ZooPa duPa day

After supplying Joe with 72 hours of pure, all-boy bedlam and mass quantities of holiday comfort food at Casa de Goodwillie, Pa begged for a morning out and about. We rallied the troops and bundled up Kelly and Rhys for a chilly trip to the zoo. Catherine volunteered to stay back at base with the wee one, who's bottle and nap schedule conflicted with our big boy plans to unabashedly make monkey calls, bear roars, and elephant trumpets - my specialty.

The massive male and smaller cuter female orangutan carefully plucking pasta shells from the matted grass with their surprisingly nimble opposable thumbs was a highlight of our zoo tour. I joked with Kelly that the orangutans were eating mac and cheese. I was so engrossed by the orange haired pair's display of dexterity at pointblank range that I failed to detect Big Boy's behavior right under my nose. Rhys, like a monstrous snail vacuuming clean the side of a glass aquarium, was sucking and licking the Plexiglas enclosure - surly fingered, mouthed, and nosed by hundreds of snotty zoo patrons of similar stature since it's last proper cleaning. I gave the circular smear of saliva and snot a quick swipe with my jacket sleeve and announced we were moving on to see the gorillas.














On our way toward the exit and slices at Abo's, Kelly insisted we stop to feed the parakeets nectar. Even though one of the colorful buggers nipped him, Kelly loved this.

Three Little Willies

Three little Willies sitting on a couch, one fell off and he said ouch. No not really. They all sat nicely together sucking suckers and hands and whatever else they could stick in their slick, drooling pie holes.



















Weird vacation photos to follow.....

Stunning.

It's like we were their yesterday the way we.....do you see that?

Overheard at Casa de Goodwillie

"Kelly, don't eat my shoe! That's gross. Mommy walks around all day with that shoe. It's dirty and germmy."

Two minutes later, "Kelly! Don't put the couch in your mouth! What are you doing? That's gross!"

Pa just arrived from KY and has renewed his friendship with Rhys and the oft standoffish Kelly in record time.
"Kelly don't sit on your mothers neck. Beat me up some more. Ouff."

After unexplained screams from the direction of playing Pa and Kelly, "He's ok. I just spilled a little wine on him."

Rhys vocab words:

1. Hat, referring to a plastic yellow-bellied, green frog perched atop his melon head. He carefully placed the frog on my head, too, six million times and thank-god-he-was-waring-a-diaper laughed every time Mr. Frog jumped off.
   
2. Orange juice, referring to milk or water. We don't give him juice, yet, but Rhys has learned to parrot his big bro's Kelly's morning mantra.
3. me or my, referring to his insatiable desire for any food item not nailed down or secured with lock and key within his reach, surprisingly long and growing daily.
4. Book, his interest in reading has mushroomed over the past month. His favorite genre: dog books. Tails, by Matthew Van Fleet, Go Dog Go, by fake Dr. Seuss, and Good Boy, Furgus by David Shannon, among other canine related titles.
   
5. Dot, referring to One Red Dot, a brilliant pop-up book for all ages. Yesterday, when we were tottering in the neighborhood, Rhys stopped, squatted down, pointed to a circular shape on the sidewalk fashioned from petrified discarded gum and said, "Dot, dot."
6. Pato, referring to zapato, the Spanish word for shoe, Rhys' favorite possession. If shoeless, Rhys is semi-obsessed with the exact location of his shoes. Interestingly or, more precisely, coincidentally, pato, is the Spanish word for duck, the Rhyser's favorite animal to imitate. Rhys' duck call sounds like, "wack, wack."
7. Kelly and Baby Buckett, referring to his beloved brothers. They truly get along wonderfully, for now.
8. Boca, nose, eye, belly button, referring to his cute little body parts. Sometimes, he accidentally pokes himself in the eye when pointing them out.
   

I always ask for peace and serenity for my birthday, but with the three boys (3mo, 17mo & 3yrs), this year, I gladly settled for joy and love. Life is good.

A Day

After I got Rhys, the giant killer/eater, down for beddy-bye in his brown, footed, dogie pajamas - so cute - Kelly and I spent the evening together, dinning, talking, and making creamy, butterscotch pudding. He actually ate, no, gobbled, two helpings of the meatloaf I made - prominently showing onion flecks and all. Accompanying the main course this evening, Kelly chomped a half an avocado and inhaled several portions of home-made apple sauce. My boy clean-plate-clubbed his dinner. This occurrence is observed as often my hair is cut in the winter months. I offered to make pudding as a reward for his shocking display of Rhys like voraciousness. Perched on his stool at the kitchen island, Kelly helped me (I actually mean it in this instance) mix up the pudding and while it cooked, slow and low, we talked about words for objects in Spanish. I picked off a few of the easy "Como say" questions and we, together, made a list of the words I didn't know: cabinet, picture, floor, salt, pepper, curtain, chair, among others for Manny Manny to translate tomorrow. Tell Manny Manny his name is Kelly Buenowilly. "That's silly."

After we placed the pudding in the frig to cool, I quizzed Kelly, "What should we do now?"
"Look at the moon. Where's the moon? I can't see it."
"I don't know. It's hard to see with all the lights on in the house."
Kelly started touring the house flicking off all the lights until the house was as dark as it could be.
"What are you a vampire?" I asked jokingly.
"Yes, I'm a happy vampire," was his sweet retort.
"Let's go up stairs and see if we can find the moon," I offered.
"No. I don't want to," Kelly's standard answer to everything these days.

He apparently forgot the point of his light extinguishing mission. The joyous search for switches was certainly more fun than moon gazing on a cloudy night, anyway.

So, we sat on the floor for a while, not know what else to do, whispering about not knowing what to do. Kelly's ear-to-ear, toothy grin glowed in the dim light. He clearly was having a ball operating in the novelty of darkness.

"Is it ready?"

We ate pudding together. We read Paul Gobel's "Storm Maker's Tipi" and turned out the lights.

"See you in the morning when the lights turn green. Love you."

"Love you. Good night."

Rhys' First Walk

Rhys' forth bottom tooth erupted, finally, after what seemed like months of pain, crying and bailing buckets of drool. Even with this dental break through, this afternoon he was def con 4 fussy. With the light and warmth of a glorious fall Monday flatten and falling, Rhys' cry fest made me call it quits at four o'clock and head out for a "walk" with Bella and 16 month-old Rhys. I added quotes to walk because I completely expected our "walk" to conclude after a mid-block face plant, wailing, and me hoisting Rhys up into ride on Daddy position.

Rhys surprised me by toddering straight down our walkway, making a quick pivot right and high stepping up the block toward the little park to the west. When I caught up to Rhys, moving in a halting, unbalanced, penguinesque gait, two doors down, he was having the time of his life giggling and repeatedly vocalizing "baath, baath, baath!" Every uneven sidewalk paver and crack was a major obstacle deserving a brief deceleration or even full-stop for Rhys to evaluate each inch of treacherous elevation change. Rhys also paused with the irregularity and predictability of a humming bird at a feeder to inspect his belly button, lifting his green Pati jacket and t-shirt to expose his cute, bulbous abdomen.

Rhys managed to navigate the entire standard long, dog-walking loop up Milwaukee, down Elizabeth and back up to Fillmore, crashing hard to the prone position only twice - tearless delays of his determined progress. The only time I carried him was to redirect him back to the sidewalk after his frequent scouting missions of our neighbor's front porch decor. On one occasion, I grabbed him to divert his course away from crossing the (traffic less) street.

After our forty minute lap of smiles and hard urban hiking, we return home and Rhys returned to def con 4. Rhys is an outside dog.