The Very Smooshed Caterpillar

The other day I attended a class at Sam's preschool on "Raising Your Child's IQ." Lots of the teaching had to do with providing a stimulating environment -- for your child, not for necessarily for yourself. You gave up that right long, long ago. So after the class was over, I picked up Sam from the babysitting area and we headed out into the bright, sunny day, full of good intentions. I was all fired up to be Mommy-of the Year or at least Mommy-of -the-Next-Five-Minutes. As we strolled across the parking lot, I spied an unusual-looking yellow and green caterpillar inching along the gravel. I stopped, crouched down on my knees and showed it to Sam who was quite intrigued. I could feel his IQ rising as we discussed the caterpillar. When Sam asked why the caterpillar wasn't moving anymore, I explained he was scared (scared stiff?) because we were so much bigger than it was and it was afraid we might hurt it. Oh no, not us, we agreed.

Right about then, Sam's classmate David, David's mommy, and his little brother Josh came out of the building as well, and they happily jumped into the caterpillar appreciation exercise. David's mommy crouched down too, and I suspect that she was trying to boost both kids' intelligence at the same time. Dang, she's good! Josh is about two and so really wanted to touch the caterpillar himself. We held him back, explaining how fragile the caterpillar is and that we don't want to hurt him. In a split second now frozen in my mind, Josh lunged forward and stomped on the caterpillar. As he lifted his wee Stride Rite sneaker, there lay a nasty smear of caterpillar blood and guts. Alas, the caterpillar was no more. The caterpillar games were officially over. It was a "teachable moment" as Henry Louis Gates would say. Now exactly what would we teach them? Where was the executive director of the preschool when you needed her most?

David-and-Josh's-mommy and I exchanged looks of horror. She began to lament, "Josh, why did you do that? Oh, this is so sad! Oh, this is so sad."

Trying to do my part, I chimed in, "Wow! This is really sad. The poor caterpillar."

We stood there in dumbfounded silence for a minute, and then I suggested, "How about if we say a prayer for the caterpillar?" A good prayer never hurts, right?

Sam jumped in, "Dear God, Please help the caterpillar and make him be alive again. Ah-men."

David-and-Josh's-mother commented, "Thank you, Sam, for leading us in prayer." I resisted the overwhelming urge to guffaw. We stood there for a minute of two; we were all feeling pretty deflated. Poor Josh just looked entirely confused. He had just wanted to see what would happen if he stepped on it. Unfortunately now he knew, a lesson he would not soon forget.

Eventually we wandered back into the world. Later in the day I ran into David-and-Josh's mommy in the carpool line for pickup. She shook her head, ''The boys have been so upset all afternoon."

Well, I don't know if the Smooshed Caterpillar Incident raised any of the boys' IQs, but their emotional intelligence got a great boost.

LibbY

A New Twist on the Homestead

First of all, let me make this clear. We have no business being at the Homestead in the first place, let alone hanging out here up to a week, but we do from time to time. Oh, we could afford to stop by the wee village of Hot Springs and have a Subway sandwich in the "Duck Inn' (preferably with a $1 off coupon) or show up for some free tea and crumpets (whatever crumpets are) at the Homestead's tea time, but nothing beyond that. So how do we end up here? Well, we are beyond blessed with an uber-generous friend with a time-share with the Homestead's Owners Club. This one is literally a time-share because she definitely shares her time with us. In return we let her -- and try to behave while staying here under her name.

So we've been here so many times that some staff members know Sam by name, even without the silver spoon in his mouth. I guess by translation that means they know my name too -- Sam's mommy. It took me well over 30 years of my life to make it to the Homestead for the first time, but Sam's been coming here since he was a baby with a rubber ducky wearing a straw hat in his delivered Pac 'N' Play. However, this time we really changed things up -- we brought FRIENDS, another Mommy-little-man duo, leaving both daddies back in the "rear" (as we'd say in the Army) working away to subsidize our lifestyle. So it has the four of us on a four-day "double date." What a completely different experience it has been with Sam having a playmate his own age (instead of me) and me having a playmate my own age who drinks wine instead of chocolate milk, shops for clothes instead of Matchboxes, and eats vegetables without any nagging. Oh, it's been niiiiiiice, so nice that the time has flown by.

My friend and I were pleasantly surprised how well the boys were getting along, both being only children and not used to having to share or interact with someone on a 24 hour basis. They were like brothers -- brothers who are best buddies and don't fight that is. They played Army soldier, built forts out of the couch cushions, and went on mini-hikes together. That was until today when Sam lost it over having to share a new set of plastic dinosaurs from the rank grocery store down the street. Not pretty, and I'm his mother. After the drama of the Refusal to Share Incident, Sam's poor friend replied, "Well, I'm not going to invite you to my birthday party." (FYI - His birthday is in March, and we are currently in mid-October.) Hey, I don't blame him -- I'd axe him off my future birthday party list as well. In his defense Sam is usually great about sharing, plus he was exhausted. He woke up bursting with energy at 5:30 AM and hadn't gotten as much sleep as usual the last couple of days. And so, Operation Separation was set into motion -- scatter! My friend swept her son off into the car, and we pealed out ourselves just to drive around and hopefully to get Sam to sleep.

