Sweetness

Keenan called me Sweetheart today. It was the loveliest thing ever. I love you too Sweetheart.

Go Go Gohan!

Yay! We made rice for dinner tonight and to quote Goldilocks, "it was just right"! Three years of cooking rice in a rice cooker in Japan killed our stove top rice cooking skills. In utter disappointment we've actually not eaten home made rice in our home since we've been back from the land of "Sugoi! My rice cooker makes banana loaf, pudding, stew, bread and perfect veggies." From here on out it's gonna be a gohan hodai at the O'Flanagans!

Halloween 2009

There's a shark in our kitchen!
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

We had a great Halloween. Etienne and Erin came by just before 5pm. Erin we miss you and hope you have a good trip back to Tokyo! Then Mark and Gill came by about half an hour later. We had cupcakes and made some hot drinks fortified with yummy Starbucks coffee liquor (thanks Mark and Gill!). Sharon and Paul came by to see Keenan decked out in his costume. We ate cupcakes (Yay! More cupcakes!) and waxed on about the new offerings from Apple. Around 6 pm we hit the neighborhood streets with Mark, Gill, our beverages, the trailer as back up vehicle and a slightly apprehensive Keenan decked out as a shark! It took about two houses for him to get a grip on the concept of trick or treating. After that, there was no stopping him from running door to door. In about a block I think he realized his treat bag was slowing him down and I became the bag lady. Shortly thereafter we convinced him to growl when people opened the door. Not long after that he rounding out the package by adopting the stick-machine gun accompanied by his realistic machine gun sound affects! It was Keenan tv at it's finest! About a block before Leslie-Anne's Keenan retreated to the 3 wheeled comfort of his trailer. We did a few more houses, Leslie-Anne's was the second last and then we swung by Dovercourt for a bit of jumping in the bouncy castle and a turn through their maze It was a fantastic night. Marc and Gill were with us for the whole event and Marc was so overcome by cuteness that he proclaimed they were going to home to make a kid of their own! Keenan got a good haul of treats and he went sleepily off to bed with a few in his tummy. This morning he asked us if there was going to be trick or treating again tonight. He doesn't yet understand the concept of "next year" so I suspect we'll be getting that question every day until Christmas!

Rambling 3

Our friends Ghis, Heather and Morgane have taken a year off to travel North America. Reading about their adventures has awoken my wanderlust. Follow their journey too.

Man caught 'carpooling' with teddy bear

Anywhere else in the world it would have been a blow up doll. CBC News - Ottawa - Man caught 'carpooling' with teddy bear

I see you had corn for lunch today

Sean took Keenan to the park right after we picked him up from daycare today. I dropped them off on the way home. I was home for about 20 minutes when I remembered the conversation we had with our daycare provider about Keenan's poop in the toilet success at daycare today...

"he pooped in the toilet today, started out as a pee and ended in a poop!"
"wow, great job Keenan, has he been without a diaper all day?"
"yup, he's in underpants right now even"

...oh God. Keenan went off to the park with Sean totally diaperless and he has been less than forthcoming with us when it comes to admitting his need to use the toilet. Two things were certain; 1)There's no way in hell Keenan could go an hour without using the toilet and 2)If he does have to go while they're at the park he won't tell Sean. For a brief moment I entertained driving over to the park and then I became preoccupied with making dinner and forgot. Within 15 minutes they were at the front door. Keenan's jeans were darker in the front from his crotch to the ankles. Oh shit. And then I smelled it.

"did you poop your pants?"
"no"

It amazes me how kids think they can get away with that kind of response to that particular question when they stink to high heaven and their underpants are loaded. I cleaned up the abundant and mostly undigested grossness and then Sean scrubbed down our child in the bathtub. We finally sat down to dinner and had a great time together.

Later in the evening we were rewarded with "I have to poop in the toilet!" followed immediately by "hurry!". I grabbed that kid and flew up the stairs. We fumbled getting the pants and diaper off but we did get his butt on the seat for the majority of the event! Finally, a happy ending.

