Monkey Rescue

This is seriously one of the funniest things I've seen happen in our house.  At least, the funniest thing in the past week.  Jonathan accompanied David to the grocery store on Sunday afternoon.  Apparently, he behaved very well.  His reward was a trip to the hardware store.  Earlier in the day, Jonathan had attached a rope to his pants with a carabiner and was asking for me to throw the rope over the blades of the ceiling fan so he could use it to scale the walls while fighting fires.  (No joke, and this was while I was trying to interview a nanny).  Obviously, I said "no" to repelling from ceiling fans.  He decided he needed more rope, anyways, and had been asking Daddy for rope.  Hence... the trip to the hardware store.

So they return home from the hardware store, and I am again engrossed in some version of find-a-nanny activities.  This first photo is what I discover when my ears perk up, I hear David remind Jonathan that he is NOT to hang from the curtain rod, and I go to investigate.  

At this moment, he is celebrating the rescue of Baby Turtle.  If you look closely, you'll see Baby Turtle has the yellow rope tied around him.  Baby Monkey is laying nearby, exhausted from his recent rescue.  Jonathan also happens to still have chocolate on his face from an after dinner treat, also compliments of Daddy.  I guess the little guy had been SUPER good that afternoon!  ;)  Jonathan had asked his Daddy to put the pulley (hardware store prize) on the curtain rod,  wrap one end of the rope around Baby Monkey, and attach the other end of the rope to himself.  He then noted he needed a second rope to stabilize himself, directly attaching himself to the curtain rod above.  To my knowledge he hasn't watched any rock climbing shows, but I'll confess to letting him watch Jeff Corwin while we cook dinner.  Maybe Jeff has performed similar animal operations????  It was at this point where he was instructed that he would NOT be jumping off the couch while attached to the curtain rod.

Entirely amused, I gave up on finding a nanny and joined in the fun, with camera in hand, of course.

So the story was that the "mean fire cows" set a fire behind the couch, and the animals needed rescuing.  Once he'd rescued both (top photo), he put the fire out.  Then he relocated to behind the couch himself and returned the animals to their homes,

carefully lowering Baby Monkey back down.

 The story took a positive spin from here.  As I explained to Jonathan that I was a "journalist" taking photos of all the excitement, he told me that the "mean fire cows" were sorry for their bad choices, had asked God to change their hearts, and were now no longer making such mean choices but were becoming friends with Baby Monkey and Baby Turtle.

 After all that excitement, he needed a drink from his water bottle, which Daddy had also attached to his carabiner.

The next day, the pulley system and an attached basket became essential in relocating building materials necessary for building Lego towers.

Today Jonathan attended "Lego Camp."  I have no idea if it's this way in other cities, as I don't recall these kinds of camps at all growing up, but here the city is chock full of day camps for kids during the summer.  Lots of kids go from camp to camp to camp -- Dinosaur camp, fishing camp, zoo camp, tennis camp, etc, etc.  Like the rest of life in a community full of over-scheduled kids where school choices plague parents from the time they have a positive pregnancy test, I try to be cognoscente of potential for craziness and not get wrapped up in it.  But when I heard about a little 3-hour, 4-day program for kids in which they get to build little robots out of Legos, I knew it would be right up Jonathan's ally.  Two friends from his swim class were already signed up, and his best little buddy joined as well, so he had great company.

So today we packed up his little back pack and snack and headed off to the local Rec Center.  He had a blast, came home full of so many stories that he couldn't get them out all at once, about building Lego cranes and using computers to program them to knock down towers, and something about flying toy dragons, and the playground....  It hit me, as we were driving home together in the mini-van, that this was the first step in a new stage for my little guy, and for me as a mom.  He attends a preschool, that's literally two doors down from ours, and Sunday school at our church, but this is the first thing he's done outside of our little every day world.  There was something about picking him up from a little camp I only knew a little about (other than that it was run by a well respected organization) and hearing his stories... it just felt so big-kid.  And suddenly I saw the years ahead of going to this activity or that (not too many!), and hearing the stories of the day on the way home.  I'm not sure you anyone else could really identify the sentiment, but something about today felt very much like one more "growing up" step for our little family.