Field Trips

We finished the second of Gabe's field trips. They were . . . interesting (and here I use the dramatic pause followed by the euphemistically nondescript participle "interesting" in the place of "nightmarish hellscapes that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy" because I don't want people to think that I'm being overly dramatic or hyperbolic just for the sake of colorful narrative).

Let me just begin by reiterating that I do not have the tools necessary to adequately cope with my small children out in public settings like this. If I've learned nothing else over these past four years (and, in fact, that's probably not far from an accurate evaluation of my learning curve), I have come to realize my own limitations in this particular area. I like children who follow orders--who do what they are told and are blithely capable of having a good time within the rather strict behavioral guidelines that I categorize as "acceptable."

I also know that this is an entirely unrealistic expectation of my children--or anyone else's. Kids are kids and they will do stupid kid things and almost never do what they are told. And I can accept that reality. I just don't accept my place in that reality. If children aren't doing what they are told, then I like to have a section of the house that I can gate/lock off from the rest where the kids can do their own thing and I can delude myself into thinking that they are doing precisely what I WANT them to be doing. The problem is, no such lock-offable places exist out in public.
So outings like this tend to go something like this:

Pat says, "Gabe, please stand by me and don't touch anything.

Gabe: immediately walks away and starts touching something hot, sharp, poisonous, explosive, or molting.

Pat says, "Norah, please hold my hand."

Norah says, "No!" then she pulls her hands roughly down to her side, slumps to her butt on the ground, and starts shrieking like I've just poked her in the gullet with a cattle prod.

Pat says, "Gabe, please listen to the grown ups and do what they say."

Gabe: (he never says anything anymore, instead just doing what he wants to instead of trying to rationalize or explain his actions to me in lively debate) picks his nose and wipes the booger on my pants, he then uses the distraction this offers--while I am trying to wipe the snot ball off my clothes--to find something large that he can go behind to "look at" so that I can't see him anymore. Then he will find something, anything, to pick up and put in his mouth.

Pat says, "Norah, honey . . ." and then stops because there really is no point.

Norah says, "No!" but lets me pick her up. Once she's four feet off the ground, she performs an outstandingly complex physical display wherein she simultaneously slumps limply into my arms (giving her the holdability of a greased sack of weevils) while using invisible limbs (her actual limbs are always flailing out behind her) to push away from my body with all her might. The end result is something like me wrestling a narcoleptic pig suffering a grand mal seizure. Inevitably, it is only sheer force of will that keeps her from crashing head first to the floor. But the fact that I have managed to prevent my smallest child from braining herself on the tarmac rarely distracts passers-by from the reality of the fantastic bratitude of said child and my obvious parenting deficiencies in raising such a nether-beast. I am only being judged by the attitude, not by the feat of physics defying deftness that enables me to keep my child alive and well.

And that probably sums my problems up quite adequately. I don't like being judged by people I don't know (and, frankly, who probably deserve to be on the receiving end of judgment instead of the giving end), and having small children in public is the judgment inducing equivalent of wearing a Ms. America style sash that says Dog Botherer or Real Doll Pimp on it.

Anyway. Gabe's first field trip was to our local Daylight Donuts. Gabe, as I'm sure I've pointed out several times before, has a real thing for donuts. Every day he asks for donuts. Several times, usually. So we kind of figured this trip would be like visiting his own nirvana. And he did enjoy eating the donuts--he ate his, Norah's, and half of mine. He also drank two juice cups.

Outside the donuteria.

My brilliant plan was to keep Norah locked in her definitely-too-small-for-her-now stroller. But the store isn't what you'd call spacious, and Norah pretty much hated sitting in this thing (plus, she doesn't like donuts, so there really wasn't anything to keep her interest while we were there). While she was confined thus, I was able to snap these three pictures. She demanded to be set free almost immediately after I took the next picture of Gabe, and from that point on I had to carry her or chase her around the place. So picture taking because an unaffordable luxury at that point.

Gabe, on his first juice cup, after his second donut.