Multi surface poop event

Just in case you didn't already know, poop doesn't stain walls. It is also easily wiped from ceramic tile and hardwood. Cotton/nylon blend pants (mine not his) and carpet are a bit more of a challenge and require a little extra scrubbing. Recommended cleaning agent: Lysol Fresh Orange scent 4 in 1 spray. It kills 99.9% of the germs and the pleasant odor inhibits your gag reflex.

Sorry Tom and Pat for pretty much having to hang up on you tonight. Just think, only five more sleeps until you're here!

The greatest poop story of them all!

Let it be known that on this day at 10:30 am Keenan Thomas had his first poop on the toilet!

How we did it...

Last weekend we let kept him in underpants as much as possible. The second Sharon and Paul showed up for a quick visit Keenan hid in a Rubbermaid bin and pooped in his underpants. Such a great timing.

Middle of this week I was changing a very stinky and full poopy diaper seconds before we had to be out the door for work and all the while I was thinking how totally done I was with getting poop on my hands. I pulled out the "great motivator"..."Keenan, if you start pooping on the potty you'll get to go to school with your friends from daycare". He was somewhat speechless and I could see that he was really thinking about it. The rest of week we kept on the school thing. How fun, it would be, he'd be so big, he could ride the school bus etc.

This morning we took off his diaper after breakfast and let him run around naked from the waist down. All along we told him that he'd get a lolli pop and a visit to the toy store if he pooped on the potty. One of us had our eyes on him at all times. There was lots of farting, a pee on the potty and then around 10 am he started asking for a diaper. We said "nope" if you need to poop you'll have to use the potty or the toilet. Around 10:25 he was crying for a diaper. I presented the downstairs potty in the middle of the living room. "NO MOMMY, I WANT MY DIAPER!!!!!! PUWEEEEESSEEEE". I picked him up and told him again that he'd get a lollipop and a visit to the toy store if he pooped on the potty. He didn't say anything so I told him we'd go and use the upstairs potty and read a story (it does look more comfy afterall). He sat down and then jumped up and headed for the washroom. I put his seat on the toilet and got him a book and stood in the doorway. Sean was in the shower giving encouragement and Keenan looked at me and as serious as a 3 year can be with a poop face he said "Mommy, please let me alone". Less than five minutes later "I'm done!" and there it was, a poop in the toilet! Oh happy day! No word of a lie, the first words out of Keenan's mouth were, "Can I go to school now?". Now the deal is he can go to school if he poops on the toilet or potty every day for a year. We'll keep you posted on that one!

I was one of those parents that said "my child will never play with guns"

Badass
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

However, I'm pretty sure I never said "my child will never stand in a retired pool chemical bucket".

“Mommy, I can’t get this stuff off”

Those are the words we woke up to yesterday. Actually, it wasn’t the first time we opened our eyes in the early morning hours on Saturday. We woke up to Keenan jumping out of bed and quietly (or so he thought) slipping down the stairs. At one point we woke up to his power tools and some hammering sounds. Then he was calling to us “Mommy, daddy I can’t get it open” and we replied “ok, bring it up here” and then we dozed off again. Some immeasurable amount of time later Keenan was resting his elbows on my side of the bed and showing me his hands which were covered in some sort white, blobby, obviously terribly sticky, unknown substance. “Mommy, I can’t get this stuff off”. It covered his hands and had actually sealed the sleeves of his pajamas to his arms. The vein on Sean’s temple bulged as he launched into his regular line of questioning; “what have you been into?”, “what did you do?”, “where did you get that?” and last but not least “did you put any of that in your mouth?”. I think Keenan’s reply was a single “no” which furthers my belief that kids really only remember either the very beginning or the very end of any kind of lecture so may as well get it over with quickly since all that middle crap is basically just for you any ways. Sean jumped up and grabbed the child to discover his feet had trances of the same stuff. I’m thinking....gluestick, white glue, lard? None of which are toxic in this household so by my calculations we were just looking at disaster control not an emergency hospital visit before coffee and brushing our teeth. After Sean’s frustrating attempt to get the stuff off with cold water I took over (the vein was now visibly throbbing to the tempo of Sean’s heartbeat) and ran a warm bath with lots of bubbles for Mr. Messy. Sean went downstairs to assess the potential damage while I peeled the jammies off the kid. Somehow I got the stuff in my mouth and realized it had a sweet, lemony taste, not unlike the homemade marshmallows Sharon made for us last weekend! I called down to inform Sean as he CSI’d the main floor. There he found marshmallow smeared on pretty much all the furniture in the living room and dining room. Yes, there was cursing.

