Gbot, this morning, scowling in front of the mirror and wildly smoothing down his hair, which I’d just brushed into floofiness: “No! I look like a baby!”
Gbot, seconds later, after I’d help smooth his floofy hair flat against his head: “Noooooo! I look like a rich old man!”
Personally, I’d go for the baby look over the other any day of the week.
Mbot’s first visit to the pediatric dentist. Free Pac-Man in the waiting room, movies on the ceiling, and a balloon. Oh, and dental x-rays, sharp tools wielded gently by kind Amy, and three cavities. I tried to hide my shock and dismay, but I think they’ve actually greased the wheels of Mbot’s social life.
Mbot, pumping all by himself on the swingset at the park, to the six-year-old (judging from the gap in her front teeth) stranger girl pumping by herself on the swing beside him: “Do you know I go to the dentist now? Do you go to the dentist?”
Stranger Girl: “Yeah.”
Mbot: “I have this many cavities–” (untwines one hand awkwardly from the chain of the swing to hold up three fingers, then counts them) “–three.”
Not-Quite-Such-A-Stranger-Girl: “I have one.”
Mbot: “They’re going to give a filling. It’s weird, isn’t it?”
Friend Girl: “REALLY weird.”
Not this guy, silly–a beluga whale. (Mbot at the fabulous Phoenix Children’s Museum.)
To make things easy today, and to prove that the bots are still here, being their eminently quotable selves, I’ve transcribed a few lines from the past forty-eight hours. You can see that we haven’t been bored; our topics ranged from mammals to physics to love. They are all connected, after all.
Mbot, on the beluga whale: “We studied the Polar regions. All of us had to learn about the beluga whale. It hops around the sea scaring people.”
Gbot, on panda bears: “If I were a panda, I would eat ALL your bamboo.”
Mbot, on Gbot: “I want his stomach to get REALLY fat, so he floats away!”
Mbot, on me: “I think you taste good in your heart, Mom, cuz you make my heart beat really fast.”
Mbot on Junepbear: “Joompbear, you’re deesGUSting.” (I gasped inwardly when I heard this. Mbot was examining his old stuffed bear at close range, and I feared that he finally had gained some perspective on the ratty old thing’s rather poorly aging fur, which at this point doesn’t get a whole lot cleaner looking with washing. I feared I was witnessing the end of an era. I shouldn’t have worried. He continued lovingly, “You’ve got some jelly on your head!”
Mbot, on relativity: “So, germs think that garbage cans are continents?”
Gbot on ear cell hydration: “I poured water in my ear so my ear cells could have a drink.”
Mbot, from the back seat: “Can’t you please drop me off at Grandma’s, Mom? I really want to give you some peace.”
Mbot, having rethought his opinion of Gbot: “I want him to be cute for the rest of his life.”
Ditto, and right back atcha, kid.
Sorry it’s so dark. But it IS a cave. Mbot is modeling the giant bat ears that demonstrate how well bats can hear. So here he is hearing the story of the unlucky sloth, told over and over again, really really loudly.
For those of you who read yesterday’s cryptic post before I discovered that most of it was missing, I apologize. Now, in today’s few bot-free minutes, I will try to recreate it:
11,000 years ago, a sloth fell through a crack. It fell into a cave. It couldn’t get out. It died in the cave.
The kind docent in the Shasta Ground Sloth cave at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum told us this story on Sunday when we were admiring the fossilized skeleton and the ancient sloth poop that I managed to not delete in yesterday’s post.
The bots listened with great concern and then baraged the docent with questions. “Why did he fall through the crack?” (I was going to answer, ’because it didn’t come when it’s mother called it’ but she beat me with ‘Sloths don’t have very big brains.’) “Why could he not get out?” (There was no door.) “Why did he die?” (Because he couldn’t get out of the cave.) While Mbot tried on a giant pair of bat ears which magnified all the cave sounds, Gbot stood rooted in place beside the docent, craning his neck upward to look at her and repeating the questions. Perhaps hoping for different, better answers. But the answers didn’t change.
On the way home, he retold the story many times.
Gbot: “The three-tailed ground sloth fell through the crack. He fell into the cave. He couldn’t get out and” (voice lowering sadly) “he died in the cave.”
