Lightening

This Sunday morning, I discovered a little backyard gecko (no idea if it's really a gecko, to be honest) lizard in one of the bedrooms.  I am frankly impressed with myself that I had enough wits to call David in to catch the thing for the kids rather than simply shriek as it darted out from Abby's collection of shoes.

There was much excitement about the lizard, which was named Lightening for his speed.

Recalling that at some point we'd had two similar pets as kids, my initial plan was to go get a house for the little guy and add him to the family.

We headed to the pet store after church, where I collected the rest of my wits and came up with a much preferable plan, which was (thankfully), well embraced by the kids.

We bought a "hotel" for our visitor, recognizing that visiting bugs and animals were welcome to stay a night or two in our hotel, but that they would ultimately be healthiest and happiest back at their home... just like we only stay a few nights when we go visit somewhere different, too.  

That solved problems of buying crickets every few days, what to do when we leave town, its inevitable premature passing away in our care, and the fact we'd be inviting a salmonella vector into a home with two young children and a pregnant mom.

The kids eagerly watched Lightening chase the few crickets we'd bought him and "play" in his hotel for two days.  We had a great visit with the little guy.

Then, with surprisingly little drama or disappointment, despite the kids' profound affection for him, we let him go in the front yard where he'd be close to their windows and able to look in at them on occasion.

Now our little hotel is available for the next (short-term!) visitor.

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Other events of the same Sunday include walking into Jonathan's room that morning to discover he'd replaced his pajama pants with jeans and donned a hard hat along with a rope and carabiner, which he attached to his belt loop (hence the need for jeans) and then to one of the poles of the tent on his bunk bed.  I found him perched at the top of the ladder, and upon seeing me he jumped off the top bunk (these bunk beds are unusually low to the ground, thank Goodness) and was now dangling by his belt loop about half-way down.  He could barely get the words out, he was so excited to tell me, "I have to practice how to come down a cliff, because that's important in case an emergency!"

I was concerned about his jeans (I'd just bought them!), and his safety.  David was concerned he'd break the pole on the flimsy bed tent.  The solution David offered was to offer a trip to the hardware store to purchase a more secure bolt to attach to the top of the bed, and "maybe we should get him a repelling harness instead."  He's definitely his father's son.

Unfortunately, I obviously didn't have a camera in hand when I walked in on the scene.  I grabbed one to snap this quick reminder of the morning while he was descending more carefully from the top of his cliff.

And yes, once we got over our amusement with the situation, we talked with him about why this wasn't a safe way to practice for potential mountain emergencies.

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This last snippet was from this morning.  Clearly, Lightening has left an impression on him.

I unfortunately discovered this morning that one of the walls in the living room is totally marked up with red and blue streaks.  Jonathan honestly related that he hadn't colored on the walls with crayons, but he had discovered that his painted drum sticks made some really interesting marks on the wall.  He tells me Abby was busy playing with the nanny while he worked on the wall, and that she hadn't told me because she hadn't noticed.

Seeing as he still seemed quite impressed with himself and wasn't offering much in the way of a sincere apology, nor seeming especially concerned about the proposed consequences, I explained that these marks probably wouldn't come off and would leave our living room colored.  "Do you see how that's a problem, Jonathan?"

""Yes.  And if a lizard was in our house and it ran up the wall, it would be a problem for the lizard, because they can turn brown and green, but they can't turn blue or red.  So he wouldn't be very safe."

Ummmm... yeah, that too.