So here’s what happened. My sister brought me me a bag of books that I borrowed yet forgot at her place last weekend. It was my birthday last weekend so Jose had us and some friends and family over. Sharon and Paul came and Sharon brought us all her lovely homemade lemon flavoured marshmallows some of which were placed in the bag of books and forgotten until keen eyed Keenan spotted the only new thing in his environment yesterday morning, the bag of books. He went investigating and found the bag of marshmallows. I’m assuming he couldn’t get the twist tie off and that was what he was calling to us about. He likely got the marshmallows all squishy by trying to get it off and voila he had himself instant stickiness! Lord only knows how much he ate! Sean tells me it appears Keenan had tried to clean up his smeared mess (read: budding conscience) by using all the small towels from the drawer in the kitchen. I can only imagine his surprise as they couldn’t clean it up but somehow managed to stick to his hands each time he used another and another. I would pay serious money for that footage if it existed! Anyhow it all ended with us finally out of bed and a clean, unharmed child. The sticky bits we occasionally find on our socks are just sweet (literally) reminders of another failed attempt at at sleeping in.

Friggin' age demographics

Happy Birthday to me!
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

Well, in less than a year I'll be checking one of those other boxes. The ones that clearly show I'm no longer in my 30's. I'll be 40-45 or 40-49. I take considerable comfort in the fact that some folks find my streaks of gray sexy. Who knows, maybe I'll start a "varicose veins are hot" blog.

The farm

Canola flowers between Melfort and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

We're on our first paid vacation since we arrived back in Canada a little over two years ago. At present we're at the family farm just outside of Melfort, Saskatchewan. It's a lovely wide open place. I felt my soul expand the moment I stepped out of the airport. The canola and flax are currently in bloom and present themselves as broad bands of yellow and blue that march quietly into the distance. I love the long views and watching the weather rolling in from afar. Speaking of weather, the rain seemed to follow us from Ottawa. It's rained everyday but we're making the best of it. We've picked a good load of Saskatoon berries and have made a few batches of jam, we've explored abandoned churches, had a birthday dinner for Sean's grandmother and have done a lot of visiting and just plain ole sitting around and gabbing.

We bought a 6 person "family tent" just before we left Ottawa and thankfully Keenan is having a great time camping out in the yard every night. He's grown very fond of his kid sized North Face sleeping bag and every night he snuggles his totally pooped-out self into it's cocoon like warmth.

We're heading into Saskatoon on Wednesday to check out the big city and do some shopping. Time truly seems to slow down here. I really can't believe we still have almost a week of vacation left. On that note I'm going to head outside as the sun is shining and likely won't be for long.

Monday was an interesting day for first time remarks from our son

Monday morning...

"Dad, you're a f**cking idiot"

Monday evening...

"Go ahead, make my day"

...and then Monday seemed to spill into Tuesday...