This field trip actually didn't go THAT poorly. It only lasted about an hour, and Gabe was at least politely disinterested in most of what was going on around him--but NOT a running around touching and eating everything terror like I was a little afraid he would be. I had mental images of him tearing around the store, grabbing donuts off the shelves and stuffing them in his mouth like Cookie Monster. But he didn't. He was quite well behaved.

The only minor hiccup we had--which was kind of hilarious, actually--happened while the . . . what do you call the guy who makes the donuts? The Donut Master? King Donut? Whatever his name, that guy. He showed the kids how most of the different donut varieties were made, and Gabe managed to feign interest for about the first half dozen varieties. After that, he just stood quietly next to the counter where the guy was piling the cut dough. As King Donut worked on the other varieties, he looked up and said, "Oh, no. You don't want to eat that," and he reached over the counter to, you guessed it, Gabe. He had quietly scooped up one of the raw donut holes and put it into his mouth. He repentantly let the little dough ball roll out of his mouth into the guy's hand and stood there, looking sheepish for the next few minutes.

But the thing is, as his teacher pointed out to me, we're pretty sure the guy had cut three donut holes out, and only two of them could be accounted for. So Gabe probably ended up sneaking the other one while nobody was paying attention. He's getting pretty sneaky.

And that was pretty much the highlight of that trip. The morning didn't go poorly. Probably that was what provided me with the false confidence to go against my better judgment and involve Norah in the second field trip--a decision I would whole-heartedly regret on Thursday.

Thursday they took a field trip to a remote little creek. Libby was the guest teacher for the day, which excited Gabe to no end. The kids were all dressed in boots and clothes they could get wet and the plan was for Libby to guide them around this shallow creek and show them all the treasures wet, seething nature had to offer.

Neither of us had been to this little stretch of water before, so we had no idea how far it was from our parking spot or what to expect when we got there. Because, apparently, neither of us have had a two year old before, we decided to let Norah walk it.

As it turned out, the creek was about a quarter mile away from the parking lot. A hilly, mulch and rock covered trail led us there. Because there was two of us, we were able to trail Gabe while helping Norah trundle along at her measure pace. And I was also able to take a few pictures (until things went pear shaped, anyway).

So, we started at a little area with benches and the kids had a snack while the adults got their shit together.

I think Libby gets credit for this dashing ensemble. I say this because, even though she's wearing a skirt with rubber boots, she's still FAR more equipped to walk around in the muddy water than I was. For some reason, the point of the morning escaped me and I didn't find shoes I could get wet. I'm pretty daft sometimes (most of the time).

After I left with Norah, Gabe put on quite a display. Not once through Libby's presentation did Gabe pay attention to what was going on. Instead, he jumped around in the river, found ledges and an old bridge to jump off into the water, and ran around offering the other kids as much distraction as he possibly could. It was not a good day to make a case against him being ADHD. But, as this picture shows, I think the kid was tired--and Gabe doesn't handle tired with grace and aplomb. This was taken at a little campsitey area about halfway down the trail to the creek. The kids were all gathered while Libby did some introductions and talked about what they were going to do in the creek.

Libby telling the kids the facts of life, in river critter form. This was about as far away from Libby as Norah was willing to get until we got down to the creek.

Libby, naturing up the kids.

At the creek. This was about five minutes after we got there. Libby was already dredging up snake skins and other signs of nature. But, once we'd reached the water, Norah had been pretty content to stand around in it. She didn't move much. She just sort of hung around these little stepping stones, hopping up on one and dropping back into the water. Twice she decided to take a seat. Keep in mind, it was in the upper 50s or so and the water was pretty much freezing. Yet none of the kids seemed to mind. And neither of our kids got pneumonia, despite everything popular folklore likes to say about being cold and wet.

Gabe in one of the few instances when he wasn't hip to shoulder deep in water, but still not paying the least bit of attention to what was going on.