Over the next few days, the story was told over and over again. To Daddy, to Aunt Susan, to Grandma, to Nanny over the phone, to Miss Mary the music teacher. It was obviously sad and disturbing. How was I to know it was going to turn into a story of rescue and redemption?
On Wednesday, from the backseat, Gbot told the story again. “But Mama,” he said, “we could use Bob the Builder’s tools!”
“You’re right!” I exclaimed. “A jackhammer can cut through concrete and rock.”
Gbot: “Yeah, and we could make a door and he would say, ‘What a wonderful door you made, Mama and Gbot,’ and he would go through the door in the cave and he would go home to his mommy. And we would go home and talk about how the sloth fell into the cave and got out the door. And the sloth would say, ‘Thank you for making my door in the cave.’”
I praised his creative solution to the sloth’s big problem. Now, perhaps, we could stop hearing about the sloth in the cave. Although it was awfully cute.
But of course, as all answers do, this one led to another question. After a brief pause from the back seat, Gbot asked, concern edging his voice again,
“What if we were sloths, Mama?”
“We would be careful sloths, Spice Bear,” I said. “And we would always carry jackhammers, just in case.”
More about the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum later this week. There were many moments to savor. Today’s recommendation, which would have been yesterday’s recommendation if my post hadn’t fallen through a crack, is: Go there!
“
Ancient sloth poop at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
“But why could it not get out?” they asked, again, several times, with great concern.
“There was no door,” she replied.
* * *
I guess I should have named this post “Lucky Betsy’s Unlucky Day,” because when I came to see that the post had been published, it had, minus 99% of the story. The only thing that remained were the two lines above, from somewhere in the middle of the post. I have no idea how this happened. Nearly my entire text fell into oblivion, just like the giant sloth did 11,000 years ago. I’d stolen time to write about it while my niece watche the bots, and now she’s gone, and so it will have to wait for a moment when the bots are trying to spread yogurt all over themselves or open up the new apple juice container or tip over my coffee by themselves. Oh well. The sloth waited 11,000 years to be discovered by us; I guess it can wait another day. Sometimes I believe that motherhood and blogging are about as compatible as a ground sloth and an underground cave.
By all means, stop to smell the flowers–but does it have to be on the way to the bathroom?
At the end of the 2 1/2 hour drive to Flagstaff to escape the heat, my full bladder and I leapt from the car and bolted toward the restroom in the Safeway, Mbot in tow. Surely he had to go, too? Someone sadistic had located the restroom beyond the floral department. Mbot broke away. “Mom! Can we smell the flowers?”
I said yes, and squeezed.
He plunged his head in bouquet after bouquet. At last, he came up for breath from a bunch of roses. “Mom! Smell these roses! They smell deLIGHTful!”
I did. They did. And then we bolted for the bathroom. In another six months I will find it difficult to grasp why exactly this exclamation was so delightful itself: not only because Mbot was stopping to smell the roses, but because it is a delightful word for a 50-month-old to utter. It may have been the first time he’d used it. And no matter how inaccurate my memory has become since giving birth, I seem to have an acute sense for when I’ve heard a word uttered from either bots’ mouth. I know for sure that, last week, when Gbot climbed into his brother’s car seat that he’d finally inherited, the one with the coveted cup holder, and announced, “This car seat is spectacular!” it was the first time he had used that word.
It was spectacular.
I am a total novice in the collage department, but our trip to the Blockbuster yesterday called for a little something special. It was, perhaps, the shortest and most infuriating trip to a video store ever to be recorded in human history and memorialized with an amateur cut-and-paste project.
Always in the past (always being three times, past being the last five weeks, since I initiated our $5/month “family membership” in lieu of Netflix’s impoverished streaming options), there’s been a movie playing on multiple screens around the store. Always it’s been a kid’s movie. Today was no different, except that today we happened to walk in during the scary part.
I have no idea what movie it was, except as I dropped Elmo’s Alphabet into the return slot, thunder growled, ominous music rose, and shrieking broke out behind me. I turned to find that Mbot had plastered his back to the windows and was yelling to get out. Of course Blockbuster is set up so you can’t go out through the in door (Led Zeppelin almost named an album after this problem). You have to go all the way around the checkout counter in order to escape.
