You Think You Know How This Will End

One of the nice things about walking with young children is they notice things I would normally miss while striding down the street in my normal hurry. We enjoyed a local art festival today, and the highlights were varied.

The boys were intrigued by this sculpture. “Ball!” sez Buster.

We read the plaque: “Back of Snowman.” Um, ok.

Q-ster and I have made a tradition of getting roasted corn when we’re at outdoor markets, but now we need to buy two ears. He gets his own and I share with his little brother.

Hey, give me my corn back!

Peeking.

Buster was determined to get himself a balloon. He pointed at every decorative balloon (“Ball!”) the entire morning, until we finally found a booth (Yay, police department!) that gave him one. I tried to tie it to his wrist to keep it from floating off, but he wasn’t having any of it. I ended up tying a loop and slipping it over my wrist, which did the trick until he noticed and starting wailing at glass-shattering levels.

I took the ribbon off my wrist and tried to slip it over his. Screams. I put it back on my wrist. More screams. At this point, his older brother was starting to tear up because he was so stressed from the scene. I handed the ribbon over to Buster and figured that the point of tying the balloon was to prevent screaming when he let go and it floated away, but if he’s screaming anyway, at least we’ll get five to ten seconds of peace first.

We started walking back to the car, Q-ster holding a small bag of kettle corn and Buster clutching the ribbon to his balloon, swerving around, drunken pirate-like, as toddlers are wont to do. I watched his hand on the unsecured balloon carefully.

You think you know how this story ends. I certainly thought I did.

But no, he held on to his balloon for the four blocks back to the car, where my non car-sleeping son passed out from exhaustion, still holding tight.

This is one determined baby.