Keenan still wakes up very early. On the odd occasion he'll harmlessly putz around in his room before he comes and shatters our cozy dream state. This was the scenario on Tuesday morning. Or so we thought. I usually wake up as soon as I hear his feet hit the floor and I keep an ear open for any signs of trouble. On this day everything seemed to be going well until Keenan dragged an unrecognizable empty box over to my side of the bed and proceeded to wipe down my nightstand with a bum wipe. "What a good boy to be cleaning at 6 am!". Then I looked into the box, it wasn't empty after all but filled with about 100 baby wipes that had been individually removed from the dispenser. The box was wet on the bottom from all the moisture and it smelled remotely of that alcohol based hand sanitizer. We got up to investigate the damage and tripped over his full laundry basket which he had dragged into our doorway. We walked into his room to discover he had pretty much sanitized all the surfaces of his room with the hand sanitizer which usually resides on the window sill, well out of his reach. He liberated it from its former location by emptying his 3 toy bins all over the floor, dragging them over to the window and stacking them to give him just the right height to get himself into trouble. It looked like a bomb went off in the place. Then we looked over at the dresser with its open and suspiciously empty drawers. What the? Where's all his clothes? That's right, you guessed it. Crammed into his dirty laundry basket in our bedroom doorway. Those who know me, know I love to work hard but I hate to do the same thing twice on account of someone else's actions. I wept at the sight of those empty drawers (remember back to Monday when I said all our clean laundry had been locked in our bedroom as I had just finished all the laundry on Sunday night, well I put it all away on Monday night including Keenan's). Wahhhhhhh! As I wept I refolded and tucked all the wipes back into their bin and Sean refolded and put away the laundry. Keenan ran about like a screaming banshee. When Sean was almost done folding he commented that for some reason he couldn't get all the clothes back in the dresser. At that point I realized Keenan had emptied the box (the previously mentioned "unrecognizable box") from his closet that contained all this past winter clothes that didn't fit him and were to be donated. Now they were all mixed in with his spring clothes and I've got to sort through everything piece by piece again. Oh joy!

Tell me why I don't like Mondays

By sleeping standards, last night was a short night. Keenan got up at 2:15 am to "read", ummm, you're like not even 3! He read for about an hour then started in with the questions. Mooooommmmm? Why dat guy do dat? The spider bite him? I didn't get up, Sean did. Sometime around 3:30 am he came back to bed. The house was dark and Keenan was asleep. "He was hungry, so I gave him an early breakfast". This happens to us many times a month. The kid is growing at a crazy rate and we simply can't cram enough food into him.

So, the alarm clock goes off at 6:30 am. The only motivational factor for getting up is the forcasted temp will be 29 C. Oh my, what sandals to wear today?! I get up, get ready, Sean gets in the shower and I head into Keenan's room to get his clothes ready. Seconds later I hear our bedroom door slam and Keenan walks in talking away to himself. I go to head back into our room but our door is locked. No problem. I'll just run downstairs and grab a paper clip and poke it in the handle to unlock the door. Wait, oh shit. It's a keyed lock and we weren't given a key for that door when we moved in. Thank the Gods, Keenan shut the door from our hallway and not our room or he would have been locked in our bedroom. After that initial horror washes over me the very real implications of being locked out of our bedroom sink in. The cat is downstairs but her liter box is in the sun room off our bedroom. Wonder if she can make it all day? Then the big one hits. I did all the laundry yesterday and dutifully folded it all neat and tidy and put the full baskets of clean clothes in our room. Sean is in the shower and basically has his dirty boxers on the bathroom floor and a towel to wear to work. I tell Sean, he cuts his shower short. I call Roberto our landlord and leave a message. Sean grabs the toolbox and starts to take apart the doorknob. I get Keenan dressed, start on breakfast and try Roberto again. I get him this time. "There's a keyed lock on that door?" Silence from me. "I'll be over in 15 minutes." So he comes over and Sean greats him at the door in a towel. "Whoa, buddy you look pretty good half naked!" My Sean is possibly the most modest and non-confrontational person I have ever known. If looks could burn Roberto would be fried to the core.

In less than 5 minutes it was all over. I ran Keenan over to daycare, came back picked up Sean and we still made it to work with 5 minutes to spare. All that excitement before 8 am no less!