"Look, kids! We're so lucky! We've found some things in their natural element. This is a Coney Island Whitefish. I know it looks like a used condom, but it's not. And here we have . . . no, Gabe. Please stop poking that poor, bloated, er, sleeping person with that stick."

This was the last picture that I got, roughly ten seconds before my morning turned to shite. Right after this picture, Norah snagged her boot on something in the creek and fell down. She didn't hurt herself in the least--no scraped knees or banged up hands--but you sure wouldn't have guessed that from the way she completely lost her shit.

That's the story so far. Norah fell down and I went out to get her. I picked her up and she doubled her efforts to burst ear drums and disconcert rational thinking people with her wailing. On the one hand, she had fallen. And, though she hadn't hurt herself, falling down still pissed her off, and she wanted to be comforted for that. On the other hand, she didn't want ME to be the one comforting her. She wanted Libby, and she wanted to be comforted while remaining in the creek and doing whatever she wanted. But Libby was busy teaching the kids. So, since I picked Norah up out of the water, and I wasn't Libby, neither of these conditions were met, so she lost her mind.

I gave Libby a pathetically put upon look, standing there, holding a writhing, sopping wet, tantrum throwing two year old, and she said, "Take her home." I nodded quietly but thought "Oh thank god," quite loudly.

I felt bad abandoning Libby with Gabe there more or less unsupervised, but that feeling passed as soon as I took about ten steps away from the creek. By that point, I was also soaked to the core and Norah was showing no signs of slowing down. Which is a bad thing. Norah crying uncontrollably means one thing and one thing only--vomit.

And the vomit came.

There is one important difference between Libby and I when it comes to parenting. When the kids are sick, Libby doesn't hesitate to hold and comfort them through a thorough dousing with vomit. She is content to let them puke all over her and then clean herself and her clothing up later.

I am not this way.

I do not like vomit. I have not been a puker since I was a very small child and I don't have much sympathy for people who are. I have a sensitive gag reflex, so if I can keep myself from puking, most people should be able to. Plus, it's gross. Warm, chunky, slimy, clingy, and horribly smelly. I've cleaned up FAR more than my fair share of it over the past few years, and I'm fine with cleaning it up with towels or whatever. But I do not let it touch me. If one of the kids is facing me and they start to puke, as quickly as I can I turn them some other direction and let them puke on ANYTHING that isn't me. This might be a little heartless, I guess, but I see it as doing a service for my children. They need to learn that you just don't do something things all over other people. There are limits.

And here I could go into a discussion of golden showers or something else unsettling, but I won't, because this post is epically long already. So just go ahead and picture some options there and shake your head a little in disgust (or wistfulness, I guess, if that's your thing).

So I quickly rolled Norah over in my arms. I was carrying her like a forty pound log. She was spewing vomit with every step I took and screaming like a banshee that had been set on fire. And she was squirming, too, obviously. Trying to get down so she could run back to the creek and her mother.

And I walked like this for about a quarter of a mile.

I am not a small person. Anyone using words to describe me will NEVER think "slight" is an accurate modifier. I grew up lifting heavy things. I do it less frequently now because I am old and years of lifting heavy things when I was young left me with all sorts of back and joint issues, but I'm still not a slouch. I can manhandle a refrigerator with the best of them--or at least the middle of the range of them.

Yet I can't think of anything that was more physically exhausting than carrying Norah back to our car. I don't know if I've pointed this out before or not, but she's kind of a big girl. A big, sopping wet, screaming, squirming, puking girls are not very easy to carry for a quarter of a mile.

Fortunately, though, she had puked herself out by the time we reached the car, and all that was left was the uncontrollable sobbing, which lasted until we were home, undressed, and she was in the bath tub. Once back in the water--this time warm and not out in the middle of nowhere--she was happy as a clam again.

And, on the plus side, both she and Gabe took GREAT naps that afternoon. Which was good because it allowed me to lie down on the couch and decompress for awhile, too. I'm not sure what would have happened if they hadn't slept, but it probably would have involved a glass and a box of wine. Possibly the entire box.