

But it's also something parents fear.

Because toys have already taken over every room of my house.

You'd expect toys in my son's room:


Look away, Leap!

And also a few in the bathroom:


Rubber ducky, you're the one, la la la la la...

But we have toys in the front room, too:


The flooring looks like a basketball court, so...

There are even toys in the kitchen, primarily on the fridge:


The duplicates of I and O are missing. My son has it in for vowels, apparently. This makes it impossible to spell indefatigable, Cro-Magnon and many other words.

There are toys in the family room:


Oh, who am I kidding? It's not a family room anymore -- it's the playroom.

There are toys in the office:


A toy leftover from the Man-cub's baby days

And a stash of toys in my bedroom too:


Please don't lecture me about my bedroom being a sanctuary and all that. When I'm getting ready in the morning, my son plays with the toys, and I can brush my hair in peace.

And, why yes! Those are Velcro hair rollers, circa 1998. Not toys, but fun anyway.

If all of these toys came to life and led a revolt, we'd be surrounded and in big trouble.

Not to mention, most of them probably speak Mandarin Chinese so we wouldn't understand the demands of their revolution....

Never wear sequined thongs in an aviary

My son has had The Very Hungry Caterpillar book for more than a year now but seems especially interested in it lately. Like probably most kids around his age, he likes to touch the holes where the caterpillar has eaten through all the food in the book.

Wait, stop the story for a moment. Did you know the author, Eric Carle, lives in the Florida Keys? That's all I wanted to say....

So when you get to the last page of the book, the caterpillar has turned into a beautiful butterfly. By then, we've passed all the pages with the holes in them, so my son has lost interest in the book by the end. But I decided to turn the book into a butterfly, moving the sides of the book up and down and make it "flutter" around his head.

Now he loves the end of the book. In fact, the boy will even skip the pages with the holes just to get to the butterfly at the end and make it fly.

With his new interest in lepidoptera, I thought he'd enjoy going to Butterfly World. We went today. The first part of the butterfly garden you enter is amazing! There are butterflies everywhere you look.

To dress for the occasion, I put on a pair of blue flip-flops that are topped by butterflies made out of sequins. Cute, huh? Well, when we got to the lorikeet aviary of Butterfly World, a bird there also thought my shoes were cute. In fact, the bird decided to stand on top of the sequined butterfly. My son was amazed, the lorikeet keeper (say that five times fast) was curious, and I was amused.

Until that little bird finally moved on, and I noticed he left behind green poo on my toes. Niiiice!

Overall, my boy enjoyed Butterfly World. We'll definitely go back -- but next time, I'm wearing work boots.

A mouthful of sleepless nights

Picture something that has a lot of teeth.

Maybe



or



You might imagine



or



How about a baby with a mouth full of teeth? Ever heard of that?

My son started teething at three months old and got his first two teeth before four months. By the time he was a year old, he had 10 teeth, including at least one molar. My mother insists it's a sign of intelligence. (But she also said that about my brother, who took his sweet time getting his bachelor's degree to graduate at age 31 and still doesn't have a job a year later.)

Because my boy's teeth came in so fast, there was no way I could relate any of his regular fussiness or growing-baby symptoms to cutting a new tooth. Because there was always a new tooth. Teething was the norm.

When I tell people my child won't sleep or eat or is pooping a lot -- the bold excitement that has ruled my life this week -- they suggest he's teething. And I have to consider that, because as strange as it sounds, I'm kind of clueless about teething. My son knows all about it, of course, but as the mom I've just chalked it all up to general obstinate toddler crankiness.

The past couple of nights when the Man-cub has woken up wailing, I helped him go back to sleep only to have him wake up a half-hour later. Too tired myself to put up with a sleepless child the first night, I lay down with him on the floor of his room -- and he was almost instantly asleep.

Last night, I skipped the floor (you're welcome, hips) and took him straight to my bed after giving him a dose of Infant Morphine Motrin. He did end up with his feet on my husband's head, but I say little toe imprints on your face for your morning meeting are a small price to pay for a night's rest.

Who knows how tonight will go, but I have to remind myself to try to count my son's teeth. I stopped checking after 14.

Fast-food summer?

Yesterday, I took my son to a park where he could run down the boardwalk among the cypress trees and play on the playground. When your child's face is covered in sweat, though, that's a good sign it's too hot outside to play. When the temperature soars above 90 and the U/V index is 11, what's a mama to do with an antsy child?

So we moved our operations indoors and went to a library we hadn't been to before. The library didn't really have anything for little people, though. My son did pick up a book by Pearl S. Buck, so I know he enjoys classics. And he tried to read it, he really did. But when he discovered the women's restroom -- which had an open type of entry, not a door -- had excellent acoustic properties perfect for squealing, I knew it was time to leave.

Up the street, I found -- ta da! -- an indoor playground. It was connected to a McDonald's, though.