Sean wanted me to add that this day came to a lovely end when he cooked his first steak on his brand new BBQ. It was "exquisite" he said with a sigh. I have personally just uncapped an icy Negra Modelo which I will slowly and blissfully nurse until this day is done.

3 things I didn't know about my sister until this evening...

Jose, the bestest big sister on the planet!
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

1)She has at long last finally signed up for facebook
2)She eats 25 Mini Wheats for breakfast everyday (and yes, I asked and she does count them!)
3)She thinks she may be turning into an indecisive person but she's not sure!

Yes please!

Geneva 2009: Honda Accord Tourer Type-S

Early riser/Holy terror. What the hell is going on?

All his life, even before he was born Keenan has been an early riser. When I was pregnant with him I'd be up almost every day around 5 am. At a time when most other toddlers are starting to sleep later he continues to rise between 5 and 5:30 am. It's really not that bad except for two things. First of all, he doesn't go to bed before 8:30 sometimes 9 pm so I may get an hour a day to get everything done that I need to do. If we put him to bed any earlier he's up between 4 and 5 am. If we take away his hour and a half nap he's impossible to be around and literally terrorizes the other kids at daycare. Usually our getting up routine starts with Keenan climbing into bed with us and snuggling for 5 minutes, then he reads, plays for a bit, then we get up and it's potty time and we all get ready for our day. Secondly, more often than not he wakes up with a bit of a crazy streak and he climbs into bed snuggles for 5 minutes and then proceeds to kick, slap, punch, scream and today a new thing, spit at us. We've tried time outs, taking away the things that mean the most to him, denying him dvd time, putting him in bed, distractionary tactics, telling him how his actions hurt us, politely asking him to stop, yelling at him to stop and plain old ignoring him. It seems everything we try doesn't work and makes him scream like we're trying to kill him. I can be 10 feet away from him and ask him not to kick the bathroom door and he melts into a pool of twisting toddler goo all the while screaming "owwwwwwwww" and I haven't even taken a step. It's 7:50 am and I'm friggin' finished already.

Sean and I have just discussed that we can't believe how two such laid back folks could have created a person so much like us but exactly opposite of ourselves. It is at once completely perplexing and totally maddening. Honestly, if he wasn't the only white kid born in a Japanese maternity hospital I'd swear someone switched our baby with someone else! Regardless of our personality conflicts we continue to learn from each other, move on and hopefully at some point we will stop feeling like we're devolving.

There's a couple of big things we're going to change. We've let Keenan watch Lord of the Rings and Spiderman which I think was a big mistake. He clearly mimicks the fighting action in those films. I can't undo what he's already seen but I won't let the problem perpetuate itself by continuing to let him to watch those dvds. Altogether he watches too much tv and we don't even have cable! That will also change.

Keenan's a very active little guy and I think he would do well to be involved in more physical activities. I'm gonna see what else I can sign him up for and perhaps get us more involved with swimming in the evenings. I'd like to think that he has too much energy to burn and that we need to make a more serious effort to wear him out. Gone are the simpler times when a shot of brandy in a sippy cup resolved most everything!

Then just keep on keepin' on with the discipline. I hear it does work over time.

Gotta go Sean is throwing all of Keenan's crayons in the garbage.

I just must share this with the rest of the world...

Embedded Video

So do the terrible two's end on the day he turns 3 or is there any chance this will be over a day or dare I say possibly a month or two earlier?

We're about 48 hours away from checking ourselves into a mental health institution. I wonder if they have family suites? Oh by the way, if you've heard, read or seen that sometimes the terrible two's morph into the terrible three's just don't tell us as we prefer to exist in a semi delusional state about certain topics.

