A walk in the 'hood.

The Spawn and I had a fun walk the other day. We went about a block and a half (each way) and it took a good forty-five minutes. We walked to the end of the driveway, where there was a mud puddle. Stomp! In front of the neighbor's house, we stopped to watch someone collect their mail. Next stop, moss on the sidewalk, which needed to be prodded, stroked, and examined minutely. Then the Spawn wanted to pick some red berries. A little further on, there was a puddle with a bit of water still in it. It needed to be stomped in and to have pebbles thrown in it. There was a crack in the road leading from the puddle--perfect for walking along. Oooo, pine trees. The Spawn looked up at them and exclaimed that there must be THOUSANDS of pine cones up there. Then came the roots of some cottonwoods; she likes to pretend they are computers on which she and I can type to each other. Just a bit further along is the puddle by which we once found raccoon tracks. Only car tracks this time, I'm afraid, and some tracks of the Spawn. At the end of the street is a gate, where the Spawn deposited the red berries. She said she wanted to go back and get more for her "collection". But wait, is there a big mushroom in that yard? No, just a leaf, but there were other small mushrooms to be found. And we think they might be irises coming up under one of the trees. Back across the street and she had to check and see if some rocks were part of the street or loose and ready to be thrown in the puddle. They were part of the street. Short discussion of what a street is made of. Then she spotted some daffodils blooming across the street. She had to touch each one twice. Back over to the red berries. We started back down the street when she noticed some of the grass was different from the rest--much taller, for one thing. She put down the berries in order to pick some of the grass. Hmmm...time to go home, she says. First though, there are some small white flowers which also need to be picked. And one final stomp of the mud puddle and we made it home.

Young Disease Vectors

Yes, that's one of the things I hadn't really thought about before becoming a parent, at least not in any real and serious way. Having a child means adding to your household a little disease vector. The Spawn catches whatever's going around and, with great generosity, shares with us. The latest has been a particularly unpleasant GI bug of some sort. Lots of vomiting has been done. On Monday (thank goodness for holidays) there were ten loads of laundry needing to be done. On the plus side, ALL the sheets in the house are freshly washed, as are ALL the towels. Sunday night was not fun.

The other and related thing I wish I'd known was that if your child IS vomiting, they're going to be running for comfort right beforehand. That means Mom catches a lot of half digested food and drink. Probably wouldn't have changed my mind about the whole spawning thing, but it would have been nice to know. Daddy doesn't get nearly his share of precious bodily fluids, though he certainly does his share of cleaning up after these little incidents. Every twenty to thirty minutes in the early part of Sunday night, in fact.