As we made our way around, in fits and starts, I dragging Mbot by the hand as I issued orders for Gbot to follow, between uttering soothing yet urgent words to Mbot, I asked the young man behind the counter to turn off the movie. He looked at me blankly and, over Mbot’s shrieks of, “It’s scary! It’s scary! Get us out of here!”, I repeated myself. The employee moved, slowly, three feet. But it was not toward the video control; it was toward the counter to help the only other customer in the store. “Please turn off the movie!” I repeated again over Mbot’s howling. He did not, nor did he offer any indication that he understood it might be the right time to move swiftly in order to Make a Difference. Does Blockbuster management encourage employees to take drugs before their shifts, or do they have a hiring policy that includes the vastly stupid?
I was furious at his lack of response. I managed to drag both bots past the double doors out into the 103 degree heat, still soothing Mbot and then asking if Mbot was okay. He answered, tearfully, that he was, and once in the car, began the usual barrage of questions that attends any event, good, bad, in or out-of the ordinary: “Why did that man have on a scary movie? What was that bad movie? Did he not know boys would come into the movie store? How about that cloud with the fangs? Why did he not turn it off?”
In answer to the last question, I said, unable to help myself, “Because he is a dopey man.”
“Why is he dopey?”
And I’m afraid I responded, “Because he doesn’t have enough brain cells.”
Mbot (who has apparently learned a little about God at preschool inspite of my less-than-god-in-heavenish approach): “Why did God not think he needed more brain cells?”
Me: “Because God is wrong sometimes.”
Mbot: “Would he not be dopey if I gave him some of my brain cells?”
Me: “He might still be dopey. Besides, you need to keep yours, Moon Pie. We need all the brain cells we’ve got.”
Gbot entered the conversation: “I do not need brain cells.”
Me: “You really do.”
Gbot: “I will give him some of my brain cells.”
Me: “Well that’s very kind, Spice Bear. Look. We’re home. Let’s watch the Backyardigans go to Mars…again!”
The cloud with fangs. What can I say? I was on a roll.
Don’t let this guy’s snowman-like appearance fool you. (cookingontheside.com)
Question of the Week
Mbot: “Mom, is PlayDoh kind of burny up your nose?”
The answer, it turns out, is:yes! And, with a mighty blow, out it came.
I hope it was too burny to try that again.
PS: Cookingontheside.com is a neat site–click here for a recipe for homemade playdough that looks great, although I haven’t made it yet. And adding a little Tabasco might keep it out of noses…
sciencemadesimple.com
So we were driving along, chatting about poop or, more specifically, what can make poop green. (Don’t you love a story that starts that way?)
Alarmed earlier in the day, I had consulted the internet and among the short list of perpetrators are excess bile, food coloring, and green veggies. I decided it was the food coloring in the sprinkles on the cut-out cookies Mbot had helped make after breakfast. Mbot decided he had eaten too much broccoli, which he likes to eat but tends to whine about while it’s cooking because of the odor. He decided that food coloring makes broccoli green.
No, I explained. Something called chlorophyll makes broccoli and other plants green. “Chlorophyll can turn sunshine into nutrients,” I said brightly. “It’s kind of like magic. So when we eat broccoli, we’re really eating sunshine!”
Mbot paused, then asked in a voice that betrayed his suspicion: “You mean when I smelled broccoli, I really smelled sun?”
“Kind of!” I chirped.
At least he didn’t make the next connection, which would be: if broccoli smells like sun, and broccoli turns into green poop, then does sun smell like poop?
It’s a question for another day.
“Good job, Mom. You finally got it.”
I have transcribed below the conversation Mbot and I had at the pool at the Y on Saturday. In my defense, I will point out that the background noise consisted of squealing children and splashing water, as we were in the kid zone, with its array of eternally splashy spouts and spigots. (Note: I have transcribed not the conversation as it actually occurred, but as I experienced it.)
Mbot: “Did you ever see octopus pie?”
Me: “Octopus pie? No.”
Mbot: “Octopus cry!”
Me: “Octopus cry?”
Mbot, becoming impatient: “Octopus crime! Did you ever see that movie?”
Me: “Oh! Optimus Prime! From The Transformers! Sorry, Bug, I couldn’t hear you. No. I have not seen the movie.”
Maybe I should, though, so he and I can continue to inhabit the same holodeck.
Class Optimus Prime figure and the truck he transforms into. Definitely not a seafood dish. Picture from Revenge of the Fallen Leader(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
