cackles madly ...

Okay, so one of my professors in grad school was Luis Alberto Urrea. I have mentioned this before, I think. I got a lot out of his workshops (even the poetry one I did only as a desperate independent study because I was one 500-level class short of my degree and expected very little from), and found one of my writerly obsessions thanks to a writing assignment he gave us.

Anyway, that's one long way of saying (and, possibly, justifying) that when I saw this, I immediately thought, I am one degree of separation from Neil Gaiman! (Which means I'm two degrees of separation from Robin McKinley.)

a really nice day with the Zweeble

Started the day on an iffy note, but then headed out. Found out that Z. prefers Johnny Cash to Depeche Mode. ("Mom, can I hear 'God's Gonna Cut You Down' again?")

So we went to my doctor's appointment, which was ... okay. Z. was shy with everyone. Let's be honest, he does not perform on demand. Which is fine; he's not a trained monkey.

Then off to Toys R Us to find an anklyosaur costume for Halloween. Oh, wait, we're distracted by the $1-$5 toy rack, hang on. Pop guns! Cool! Other stuff! Neat! Halloween costumes? Why do we want to lookn at tho--oh, hey, Ben 10 Ultimate Alien costumes. Bees! Yeah, okay--wait! TRAIN SET! TRAIN SET! What? No, no, there's a train set--huh? Oh, fine, Halloween costumes, whatever. Hmm. Not even one dinosaur costume, let alone an anklyosaur ... phooey. Okay, well, "I'm okay with being a ZhuZhu Pet."

Say it with me: "Wha ... ?"

Yes, so we got the kid a ZhuZhu Pet costume. (ZhuZhu Pets are little run-around hamster toys.) It has a little head piece and a tail, and a cape. I think the cape was really the draw--he's SUPER ZHUZHU.

I was dubious, but it's his Halloween costume--I got two years to choose for him and that was that.

We wandered the entire store looking at everything. I got a lot of ideas for Christmas. Z. danced with a Disco Mickey Mouse toy that said, "Go Mickey, Go Mickey," and Z. boogied and said, "Go Zweeble, Go Zweeble!"

I also lost him in the store. I turned to look at the Nerf swords, still talking to him, and he took off. I turned around and he was gone. And this was the part of the store where it goes from being straight sight-lines to lots of little shelves at cross corners. So there I was, stalking up the aisles and calling his name (and none of the three sales people I saw on the floor even offered to help me, excellent work there, Toys R Us--Safe Place signs be damned), hearing nothing, until I did the old Mom Projection and belted out "[FULL CHILD'S NAME!] ANSWER ME NOW!"

"Mom? I think I might be lost."

"Well, keep talking and I'll find you."

"Okay!" Silence.

"I said keep talking!"

"Oh, okay!" Nothing.

That went on four more times until I tracked him down through the labyrinth that is children's art supplies and train toys.

So now I had promised him a toy, and he didn't know what, out of the million things he'd seen, he wanted. "How about a pop gun?"

"That would be great!"

(The pop guns were actually kind of hard to work--we'd gone through the box and I'd found one he could make pop easily. And being a crafty Mom, I creased the tag so I could find it again.)

After paying, we went to see Grammie at work. Z. charmed everyone at her place of business with a description of his pop gun, his Halloween costume, his t-shirt ...

So we decided to go to McDonalds for lunch. Mom had to take care of something on the first floor of the building. We were waiting for her in the foyer; Z. wanted to climb the stairs. Okay, so we climbed the stairs to the second floor, where there is a balcony that looks down on the first floor. Z. then starts popping the pop gun as a message for Grammie. Yeah, well, she got it. :)

At McDonalds we sat out on the play area, and Z. got himself totally stuck on the play set, so I had to climb in and help him down. Twice. They say those things are fun for parents, too, but they lie.

Then we headed home, and we chatted the whole way about ... oh, well, what a Zweeble is and how we found out he was going to be a boy, and fishing rods, and cell phone towers and who knows what else, and played his version of slug bug, where everything is a slug bug.

When we got home, we tried on the ZhuZhu Pet costume, and oh my god, he is freaking adorable in it. But it needs desperately to be hemmed. There's a little tail! But the hamster head, which is supposed to go on his head like a hat/crown sort of thing--well, he wants it to be a mask, so he yanks it down over his face--but there are no eye holes, so he can't see. So I have eye holes to make, too, apparently.

Then he napped, and when he woke up he set off his pop gun and I couldn't figure out what that noise was--which he found hilarious.

He was getting cranky, so we went outside and it was gorgeous out. We played with his ray guns and the pop gun, then looked at some bugs. And then I offered to draw a hopscotch grid, so we played a little pseudo-hopscotch. Well, okay, but then we decided to do some Extreme Hopscotch like they do on Curious George with a circle, square, triangle, diamond, rectangle, star, oval, trapezoid, pentagon, and octagon. Which Z. then named.

So the rules for Extreme Hopscotch are: you have to jump on all the shapes, and when you land on each space you have to shoot your gun. If you fall off a shape, you're out. And the board goes uphill. Except when it circles around and you go downhill.

It was cool.

Daddy's sick, so I got the boy bathed and we played with water toys, then we watched cartoons, read books and did some serious counting and pretending with his numbers book, and hit the sack.

And that was my really nice day with the Zweeble.