Over the weekend, the three of us walked up to our local plant nursery for some pretty flowers to go on top of our upside down tomato buckets. It was quite a lovely day -- a nice temperature, rain just on the verge of beginning, Eliza sole princess for an entire walk. Bill had Maggie in the front carrier; I had bright six-packs of plants over my shoulder; life is fairly idyllic.
Then Bill stops suddenly and gasps and makes a frantic swatting gesture with one arm. Maggie's eyes are big with surprise. "A bee. It flew right at her face. I hit it," says Bill while contorting the front carrier around as best he can to look at Maggie's face. "It was going right under her hat brim." I good-naturedly walked over to reassure Bill that the Mags is fine. Maggie is mildly interested in the goings-on.
In the course of my "humoring you" investigation, I spot the bee sandwiched between Maggie and the front carrier, just inside her sleeve. "It's still there!" I say, pointing. "Agh!" says Bill frantically moving in to flick it away. Except he flicks it further down her shirt.
Now we have to quickly remove Maggie from the front carrier (unsnap, unsnap, unsnap, lift), open up her onesie from the bottom (unsnap, unsnap, unsnap, lift), and find the little bugger wherever he's set up temporary residence. He was just on top of her diaper, dead, probably squished to death with all the activity. And a quick check of Mags revealed no blossoming bites. Later that evening I found the bee's stinger on her sleeve. I think he was turned around the wrong way and might have tried to sting the front carrier. Poor guy.
It was all very exciting. And Maggie just sort of had this expression on her face like "What are we doing now? I'm learning. Oh, interesting." Which is probably the way it should be: children have no idea that a situation is on the verge of desperate while the parents' hearts are pounding. They come away thinking, "Oh, what are we doing next? Something else interesting?"