Let me mention right here that I made my own homemade baby food from organic fruits and vegetables. Three times a day, I try to make sure my son gets a meal with all of the four food groups. I give him new foods to try all the time. We don't eat a lot of fast food.

So it was inexplicable why my car pulled into the McDonald's parking lot. Amazing that I picked up my child, opened the door and went inside. Strangely curious that I ordered -- gasp! -- a Happy Meal.

But you know what? My son was indeed happy. He ate all four pieces of chicken and all of the apple slices. (You can get these instead of french fries.) He only played with the cookies. He got to watch every car ("Car! Car!") leave the drive-through. Afterward, he was happy to play in air-conditioned comfort with a boy close to his age.

The boy's mother told me about another McDonald's with an even better indoor playground. And you know what? We went there today. This time, we shared a yogurt parfait. And my son had a grand time. Until I caught him stealing french fries from other kids while they were playing.

So am I turning into one of those mothers who takes her kid for fast food every day? Those terrible mothers who supposedly don't care about nutrition -- who don't have time to make their children a healthy meal? Am I going to end up on page five of the local section and get booed by my neighbors for exposing my child to a fried sandwich?

Well, it sure beats sweating or getting skin cancer.

Pushy

If anyone is reading me, welcome to my wildlife blog -- I mean my mom blog.

Just to prove I can write about my child, I'll tell you about one of his hobbies. He loves to push things around. I think it started when I got him a hippo push toy to help him steady himself when he was learning to walk.



(Not actual picture of my son.)

Then my mother gave him a ride-on-top/push behind Winnie the Pooh train for his first birthday. Because the train has lights and lots of buttons to push and plays repetitive songs that are as loud as the runways at Miami International Airport, my son thought this was way more fun and quickly abandoned his hippo.



(Also not a picture of my son.)

Now my child has moved on to strollers.



We got a free, lightweight umbrella stroller with the last car seat we bought. I bet if I put a pedometer on my son, it would prove he gets those 10,000 steps in, plus, just pushing this thing around the house. And it doesn't even have a single light or button, and doesn't play music. Weird.

The problem is that he doesn't want to ride in strollers anymore. He'd rather push them. (Sorry, Paula! My son didn't know your beautiful baby girl was in that stroller. Honest.) I try to take him for a walk to the park around the corner, and he throws a fit because he wants to push the stroller down the street. Believe me, I'd rather let him do that than be the victim of another one of his tantrums, but I can't let him loose around all those cars on the road. When we get to the park, he wants to push the stroller around -- the slides and swings, he can take them or leave them, but don't get between him and his stroller.

It's not just strollers. If we're at Target and I try to put him in the seat of a shopping cart, he reaches out to the bar with both hands so he can push it. While he's in my arms. Once he's in the seat of the shopping cart, and we pass by someone's unattended cart, he strains to reach out and push it. While he's sitting in his own cart.

Today when I asked my son if he'd like to play outside, he smiled and immediately situated himself in that little umbrella stroller. OK. Well, this was different. He let me push him out onto our patio ... past the pool fence ... onto our dry, crunchy weed patch beautiful backyard lawn. Then he heaved himself out of the stroller, knocked me out of the way and started pushing it around. The little sneak!

As I watched my son navigate the yard with his wheels, I started thinking, you know, our society really needs people who can push things. This is a very valuable technical skill. Where would we be, for example, without the fancy restaurant waiter who pushes the dessert tray to the table? The guys who haul hand trucks stacked with beverages to stock the shelves? The intense medical professionals wheeling a hospital gurney? People in management? Oh, wait -- managers push people around, not things.... Anyway, I'm sure I could come up with more jobs that require pushing as a skill if I thought about it some more.

I think the kid is going to be OK.

The cult of Thomas

Fearing that your child will someday join a cult is a real fear. And, I'm learning, it can happen as early as around two years old. I learned this today.

Let me back up a bit. Way before our son was born (childless days for my husband and me), our Adorable Nephew celebrated a birthday where Thomas and Friends was the theme. His parents and grandparents hinted overtly that a Thomas gift would be de rigeur. My husband and I had to educate ourselves in order to attend this party. Who was Thomas? And those friends? Where did they hang out, so we could buy them?

It turns out they were everywhere. Those trains -- and their tracks, figures, accessories -- had infiltrated not only the toy stores, but craft stores like Rag Shop (RIP). Thomas and his disciples/friends had taken over a whole corner of Barnes and Noble.

It was that corner of the B&N that caught my son's attention today. After he tossed some books around read quietly on the reading platform in the children's section, we wandered over to the Thomas corner. An elaborate shrine had been set up for Thomas. My son approached the altar, made suspiciously to his height and appearing to look like a play table with train tracks all over it. Not just train tracks, but bridges, a water tower, a roundhouse and other things whose use I'm still unsure of.

And do you know my son played with those trains at that table for 20 minutes? That's like an hour in toddler years.

And he's not even two years old.

Oh, it starts young. Very young.

Those Thomas people are goooood.

I'm sure this isn't the last we'll see of Thomas....

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.