He stepped Bee

We went to the Ottawa Farmer’s Market today. It’s the biggest outdoor market in the city, we’ve never gone before and we were more than pleasantly surprised. Apart from the market there is a huge indoor flea market and free wagon rides too. We did our signature “once around” with Keenan sitting quietly in the stroller. He asked to get out a couple of times but there were just too many people and many breakable objects so we declined his requests. We got outside the building and were just about to begin our “purchasing round” and we heard more requests coming from the stroller. So we bent down to listen and kept hearing “I see bee, I see bee”. Earlier on we had walked past a fellow selling honey and he had small section of hive under glass and apparently it made quite an impression on our son. So we headed back over, I tried and bought some honey and just as we started to walk away Keenan pulled the hive display over onto himself. Keenan, a few hundred bees, glass and gooey hive all tumbled onto the ground. This of course resulted in a screaming child, an angry dad, a worried mom, broken glass, displaced bees and one large, grumpy bee-keeper. Sean grabbed Keenan and the guy grabbed his busted up display and went around back to take harm out of harm’s way. Sean and I tried to give him some money for damages but he wouldn’t take it. Many apologies were said, we strapped the boy into the stroller and we quickly wheeled off.

Here’s the shakedown of how we all were feeling…Sean clearly was horrified and embarrassed and wanted to put a lot of distance between us and the bee guy. I was a bit embarrassed too but quite honestly the guy shouldn’t have a glass case full of hundreds of bees sitting on a wobbly wooden box where a curious two year old boy can pull it over. So naturally I was also angry. All this and we still hadn’t had our morning coffee so I’m presuming Sean went off to find some and Keenan and I went gourd exploring. I tried to pass him a particularly warty orange one and he just looked at me with his hands in his lap and tears in his eyes and said “I sad bees”. The wee guy was feeling sad that he had broken the bee house. It was enough to make me cry too so we had some cuddles and then met up with Sean. He was buying a great bundle of orange, purple and yellow carrots and when I bent over to ask Keenan if he wanted a carrot he said, “He stepped bees”. Sean had grabbed Keenan up off the ground as soon pulled the case over then the bee keeper grabbed the case and stomped on all the bees that had spilled out onto the ground. It was a pretty chilly day so the bees were thankfully/sadly really immobile and there was a small heap of them on the ground. I guess the bee keeper didn’t want anyone getting stung so he squished them with his big boot righ where they lay. All this happened right in front of Keenan and obviously had quite an affect on him.

He was very sad right up until we found a place to have hot chocolate at which time he seemed to forget about the bees. Then we went for a horse drawn wagon ride and he forgot about the hot chocolate too. It was just such an interesting show of emotion from Keenan. It’s one of the first times he’s truly understood the consequences of his actions. And it wasn’t a simple “I touch stove, I get timeout” kind of situation. Keenan was sad that the man stepped on the bees after he pulled over the hive. And so we turn another corner.