While cooking dinner last night, Ezra and Reuben were nakedly frolicking in the yard, playing in the pool and on the slip 'n slide. A neighbor just told me, "I saw your boys playing in the yard yesterday afternoon. It was so sweet." Sounds idyllic, doesn't it?
It was, until Ezra called to me: "Mama! Ruby has so much poo poo in his tushy. It got all over my hands when I boosted him up into the tree..." And then, "But that's okay, I just washed it off in the pool!"
As I headed out to deal with this doozy, I realized that the one part of this sentence that hadn't seemed troublesome (Ruby being up in the tree) was actually the most urgent part. There, up in the maple tree, was my little naked Ruby, looking more like a small forest creature than a boy, as he scrambled higher and higher and higher up the tree limbs. My calls for him to stop were useless. He only stopped once he was perched near the very top of the 10 foot tree and then, looking down, he said in a small voice, "No let me fall down."
Standing on a chair, I wasn't nearly tall enough to reach the little lemur looking at me with big brown eyes. Luckily, a friend had been over the day before to trim our trees and had left a ladder out. I quickly carried the ladder over - all the while telling Ruby not to move as he crouched clutching the branches - climbed up and could just barely reach him. It was very precarious trying to keep my balance on the top of the ladder, while trying to grab my hefty little boy. Ezra, who was perched a little lower down in the tree than Reuben, helped me greatly when he sort of pushed Ruby into my arms. I carried him down the ladder, hearts beating wildly (his and mine), cleaned up the poop and told Ezra to never ever boost Ruby up in the tree again.
And then, I went back to cooking dinner which, in a stroke of good luck, hadn't yet burned.
Recent Comments