Well, we stumbled upon a local apple butter festival in Hot Springs. What is an apple butter festival you ask? Before today I had no idea. Well, people make homemade apple butter, apple cider, caramel apples, and anything else apple-related. (I must clarify -- no apple sauce though. Don't want to lead you astray.) So what the big deal? Well, it is the sheer magnitude of the endeavor -- the most humungous copper pots I've ever seen in my life. (Maybe they are left over from the Middle Ages.)

Well, all five of the massive kettles were filled to the brim with apple butter in the making. They were set on top of an open fire, and people were stirring them with a disturbingly large extended spoon sort of thing. It was amazing -- within ten minutes of leaving the poshity-posh Homestead, we were experiencing something totally (e) other -- a country apple butter jamboree. It was a whole different world, and I wouldn't have it any other way... I'd love for Sam to grow up able to function well in both environments, appreciating them for what they are, neither superior. (I will skip my updated version of the "I Have a Dream" speech.)

After we did some arts and crafts and wandered around literally smelling apples in the air, Sam picked out the largest caramel apple I've ever seen. Atta boy! And then we were headed back to the genteel Homestead and our buddies. All offenses were forgotten and forgiven, and we were back in action happy to be reunited with our double dates. All we needed was to escape our world for a while, and we did. We have the caramel apple to prove it!

LibbY

Going Batty at the Science Museum

All summer long I had been promising Sam I'd take him to see the cool Shark Exhibit at the Science Museum. He was all fired up to see it, but don't you know it, we never quite made it there. Oh, well. That's the way the shark tooth crumbles. He is welcome to tell his therapist all about it when he is 25. In my defense he is hardly the poster child for deprivation. He did go to umpty-nine camps, hideously expensive swimming lessons, Cape Cod, Dallas, Busch Gardens, the Children's Museum, and various and sundry other cool places. So there you go, therapist of the future! Take that!

Anyway I saw an ad the other day for the new Bat Exhibit at the Science Museum, inviting us to "Come Hang With Us." And so we did-- hang with the bats, so to speak. Lo and behold we were buckled up within 24 hours with a pit stop to spin class at ACAC to fight an hour-long battle in the War on Mommy-Fat. (I'm sure you'll agree it's just another form of Terror.) When we got there, I was elated to see that the highly-anticipated-yet-undelivered Shark Exhibit was still on! Bonus! Maybe the therapist won't get on my case for Shark-Gate after all!

Well, we saw the bats first. Once Sam got over the fact that a bat was not going to swoop out and land on his shoulder, we both learned some pretty cool stuff. First of all, there are 585 different kind of bats. (And the internet said there are 1,100.) Anyway there a a lot! Who knew? Another bit of batty trivia -- Did you know that bats are mammals? And here I was thinking they are birds! They also have one baby at a time, usually once a year, and actually nurse their young, each with its own unique cry just like human babies. AND bats are not blind; they actually can see in the dark! OK, enough with the bat facts!

Then it was shark time, da-na, da-na, da-na-na-na-na-na (In case you were wondering, I was attempting to conjure up the "Jaws" theme song in your mind.) It was pretty cool I must admit, especially the huge sand structures. We saw different kinds of small sharks, including a hammerhead, one especially creepy shark. i also learned that sand dollars are alive, not just sand pounded together by waves. Also, star fish are not in fact fish at all. The proper name is now "sea stars." OK, I stand corrected. Sea stars it is.

We headed outdoors to see the old trains out back and headed off to "Science Unplugged" where kiddos can build various different structures with blocks and learn some basic principles of engineering and physics. We even built a Roman Arch that we could walk on -- with lots of coaching from the gracious volunteer.

After a snack for Sam and a massive caffeine-infusion via coffee for Mommy in the cafe upstairs, we were headed to the gift shop, arguably the most important stop of the trip. We hit the jackpot there last time we were at the museum with a kid's coal miner's helmet made by Squire Boone Village -- complete with a real light on the front. Here is the link to that awesome find: http://libbywithay.blogspot.com/2009/02/science-museum.html. So it was going to be hard to top that one for sure.

I realized that this would be the prefect time to implement the "We-Don't-Get-To-Buy-Something-Everywhere-We-Go Rule, just most of the time. I was all set to make this a "teachable moment" a la Henry Louis Gates when our eyes fell on a model solar system kit which was pretty cool even for me, the non-astronomer-Mommy-type. It was very cool, so cool that the WDGTBSEWG Rule went out the window -- and into space. Little did I know that 45 minutes later I would be in a full sweat trying to get the $12 kit to jive. Once Daddy Mac got home, he was able to put the universe together a whole lot better than me. Oh, I forgot -- Sam did it ALL himself because he is just that gifted. We learned all sorts of factoids, and Sam seemed to have all of the planets memorized in their various locations. I was impressed, but my proud moment morphed into cackles when he later showed the model to the babysitter, explaining, "Here's Saturn. Here's Venus. Here's New York City. And there's Mercury!"

There is still more to learn at the Science Museum, so we'll be back!

LibbY