Every Sunday we gather as a family and retreat to my husband's grandparent's home for a traditional Sunday lunch. The entire family does this every Sunday. It's nice, and yes it does get old, but all the same nice.
Their home is in this unbelievabley beautiful spot in Texas, right on the water on 7 gorgeous acres of magnificant land. They have a gameroom with a pool table, a half court basketball set-up, and swingsets. A 100 ft. peir takes you out over the bay to the boat house where you can enjoy fishing or relaxing on the water. I mean, it's top notch country. It's roughly 60 miles south/east of Houston, so you get the best of both worlds.
The downside is there are quite a few scary critters out there. Snakes, possums, raccoons, aligators, (yes, I said aligators) spiders and the occasional wolf - or wild dog, whatever.
On one particular day, Blondie was about 3 years old and was playing pool in the game room. Well, he was playing with the pool table and pool balls - the actually game itself was not recognizable. He wandered around here and there, but we always managed to keep him close by. It's pretty dangerous out there for a baby if left unattended. We are great parents, we NEVER EVER leave our children unattended. That's why this next part still stumps me to this day.
As always, when leaving "The Bay" as we like to call it, we took advantage of our nicely dressed child and clean appearances all the way around and would run errands. Today we dedicded to venture to Sears, to buy some towels or something.
As we were walking through the store Blondie kept his hands in both his pockets. For the first 30 seconds this was kinda cute, but then I quickly became suspicious. There were lot's of shiny, breakable items quite in his reach that he wasn't interested in the slightest. Could my baby be getting sick? I decided to keep an even more close watchful eye than normal.
It was not too much later when I notice the hands in his pocket were fidgeting - almost inappropriately. I've seen this same move done by his father - I believe there is some sort of scratching involved in deep dark places I've yet to encounter, but I'm not sure. I knew the 3 year old was playing "pocket pool", so when we were half way down the shower curtain aisle I said, "Honey, what are you doing with your pants?"
He quietly answered, "There's a mouse in my pocket".
Turning to my husband, I said, see this is YOUR INFLUENCE. His dumbfounded expression clued me in to the fact that further explanation was required. The husband is something of a smart mouth. Whenever I would make an assumption and say "we" as in "We would love to attend your son's 2nd birthday party" he would say, "What do you have a mouse in your pocket?". He's pretty sensitive that we stay seperate entitites and not become one of those mod unicouple's - when they dress alike and you can't always tell the man from the woman.
But I digress. I simply assumed Blondie's reference to the mouse in his pocket was some sort of smart ass statement he was using to be more like his dear old dad. During my explanation to my husband, however, I discovered the truth.
"See Mommy," said the tiny voice from down below. "I have a mouse in my pocket."
I am confident that my scream could be heard in Australia. There was Blondie, holding a what appeared to be dead mouse in the palm of his hand. And this was no ordinary dead mouse - rigor mortess had set in and this bad boy was already decomposing.
He found the mouse on a trap, unhooked it, and then placed the poor litte creature into the front pockets of his pants. He then kept "petting" his friend througout the store.
My husband quickly rushes the the boy to the store restroom to try and rid his hands of any bacteria and disease. I was done screaming, but now onto gagging and was desperatley trying to get a hold of myself.
Before too long, my husband and red-faced crying son met me in the applicance ailse. Hands were washed, and washed and washed. Blondie was crying so hard I could barely make out his words, "Daddy made me fwush my fwrend".
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