Tough Times

If our child learns absolutely nothing else during his formative, adolescent years, it will be durability and survivalism.  And yes, I realize that survivalism is not a universally accepted word, Webster.

Yesterday was a tough day for Kenyon.  After our morning run we stopped by Great Grandma Curry's house so I could get some of my ground hamburger out of her freezer.  (If you will recall, my freezer is filled with important things like blanched tomatoes.)  When I left Kenyon on the main floor with Grandma he looked fine.  It took all of one minute for me to run into the basement, grab my hamburger and run back up.  When I got back into the living room I noticed that he had a large red circle around his left eye.  The tell-tale markings of a soon to be bruised and black eye.  Both Kenyon and Grandma Curry looked at me with the typical 'I don't know what happened, ask him/her' look.

Yesterday afternoon was minimally windy and I decided to re-stain my porch posts.  You know, because I have projects in the shop that NEED done and I am a master of procrastination.  (This is also why I decided to sort through tons of Kenyon's outgrown clothes during naptime, but I digress.)  One minute Kenyon was quietly playing on the other side of the porch with some rocks and the next minute I looked down to see him up to his elbows in a gallon of stain.  Fun fact, Redwood stain is pretty on wood but will make your child look like an Oompa Loompa.  And yes, Kenyon's rock that he refused to relenquish looked very pretty in Redwood stain as well.  Apparently everything looks good with Redwood stain, minus humans.

Since staining posts with a mobile child proved to be a futile effort, I decided to finally move into the shop.  Kenyon was happy to keep playing on the porch and I was happy to leave him barely around the corner out of eyesight but definitely within earshot.  I would have been more firm in making him stay in the shop with me, but we experienced a rather unfortunate incident in the early morning hours involving dog food and his mouth.  Don't ask.

I was happily gluing away on some school desks when I heard a confused whimper of sorts.  Kind of a I'm not hurt but I don't know what's going on type sound.  I ran out onto the porch to find that Kenyon had crawled onto my rock border surrounding the porch where all my pretty flowers grow (in the absence of grasshopper invasions).  He had somehow fallen onto his back and was wedged between two large rocks.  No worries, though, he had fallen into my oat grass and was resting semi-comfortably in the midst of it.  For a split second I debated about running into the house and grabbing my camera.  No worries though, folks, as my mother-of-the-year instincts kicked in and I rescued my beloved from his stuck-as-a-turtle incident.

Add to all of this a few slips on the concrete floors from dripping sippy cups and it is safe to say that this child had better learn to toughen up pretty quickly.