As of late Keenan is going through a very aggressive stage. He hits when he gets exited, kicks when he gets mad and slaps when he doesn't get his way. Any combination of the 3 is enough to make that little vein in Sean's temple throb visibly. On the odd occasion and for no apparent reason, Keenan bites. As a matter of fact I was on the phone with my dear friend Sharon the other night and out of nowhere Keenan just silently walked up and bit me, very hard, in the ass. That one definitely tops the charts in the "attention getting" category. I know so much of this stuff is done for attention and to see what kind of reaction he can get out of us. Naturally we oblige, we're not quite at the stage where we can handle every one of these situations like we're supposed to. We try but there's only so many times you can be slapped across the face between 4 and 6 am before you start feeling a tad bit angry. So you know, we have a plan with our daycare provider on how to deal with this when he's there and Sean and I are constantly trading off supervision duties. We go thru almost entire days on the weekend where we're trading back and forth based on our anger levels. It gets exhausting and by the time Monday rolls around we feel like we need another two days off to recover.

The good news is Keenan has made good ground on understanding how his actions affect others. He's getting better at reading facial expressions (especially sad and angry) and he knows exactly when and how to say sorry. Although he doesn't always choose to. Time outs are working better with him again and he has on occasion put himself in the time out spot at daycare. So there is a faint blip of light at the end of the tunnel. It's just this particular tunnel is exceptionally long and the road is very bumpy.

Laugh, love, floss and travel!

At one time those tag lines made me nuts.  Now I find them terribly endearing and I miss them almost as much as Ryugetsu chocolate cake.

Once upon a time when we were in Japan we couldn't get over how much cooler the vehicles were.  Astonishing selection by manufacturer, wicked color selection, wild designs, ridiculously small sizes, wacked-out names (just have to mention the "Retarder" here), everything comes in 4 wheel drive and just when you think you've seen it all it's next year and everything's different again.  After 3 years we were still seeing models we hadn't seen before.  Here in North America we basically get the shaft.  Everyone has their version of the Civic, Fit, Accord, Odyssey and Pilot.  Hang in there Element, you've not been cloned yet (and likely won't be 'cause you're a wee bit too gormy).  One of the coolest rides in Japan is the Nissan Cube and it looks like they're releasing it in an effort to chase down some of business Toyota is getting with the Scion xB (known as the bB in Japan).  Whatever the reason it's great to see this little scrumpet (looks like it's wearing a halter top from the back) breaking into the US market and shaking up the dull and boring sameness we're fed over here.

Nissan Cube: 2009 Nissan Cube Revealed

Sixth sense?

I simply can't go another day without telling the world about this. Those of you that have seen M. Night Shyamalan's film The Sixth Sense will remember how absolutely creepy it was when Haley Joel Osment came out with the "I see dead people" statement. Well, our lovely, often bizarre but not really creepy child has recently been hitting us with the following...
"mommy"
"yes babe"
"I see dinosaurs"
"real dinosaurs?"
"yeah"
"do you see them now?"
"yeah"
"oh, ok, say hi to them for me"
"ok"
And off he goes. Maybe this is the whole imaginary friend thing starting to come into play. Or who knows maybe the kid really does see dinosaurs!

I told you they’re not poison!

And another exciting thing happened at the Ottawa Farmer’s Market today. Eagle eyed Sean spotted a sign at a stall that simply read “Saskatoons” Only someone who has grown up in the prairies or eaten Sean’s mom’s Saskatoon Berry Pie would get excited over seeing such a sign in the East. So we went over to check it out and sure enough the saintly man was selling frozen Saskatoon berries that he grew on his very own farm in Osgoode! And it’s a U-pick farm so you can pick your own Saskatoons right here in the Ottawa Valley in late June! Now that’s a miracle!

We actually found a few Saskatoon bushes near Hog’s Back when we were there with Sean’s folks this summer. The 4 of us were leaning over the fence to pick the yummy morsels and this total ignoramus walked by as I was stuffing some berries into Keenan’s mouth and he confidently warned us “those are poison you know”. I’m actually happy people out here don’t know a Saskatoon berry from a hole in the ground. Just means more for us!

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.

Why?

Yesterday was another first for our son. He hit me with his first...

Why mommy?

Here we go. God. Help. Us.