Bottle Time

Sunday afternoon was warm and humid, the kind of weather where all three of us fell asleep after a short walk. We woke up just in time to be late to a BBQ at Janet’s. Extra late considering that we hadn’t got together our contribution to the pot luck. Pack up the baby, along with plenty of food and diapers, and pack up Zombie Mommy. Unfortunately the store didn’t have the flour-free chocolate cake she had her heart set on nor the coffee samples her mind needed to break free of zombification.

We walked groggily into Janet and Paul’s kitchen only to be faced with a gaggle of girls. There must have been a hundred of them, at least until I realized that they were circling around the kitchen island and living room center and we were simply seeing the same ones over and over. Still, Tyler was vastly outnumbered.

Zane likes the sound of voices. At a restaurant he’ll either sit and listen or drift off to sleep under the steady drone of conversation and activity. It was a little harder to drift off sitting next to a hot tub full of squealing girls! I’d helped Paul pick up the hot tub the day before and the water was still on the chilly side, but goose bumps and blue lips never seems to deter kids from having a good time … and it wasn’t quite that cold.

There were close to a dozen kids, with Zane being the youngest and the oldest kid approaching nine. The only other boy besides Tyler was somewhere in the two’s and he was all motion without much thought/control. Watching him try to work a cup of cheerios was a pretty good preview of what we can look forward to.

Zane was passed around a little bit and took it all in a calm manner. He ate a little bit and then drifted off to sleep in my arms just as everyone started gathering their kids and leaving. Zane and I were alone in the house, with everyone out front packing cars and saying their goodbyes, when Tyler came in the back door, stopped and looked at us and said one thing before leaving:

“Jerry, why are you still here?”

I think he was concerned that we’d been forgotten.