the not so heavy hand: how to prevent spankings (more potty humor)

this post relates to saturday, august 9.

saturday was spent in new orleans. we made a day trip to the big easy and cruised around downtown before heading to the new orleans zoo and then the aquarium. it was good times. what’s not to love about the zoo... even if the humidity is thicker than cheese. the zoo was nice because it wasn’t huge and there was a lot of shade provided by nicely placed palms and other trees. the animals were also worth seeing. gators in their element. jaguars tussling. elephants picking up stuff with their trunks and 10 cooper grandhcildren trying to keep up with big jeff. oh, and the giraffes... it had been a while since i had seen some of those (probably my personal favorite). the aquarium was nice because it was indoors. plus, there were sharks.

this was the first part of the vacation where big jeff joined along in the day’s activities. big jeff moves along at a light-speed type pace when sight seeing... thus, it is more like sight glimpsing as you cruise along to the next stop. i think i saw some flamingos at the zoo, but i’m not entirely sure since all i saw was a pink blur (i guess it could have been cotton candy). big jeff likes to move. the kids are not exactly amenable to his pace; but, in the end, we hustled and ended up seeing most of the zoo in about 3 hours (i’m still looking for guiness’ number to make sure we’re in the next edition). the aquarium was more of the same, but the kids were happy and sometimes it is nice just to get through quick, strap the kids down to the car seats, and then relax for a moment.

we had some korean bbq and shabu shabu for dinner that night. good stuff. i think vegas needs a nice korean bbq joint. afterwards, we took the kids upstairs and let them run around like wild banshees. aim told me she made her way over to the boys’ bathroom and found a bottomless caleb hanging out by the toilet. turns out, caleb had just gone number two but there was nothing in the toilet. that’s always a scary moment for a parent: knowing that your child has gone to the bathroom and having no idea where he placed the goods except that they aren’t in the toilet. apparently, it didn’t make sense for caleb to use the toilet in this instance for some reason... and like any god-fearing, reasonably minded person would, he used the garbage can next to the toilet instead. this makes sense since this is how we have raised our children... actually, it makes no sense at all and i have no idea where the boy came up with the idea.

at least i didn’t have an idea until my older brother reminded me that i once used the laundry basket as a substitute toilet while we were growing up. of course, i was sleep walking at the time and that’s a story for another day (and that’s still not as bad as the time i slept walk home from the neighbor’s house while babysitting). anyway, there could be some relation to my use of the laundry basket as a toilet and caleb’s use of the garbage can... except that caleb wasn’t sleep walking.

at any rate, caleb, sensing that punishment was in order and a spanking was headed his way, quickly told aim that she could not spank him because she would get poop on her hand. i guess he hadn’t wiped yet.... couldn’t find a towel or something because it would have been too conventional to use toilet paper. not bad. i can’t fault the kid for trying to keep his backside safe (not that aim would have spanked him for pooping in the garbage can anyway... i mean, there was a liner and it’s not like it was her purse or something). i once told my grandma as she was scratching my back and getting closer to my waste line to be careful or her hand might smell funny. i am starting to see that caleb and i are more alike than i thought, thus, i can see where the kid’s head was at and, as fate would have it, he didn’t get a spanking. nice tactic. i’ll have to keep it in mind for future use.

one last note: caleb just informed the flight stewardess/attendant (whatever the politically correct term is nowadays) that uncle kendall passes gas all the time. neither he, nor kendall according to caleb, holds anything back.