Thar she blows

We hung out at the house for most of the day today since most of us are still getting over the plague that has descended on our house. But we decided to venture out into the sun for at least a little jaunt down to the park. A couple of blocks down, we notice the NBC and ABC news vans parked on the street. What could possibly be newsworthy in our quiet, little neighborhood? Well, it's been pretty windy today. So windy that one of the poor trees keeled over. Thank goodness the only casualty was the truck. Yikes.


After gawking at the accident along with all the other neighbors, we continued lolly gagging our way to the park. There's not much there little Emerson can do yet, but he's a big fan of the swing. Can't get enough of it. It's the cutest thing. We tried him out on the slide for the first time. He didn't seem that impressed. He just looked at me as if to say, "Really? That was it?" To be fair, the slide was only like 3 feet long so I can understand his ennui. He did get rather bold at one point and while I was sitting at the bottom of the slide, he turned around at the top and slid down by himself feet first and face down. I don't think he realized what he'd gotten himself into until it was too late, because there were a few tears at the end of his ride. But apparently that wasn't enough to deter him from doing it again. Got to give it to the little guy. He's quite the daredevil. 3-foot slides today, 100-foot rock faces tomorrow. I can see it already.

Baby animals suck

I've been living in a quarantine ward for the past week. I've had not one, but two sick babies to take care of. (I'm already bracing myself for the lecture I'll get about that last statement, but I don't think it's new news that men don't handle sickness well. It's ok men, we love you anyway.) So as I'm sure you can imagine, I was really looking forward to the weekend since we had fun plans lined up. Emerson, however, was still not 100% so we had to miss out on a friend's baby birthday party. I couldn't just stay in the house though, so I thought we'd head down to Long Beach where the El Dorado Nature Center was having "Baby Animal Day." Once a year, they bring out the baby animals that have been recently born at the nature center for everyone to ooh and aww over. Sounded like it could be good. Who doesn't like small, furry, squishable baby animals? So we drive aaaalll the way down there only to find out that the event has been canceled. What?! Why? Did they just not feel like coming out? What gives?

animal keeper: "All right guys, everyone up and at 'em! Big day today!"
baby animals: "Non cherie. We are not coming out today."
animal keeper: "What do you mean? Everyone's come out especially to see you."
baby animals: "Eet eez cold today. Zee sun is not out. We do not feel like eet. [as they turn their backs to the keeper] Pleez close zee door behind you. Merci."

I bet you didn't know baby animals had French accents. Well, that was a total bust. Back onto the freeway. On the way down I'd noticed an exit sign for "Hawaiian Gardens." When I passed it again on the way back to LA, I decided to pull off hoping maybe the day could still be salvaged. I wonder if it's anything like Huntington Gardens, I thought to myself. It's similar to Huntington Gardens if Huntington Gardens suddenly started holding black jack tournaments in their Rose Garden Tea Room. Um yeah, Hawaiian Gardens is a casino. Can I catch a break, ugh! I guess today just wasn't meant to pan out. Booo on you baby animals. Boo on you.

I deserve a prize

"I deserve a prize of some sort," I said to JD when he picked up the phone. "Oh really," he replies. "Yes. I'm not sure of what caliber this prize needs to be, but I deserve a prize nonetheless."

Flash back to the day before.... JD, Emerson and Gidget are hanging out in the front yard. As I'm about to rush out the front door to a friend's baby shower, JD drops this on me.
JD: "I think Emerson just ate a rock."
me: "What do you mean?"
JD: "Well, he was playing out here and I think he just ate one of these pebbles."
me: "How big was it?"
JD: "Small. It just happened so fast. I was standing here next to him, watching. And before I could stop him, he picked one of them up and his hand moved up towards his mouth. I went for it, but I couldn't tell if he actually ate it or not. What should we do?"
me: "Well, I guess we'll just have to wait until it comes out the other end."

And that's where I found myself. On the other end. Searching through what had come out the other end more specifically. And what did I find? No rock, just a bunch of blueberries. Four diapers later, and still no rock. Just more blueberries. I really didn't think I'd fed him that many blueberries, but diapers don't lie I guess. At the end of the day, I call JD laying claim to my deserved prize and state that at this point it's probably safe to assume the rock never made it into Emerson's mouth. He agrees. But, after our phone conversation, I get this text:

"well maybe just keep an eye out anyway."

I don't think so. Search party is being disbanded. Not the most pleasant mommy task I've had to accomplish recently. It's probably a good thing I don't freak out about these kinds of things because I have a feeling this won't be the last time I'll be looking for foreign objects in a dirty diaper. Ick.

Next month, Emerson will be turning one-year old. I feel pretty lucky that in his first year, the rock-incident-that-turned-out-not-to-be-an-incident is the most serious thing we've encountered so far. And ahem, I'm still waiting for my prize....