After breakfast this morning, I took my coffee to the couch while Ben busied himself with deciding what he wanted to play with. Stuffed dog, Pooh maybe? No. Drink the rest of his milk? No. A book, perhaps? No, not today.
Instead, he sees something on the floor and picks it up to inspect. It looked to me like a torn piece of paper. There are many such pieces of paper strewn about our living room. My grandmother let him tear out any magazine page with a dog on it last week and I’m throwing them away one at a time.
But this was not a piece of paper. He made a “yuck” face and dropped it. Plop. That had my attention. Pieces of magazine paper do not plop. I stood for a closer look.
“Aaaggghhhh! Uck!”
It was a dead frog.
At my outburst, Ben thought he was in trouble and dropped to the floor crying. All I wanted to do was wash his hands. Once I upset him, all he wanted to do was rub his eyes or put his hands in his mouth.
“Aw, Ben, no, I’m sorry, you didn’t do anything wrong… Oh, please don’t grab your tongue. Why would you even do that? Gah, just let me wipe your hands off!”
If you don’t have a toddler in your house, you might wonder how I could possibly miss a dead frog in front of the couch I was sitting on. If you do live with a toddler, you’re probably surprised he didn’t put the dead frog in his mouth.
The cats (or maybe just Frodo) have been bringing many a dead animal to the foot of the basement stairs. I take it as a “guys, seriously, we love the new house! That we can go in and out of the house any time of day we want? Love it! Here’s a dead bird of thanks.”
Because nothing says thanks like a small dead animal.
