“We don’t ship those, they escape our grasp in a bloody trail.” I shipped it anyway and then I left to go meet the megabus.

Er, yeah, someone has been doing a lot of xbox-type gaming in their spare time. Anyway, I picked Lizard Breath up over at the Megabus this afternoon after a trip to Chicago and we are hanging out at the Landfill cooking spaghetti sauce.

And we are reminiscing. Or I am. About the time when Liz was 18 months old and we were scheduled to drive down to Flor-i-duh to visit her grandparents. The Beautiful Suzie went with us. A week or so before the trip, I was having a rather stressful day and I was trying to feed my baby lunch in her high chair before I went to work for the afternoon. I don’t remember whether she didn’t want to eat or was just fussy or whatever but I kind of snapped and called her a “bad girl”. I have had my moments as a parent but that was out of character for me and she *hung her head*. I immediately melted. How could I have said that? I also realized something. We had been talking and talking and talking about going to Florida but we forgot to say something very important, which was, “*You* are going *with* us!” I think that babies understand language a lot earlier than they have the ability to verbally communicate. I knew that then but I was too wrapped up in my own stress to be thinking about what my baby might be thinking. To me, going to Florida and leaving a baby at home alone was totally unthinkable. My baby may have had some different thoughts…

We had a great trip to Florida that time. The Courtois grandparents were traveling to Florida at the same time and we met up with them at various points along the way. We had two overnights on the road and the first night was the first time the baby Lizard Breath had ever stayed in a motel that she could remember. As we were packing up to leave at 0-dark-30 the next morning, she made sure that she was *outside* the motel room and next to our vee-hickle (1985 Jetta if The Engineer is tuning in from the other side). NO WAY was she going to be left in that motel room! As I just (unnecessarily) reassured my independent 20-something kiddo tonight, even if *we* had tried to leave her in a motel room, her Beautiful Aunt Suzy would have made sure she was retrieved.

So, of course we *did* take her to Florida and we did *not* leave her in a motel room (fer kee-reist!) and she is now in the Landfill Chitchen cooking a spaghetti dinner for us.

Dreams of Florida that trip include the GG getting up at something like 3:00 AM to drive into the interior of Florida to set up his telescope and watch Halley’s Comet. When he got back from those expotitions, we would go out for breakfast. Beach outings and alligators erderators at the Sarasota Jungle Gardens. And rubber duckies in the grandparents’ condo pool.

2 Responses to ““We don’t ship those, they escape our grasp in a bloody trail.” I shipped it anyway and then I left to go meet the megabus.”

  1. Margaret Says:

    3 am ouch–but I do LOVE astronomy and going out for breakfast. (my favorite meal)

  2. Tonya Watkins Says:

    I had to grin about “I think that babies understand language a lot earlier than they have the ability to verbally communicate.” That totally occurred to me when Nate was about that age (18 months). I even tested the theory with a series of a few short instructions, like: “Go into the big bathroom, find the big duck in the bathtub, and bring it to me.” I felt like a scientist or something, because I watched him intently peer at me, processing this. And then he did exactly what he was told. He could only say words then, couldn’t string together sentences, but it made me realize his level of understanding. That said, the comprehension was selective. Heh. Still is.