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Passing on our crazy obsession with birds
This post is for Toby. He has been asking me twice a day if I wrote it yet. So now I feel extremely bad that I don’t have all that much to write about. But if you look through my flickr set, you’ll see that I did make quite an effort to try to be more funny with my titles and descriptions. Being funny is hard work. It’s a good thing I can draw because I suck at the funny blogging gig.
We went to the Magnolia Bird Farm on Saturday. It was a case of me begging Toby, “Please please take us somewhere. We are so very bored of this house and I can’t think of any adventures that don’t involve the mall and shopping.” I didn’t actually beg but I think Toby could hear me through my desperate looking eyes. I take Baby Bug all over the place but sometimes, I just need to get out with another adult.
The Bird Farm was a total hoot with Baby Bug. Last time we took her she was too little and didn’t really care much. This time it was like what taking her to the zoo should have been. She loved looking at all the birds. (At least they were awake, unlike all the animals at the Zoo). We explored for hours. I’m sure a lot of that exploring was her exploring the poop encrustment on the cages but I can’t do anything about that. Let’s just hope none of us come down with any bird flu viruses.
The actual reason we went to The Bird Farm was to trade in two of our very very noisy finches. Sadly, we had to let Mel go. We’ve had him for ages but he was way too noisy. I love that bird but he had to go. I kind of feel bad that I didn’t give him a proper goodbye but I think finches only have a three second memory so he probably forgave me. He’s probably thinking, “Hot Dog! Look at all the hot women in here!”
I got Mel way back in the beginning to be a friend to Bridgeet, my first finch. Bridgeet was a female zebra finch. All white and cute as a button. A woman at work gave her to me because she had to get rid of her because she was too noisy. (Bridgeet, not the woman at work). Little did I know, that little white bird was the beginning of our crazy bird hobby. Toby’s always loved birds but getting a finch was permission to take his bird watching hobby to a whole new level.
Then we built the bird aviary. Hmmmmm… I have pictures of it somewhere. Probably in my old archives that are GONE. Too bad because our aviary is really cool. If Toby’s office wasn’t always such a mess (and I didn’t have this aversion to showing off messes), I’d go take a picture of it. It’s huge and in our house. Just like a Zoo! In our house!
We are the crazy bird people!
Shortly after acquiring Bridgeet (and then Mel to keep her company) we started collecting more and more finches. (They are like candy except you can’t eat them and they tweet!) We had spice finches for a while but they kept having babies and that got out of control. So over the years, we’ve narrowed our collection down to mostly just waxbills. This is probably boring to 99 percent of the people who might read this but there’s going to be one person who knows exactly what a waxbill is and this paragraph is ALL FOR YOU!
Bridgeet died a while back (she was old) and ever since, Mel has been a screeching lunatic bird. It could be because he misses Bridgeet or it could be because he just is a crazy lunatic bird. The bird aviary is in Toby’s office and in order to work, and get stuff done, Toby has resorted to squirting Mel with a squirt bottle full of water to get him to shut up. It’s really sad. Mel has had more than his fair share of baths.
The rest of the birds have suffered too because when Mel gets squirted, he sends the whole aviary into a tither. It was time for him to go. We didn’t want to do it because who knows if somebody will buy him and put him in a very very small cage in a dark dorm room or something, but he had to go. Hopefully, he’ll get to live out the rest of his days at the bird farm with a zillion new hot girlfriends.
So this is my goodbye post to Mel. And also a post about how we hope to pass on our love of birds to Baby Bug, so people can make fun of her too.
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Potty Talk
Okay, everyone who doesn’t have kids, you can just skip reading today. I give you permission. And if you do have kids but you are sick potty training in general, I give you permission to leave too. I’ll call you when I post letters again.
I know it’s probably way too early to be getting excited about this but… Baby Bug has shown a significant interest in potty training!!! I know! She’s only twenty months! Not that this means anything, all the books I’ve read warn that early interest does not necessarily mean early mastery or that Baby Bug is going to read before she is three or anything. It could happen though.
I’m not in a rush about this at all. It just sort of happened. Maybe it was the youtube movies we watched, maybe it was because she idolizes her older cousin SuperChic, who is four and going through the whole ordeal. Who knows. But it’s sort of a big deal at our house. Like jumping up and down, singing happy songs and celebrating big deal. She is so proud of herself.
It started because she pooped in the tub. I hate poop in the tub. It’s disgusting. I have to fish the poop out of the water with my hands through a plastic grocery shopping bag, kind of like how dog owners scoop up dog poop at the park. Then I have to wash out the tub and it’s just this whole ordeal that I don’t really love very much. Not to mention, bath time is very close to bed time and thus not the best time to be busy cleaning things.
I think Baby Bug picked up on my distaste for poop scooping (even though I tried really hard to let her know that she’s not in trouble in any way) because soon she started getting this really distressed look on her face in the tub.
“Poopy!” She says, all worried, with eyes bugging out of her head. “Poopy! Poopy!”
I think she wants me to put her diaper back on her so she can poop normally but that’s not an option. She’s wet and slippery and who knows where I put that old diaper anyway. So I lift her out of the tub, dripping, and attempt to put her on the big person toilet.
That’s a mistake. Her little wet butt nearly slips off and now she’s terrified of the giant potty hole. Maybe there are snakes in there or something. So there I stand, distraught mother with no idea what to do. I put her back in the tub and …viola! poop in the tub.
After this happened a couple of times, I put my thinking cap on and decided that maybe if I had a baby potty in the bathroom, near the bathtub, I could just put her on that and all my problems would be solved. It would be just her size. And why not? She might as well get used to the idea anyway.
So off to the baby store we went. I didn’t plan this but buying a baby potty became quite the event. Baby Bug and I went together and talked about it the whole way to the store. At the store we looked at the potties and she picked out the GREEN one, of course. I didn’t even know they made green potties. This was a very lucky break.
Baby Bug loves green. Really really really loves it. I think she eats grapes and lettuce, celery and broccoli just because they are green, not necessarily because she likes the taste of them. I gather this, since I often find them chewed and spit out later. Sigh….motherhood is so glamourous.
At the baby store, we found a book about going potty. (There was a movie too but I didn’t think we really needed that.) It was all very exciting. New book! New potty! It was like Christmas. I bet we could throw a party and have potty cupcakes and everyone would be totally into it. Well, maybe not the potty cupcake part.
Anyway, everything is all about the potty all the time at our house now. Baby Bug loves her potty. She wants to sit on it all the time. When I go to the bathroom, she goes with me and sings, “Mommy potty. Baby Potty!” over and over and over again.
I find her all over the house with her diaper off, talking about going to the potty. It’s actually becoming a bit of a pain in the neck and I find myself dressing her in onesies with snaps just so she can’t take her clothes off and run around.
Getting her to the potty is not that easy. We keep the back of the house (where the bathroom is) blocked off because that is where Toby’s office is and he needs it quiet to work. It’s bad enough that I go to the bathroom a million times already. Every time I open the door, every time I flush… it’s all within hearing distance of Toby’s office and he can be a bit grumpy when interrupted over and over again.
So you can imagine my distress when going potty is Baby Bug’s new favorite thing. Maybe I’ll have to move her little toilet to the kitchen or something. I don’t know.
Anyway, I thought I better blog about this because it is all very exciting and newsworthy in the world of Baby Bug. Since I don’t keep a baby book, I better record it here that Baby Bug has officially used her potty four times in the last three days.
I’m proud of her.
