Wherein I Shove Fun Down My Kid's Throat

Today is the day that Mike works until 8pm. That means the boy and I take the bus home together after work/daycare and today I had a brainstorm: why wait for the 77? I'll just walk to the busway and we can get on an EBA. If buses were planets and their routes were orbits, the EBA would be Mercury and the 77 would be more like Mars. ANYhow, we got home in record time and that played right into my plan. Summer is officially over and I had never squirted Donovan with the hose.

We got home, I changed him into his swim diapers and swim trunks, all the while promising "a special fun surprise!" Yeah, that sounds twee but it was sincere: I sure as hell liked getting squirted with the hose, what kid doesn't?

Mine doesn't, apparently. Well, he tolerated it and a few times he sort of smiled, but that big laughing fit I was expecting? Not forthcoming.



When I noticed him shivering, we cut things short and I took him in to change him into a clean, dry diaper. I fed him dinner and then got out the next surefire funfest: Fingerpaints! I've been meaning to buy Donny some fingerpaints for weeks now and I finally remembered to get them yesterday. After he finished eating I cleaned off his tray, taped down some paper and squirted some paint on it. He squished it around, put some in his mouth, wiped his face with the back of his painty hand and then started whining to get down.

Sigh.

At that point, I put him in his playpen. Mike and I didn't intend to make his playpen his favorite place but we unintentionally have put all of his electronic noise making toys in there--the Sesame Street pop up toy that sings 6 different songs, the bilingual maraca that counts to 10 in Spanish, the stuffed toy calculator that sounds like Skee Ball, the "Baby Boom Box" and the quacking duck. Once he's in the playpen, he gets them all going at once--Mixmaster D. And he's very happy.

While he laid down the beats, I prepped the sink and the table for his bath. He was good boy about it, too. By the time Mike got home, the kid had been squirted, painted, fed, bathed, dried, dressed and entertained. Not bad, if I do say so myself.