Bye-bye froggie

River flushed a rubber frog down the toilet last night. While he
uses the portable potties like a champ, he hasn’t really embraced the
throne. Perhaps because it’s not as easy to entertain himself. We bought the
cute Baby Bjorn seat, which I hoped would help, and a step stool.
Last night I introduced him to the step stool, put him on, gave him
his plastic ducks and frog to play with, and left the room so that he
wouldn’t be distracted by me. He started to flush the toilet
repeatedly and seemed amused by the swirling water. “Agua!” he
exclaimed. I guess the frog fell or was dropped in there at some
point and became a victim of the flushing. When he couldn’t find it,
he asked Rana? Rana? and asked me to help him look for it. Only then
did I realize what probably happened.

The late night Roto-Rooter visit cost $175 plus tax. We’ve recently
been trying to budget and have allocated $100/month to spending on
River, not including education savings, childcare or food. This has
seemed like quite a luxury to me, since I previously spent pretty
close to nothing on non-essentials. But this has used up his budget
for the next two months, so it’s time to be frugal again. Now the
washing machine has overflowed too, so perhaps the frog traveled and
we’re going to be out another couple of hundred dollars.

Just to make life wonderful, the car broke down last night and had to
be towed and we are scheduled to move to the new house tomorrow, but
haven’t yet found someone to take over our lease. I sure hope the
joys of home ownership make themselves apparent soon!

Logistics are pretty much consuming us right now, though I am worried
about the effect of the move on River. It’s only a couple of blocks
and it’s not going to change the people in his life. But I still
thing the change in immediate environment will be stressful for him
when this is all that he’s known and he has a very clear familiarity
with his house, street and neighbors.

I decided to bow out of the moving of heavy furniture tomorrow,
leaving that to Mark and the movers. I’ll take River somewhere fun,
where he doesn’t have to be around the stress of moving furniture and
can enjoy the time in another way. I hope he’ll adapt OK to the new
circumstances. His room will be better and more spacious, but I kind
of doubt he’ll appreciate that now.