First of all, cutie pie is wearing some new duds. The sweater is part of a pkg of clothes we received in thanks for some of Lily's newborn and 3 month clothing that she doesn't fit into anymore. This woman picked out such cute stuff! And most of it fits now or will soon.
Now, about that village thing. We went to a bookstore reading this morning at Wild Rumpus, and although the storytime was a wash because it was so packed full of people, Lily had a great time because this store is like a little zoo. They have a few cats, 2 chinchillas, 3 ferrets, some parroty-looking birds that were very chatty, a couple doves, a gecko, a tarantula, and a little chickeny thing. I think it's a guinea hen. I'm not sure. But I'll call him Chic. So Chic roams free in the bookstore, and when storytime was over, the kids started all leaving and/or roaming around, and this one little boy was running through the store, trying to catch Chic, and pushing people and smaller children out of his way. Well, I got sick of it. When he ran in front of Lily while she was trying to approach Chic, I grabbed him and said "Hey, don't run in here." Then his Dad sort of showed up. Actually he was already standing near him, but he wasn't controlling the kid at all, and when I tried to correct his child, he mumbled something about "Hey, let's not....get...excited," and made eye contact with me but quickly looked away. I couldn't tell for sure if he was talking to me, and then when he had walked away from me, I heard him mumble even quieter something about "touch my kid." Well, dumbass, if you're not going to control your child and keep him from knocking over smaller kids because he's running in a crowded store, the village will intervene. I am the village.
Unfortunately the little brat was there for a while longer and I could see even more of this lame dad's parenting. His kid is running around and he says "Hey, buddy, slow...down...there." Oh yeah, that's real effective. See how he's not paying any attention to you?
I'm sorry, but I am not going to stand for this behavior when it gets close to my child. Am I stepping over the line? Tell me what you think.
Once the speed demon was gone, Lily was able to check out Chic at close range because she walked up to him very slowly and calmly. I think she might have touched him lightly before he sauntered off. It was funny, too, her and a couple other well-behaved calm little girls sort of chicken-hopped after Chic, following him but doing it in a chicken-like manner. Very cute.
Lily also pet one of the cats. The first attempt was not so good, because she went for the ear. The cat was so mellow, though, it just let itself get dragged a little ways by the ear before I peeled Lily's hand away and showed her how to pet gentle like she pets Cocoa. She did a good job after that. This was her first cat-petting! I give her a B+. Or maybe an A, since she didn't pull his ears after I told her not to. So maybe now that she's actually pet a cat, she'll start saying "cat" or at least not lumping them in with the dogs when she's looking in her books. Because usually she just calls them dogs or nothing at all. Now she has a real life experience with a cat. I wish we had gotten to pet the chinchillas, they are sooooooo soft. We'll have to go back there when it's not storytime, and see if we can pet the chinchies.
1 comment:
well, I think you did fine. I agree with you completely. First of all, what does he get to do when he's at home? Pull the cat's tail off? Beat the dog with a skillet? Why is he allowed to terrorize animals? But besides all that, when it's busy, that's when you are hyper-vigilant with the child. But clearly, this was a case of the guy having his ego all up in his kid, and he was more irritated with you touching 'his property' than about anything else. He could obviously not care less what was happening with his kid or anyone else.
You go, girl. And I can't wait until Lily learns to speak up! She's going to be protecting her space just fine!
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