Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

It is a slightly painful truth that I am about to share with you. One that I am not fully comfortable acknowledging. Change happens. And there are several happening in our home as of late.

The one I intend to share with you today is just this: Thomas is phasing out of his need for daily naps.

Ouch! Ya'll know this means I have to make the switch, too, right? I like that sacred 3 hour window in the middle of the day when peace reigns supreme.

However, as I have said before, time marches on. It's a great time of year for a little boy to be making this change. I can shoo him outside, thereby maintaining the peace within the house. So somebody can sleep. Even if it's not me doing the sleeping! There's a glitch in this line of thinking. Thomas is not a self-entertainer. He has never had to be. He was an only child (and grandchild) for a short eleven months, and then his playmate arrived. By the time he was twenty months old, Sarah Grace could keep up with him and they have been playing ever since! All this to say, I often hear him asking for Granny or me to come play with him.

Today, I was feeling up for a change of scenery. My beloved Land of Dixie has had a bit of rain lately. (read - dang near flooded us out of house and home) When Thomas came in after a scant five minutes of solitary playing and asked for a playmate, I offered to take him on a bike ride. We took off and were about halfway around the block when we got distracted by the overly full pond. We pulled our bikes over to the side of the road and went to inspect the pond more closely. It was quickly decided to take the bikes home, grab some supplies, and come back to the water's edge.

We got back to the pond about fifteen minutes later, Thomas armed with a butterfly net that was masquerading as a fish net and me with a jar and the camera.

Because what else does one need for an afternoon of poly-woggin?

As I mentioned before, I am especially thankful for these shoes. Thomas was careful at first, and stayed entirely to dry and clean. He got braver about his adventure, though, and soon was up to his knees in the muddy water. He caught several tadpoles, dumped them in his jar, and went back for more.


Eventually, he ventured out too far and found where the bank drops off a bit. He fell with a laugh and a splash. After surviving the first fall, he lost all reservation and had a ball splashing about, slogging around, and just being a boy.


You have heard the NEW definition of boy, yes?

Boy - \boi\ - noun - a noise with dirt on it.

After he was thoroughly soaked, we headed for the house. While I opted to walk on the road, Thomas took the ditch, which had just enough run off from the pond to make things interesting to a little boy. The farther we went, the muddier it got.
And then it happened. He got stuck. Up to his knees, stuck in the muck. I had to actually pull him out. I could almost hear the slurping release of the suction when his feet, minus one shoe, were free.

(For those of you unfortunate souls who are not familiar with this pose, the hands out to the side, head tossed at an odd angle, and bummy protruding - - it's a sure sign of oh-my-goodness-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into-Mommy/Daddy-fix-it-for-me-NOW! It is usually paired with the infamous Thomas howl. This situation was no exception.)

I looked down at the muddy mess of water, knowing that I was going to have to plunge beneath the surface and into the nasty mud below to fetch that shoe. What could be living in that mud?

I was almost ready to go get new shoes. But I had already been to Wally World once today, and the experience was enough to make me seriously consider hiring a personal shopper.

So I sucked it up and did what I had to do. Up to my elbow in mud, I finally located what prayed was his shoe and pulled. God is good people. It was his shoe, and I didn't have to put my arm back down in that scary water.

We made it home, got him sprayed off, plopped our jar full of polywogs on the table, and called it a day.

And nap time wasn't even over yet! We crammed all that fun into about ninety minutes! What will tomorrow bring??