To Avoid Drinking

Nick is in full teething mode again. This time it is actually happening. And it is three of them at one time. Plus he decided to have his first real full-out tantrum today, which lasted for 45 minutes. It involved screaming, kicking, slamming his bedroom door repeatedly, dramatically throwing himself onto and off of his bed while screaming, throwing books across the room etc. For 45 minutes. It was all I could do not to laugh but then after a while I was really temped to crack open a beer. It was 8:45am.

Lucas decided that his hearing is bad. He doesn't respond to me at all, and completely ignores me when I ask him to do crazy shit like BEHAVE. He knocked his brother down, threw sand in Nick's eyes, stepped on grapes that fell onto my carpet. When I told him to go to time out - he was once again deaf. But when I asked him if he wanted chocolate milk his hearing miraculously returned. Hallelujah. It is 9:00am. I started looking longingly towards my bottle of tequila.

So we went to the botanical gardens. I needed to distract Nick from his mouth pain, make Lucas forget about his inability to hear and I needed to avoid being in the house with alcohol. I sound like an alcoholic but I'm not, I just sometimes drink alone. . . locked in my dark closet. . . . while my children are outside the door screaming that they are hungry. Joking.

The distraction worked. We had a great time, Nick was his old self with a little distraction and Lucas was able to hear me the entire time.

Slathered with sunblock and ready to go.


Nick found a mushroom to hug. The dude behind us with the cigar sized holes in his earlobes didn't seem to understand why Nick was hugging a mushroom. But I understood.


Then Nick screamed in partial fear and partial amazement when he located the GIANT buzzing bee. "BEE!! Momma, BEE! BEE!" His alarm subsided when I got down to his level, wrapped an arm around him and talked about the bee with him.


Ant ridin'. Yeee Hawww!



Lucas loved the ants and LOVED the giant bird nest. So much fun. He was bouncing around unable to contain his excitement.


Lucas was sitting on the giant log while Nick tries to position himself on the slide inside of it.


Here comes LUCAS!!



"EGGS! In the NEST MOM!!"


Then we went to the cactus/succulent building where we had a long and in depth discussion on the different types of cactus. Some are tall, some are round, some are purple, some are fuzzy, some have long spines, some don't have any branches etc. It was exciting to see the cactus/succulent world through their eyes.


Then we had an in depth discussion on the weapons grade plutonium waste water that has washed down stream from Los Alamos and into the botanical gardens, causing flowers to "glow". Just playing. . . Picasa photo editing made the flower glow. So far the plutonium has had little effect on us, as far as we can tell anyway. : )


See? Perfectly formed and exceptionally cute.


Except for this teething issue. We are all waiting for it to ease up.