Green Bunny Has Surgery

Morgan's all time favorite comfort toy is a little plush green bunny that showed up in his Easter Basket when he was two. This poor bunny has been through a ton of washing and Morgan must have him almost every night to sleep. His name, appropriately enough, is Green Bunny.

He used to play the Bunny Hop if you pressed a button in his tummy but long ago he lost his voice and has been steadily getting skinnier and skinnier as his stuffing is worn and he's just has too much love. He's been to my office with me and sometimes has come on a ride to the store (though he has to wait in the car). The days when we can't find Green Bunny by bedtime are never easy though not as bad now as they were when Morgan was younger.

For a while I've been telling Morgan that I will need to carry out bunny surgery on Green Bunny to take out his broken voice box before it makes him sick (I'm concerned the batteries will leak). It took a few repetitions to convince Morgan that this did not mean that Green Bunny would be able to sing again.

I thought he would be traumatized by the very concept of having to cut Green Bunny open but he seemed to consider the concept for a day or two and then started asking me to do the bunny surgery. Well - at least there wouldn't be wailing.

This morning I decided to do it. Morgan and I ceremonially selected a thread that would match Green Bunny's fur and my sharpest scissors as well as new stuffing to help plump Green Bunny up again.

We set up the operating room (aka tray table) for the surgery with all our tools and reassured the patient.



Morgan and I discussed the surgical options and Morgan decided the best place for the incision was on Green Bunny's back, just above his tail. I made a careful and straight incision into the patient.



After making sure Green Bunny was still okay, I began to explore for the voice box. Because of the way it was anchored into him, it took the evacuation of most of his body stuffing to find it.



Finally the broken voice box was located and removed and any stuffing that didn't appear in good shape was removed at the same time.



Now that Green Bunny was free of his diseased voice box, he was given fresh clean stuffing to plump him up again and carefully sewn shut with two rows of nearly invisible stitches.



After the patient was reassured and woke up in recovery, Morgan pronounced him fat and happy again and all better.



Now Green Bunny can sit up unaided and once more looks as plump as a Green Bunny should look. Morgan says he was only scared once, during the cutting, and I told him how very careful I was to use very sharp scissors and not hurt him.

All in all - a very successful operation and I predict the patient has years of life left in him.

Christmas 2006

The Morganator has been anticipating this holiday seemingly forever. Despite the fact his requests for Santa seemed to change multiple times a day, he was sure that he would get everything he wanted. Now we had a bunch of presents to schlep to his Grandparents' house.

We usually spend the holidays with C's family and the tradition is the family presents get opened on Christmas Eve, after dinner, then once all the kids are in bed, the Santa presents get set up and stockings filled before the parents collapse until the way-too-early the next morning when the kids all wake up and race down to pillage their stockings and to find out whatever Santa left for them.

This year I had found a great item for M - a RoboRaptor. Now, being the ignorant mom that I am, I didn't realize that there was more than one model of robotic dinosaur and was under some delusion that the RoboRaptor was the smaller RoboReptile. Silly me. The RoboRaptor is about 1/3 again larger than the RoboReptile. When it arrived, I was floored by the size of the box it came in. Oh my word!

The first challenge was how to get the thing into the car and all the way to Grandma & Grandpa's house without it being spotted by the sharp-eyed M. That was accomplished by C swathing the box in a black plastic garbage bag and hiding it in the car the night before we left after M went to bed.

With the car packed to the gills, we went off to C's parents' house and successfully negotiated the mountain pass which had quite a bit of snow banked up and the road itself was only really bad at the top of the pass. Not too bad though C did get our adrenaline going when he slid off to one side and glanced off a snow bank. He said he forgot he was in a front-wheel drive car. LOL

After arriving at G&G's, M immediately discovered his favorite cousin (about a year and a half older than him) was there and took off to play in the foot or more of snow they had. C successfully managed to hide the large black plastic encased Raptor in the garage.

Much fun was had during the day with great family company and many presents and love. M got a ton of stuff and had a BLAST. The snow was coming down again and after presents most folks went out to walk in the snow and play around. Eventually it was bed time and once M slowed down, he crashed. The kids were absolutely exhausted.

After the kids were safely asleep, the parents got busy trying to get the Santa tasks done and I packed M's stocking while C was responsible for getting the RoboRaptor out of his box and batteries put in. Apparently one the batteries were put it, the Raptor was set to "on" and came alive.

Now several of the kids were upstairs in the loft while we were downstairs where sound travels. The Raptor let out a "roar" and I almost fell over when C got this look of panic on his face and grabbed the Raptor by the head and hissed "Shhhhhhhhhhhh" at it. When it seemed to stop, he let go of its head and it again thrashed and started to make roaring sounds. C grabbed it again and struggled with it while he tried to pry a battery out so he could shut it up.

In the meantime I'm laughing so hard I had to be turning red and falling off the hearth. My 16 year old niece and I are just dying as we watch this. Finally he succeeds and the raptor stops. Then C actually reads the instructions and locates the on/off switch for the Rapter (a Raptor BUTT switch???) and we get everything posed and finally get to bed.

This morning I wake up to hear the kids in the living room playing with toys and everyone else is up. I make C get up and we toss on some clothes to find that kids are having a great time and the Raptor has caused yet another stir and scared the heck out of the dog by heading toward it.

So C begins to play with the RoboRaptor and I think in some ways he was having as much fun as M was (especially since M was involved in playing with his garbage and recycle trucks at the time). It really is hilarious!

We'll see what happens when we get the RoboRaptor home and the cats get to experience the fun of being chased by it.

Training the Rocking Horse

First some background....

Morganator's daycare lady, Gayle, has three horses - two average size and one mini horse. One of the things the kids LOVE to do is to help her care for the horses. They are very well supervised and get to do things like help sweep or get water, etc. Morganator is always very proud when he gets to fetch grooming brushes or some other important job.

As a result, C and I have often seen Gayle training the horses. There are some exercises that get done where they are on a lead and she runs them around in a circle for a while. It's a fast and athletic activity.

So, the funny bit...

Yesterday I hear Morganator on his rocking horse and then I hear him talking and the sound of whacking. I look over from where I'm sitting and see him using a piece of hotwheels track like a whip (not hitting the horse, just whacking it nearby) and telling the horse things like "Git on, Go on. No stopping until I say so. Don't Stop!"

He was attempting to train the rocking horse as he'd seen the other horses be trained!

Birthday Boy

Another delayed post - I finally got some pictures off the camera.

So Morgan turned 5 a few weeks ago and for his birthday got a lovely new Batman bicycle from Mom and Dad and Grandma Kay added in the very useful Batman helmet and pads to round out the ensemble. He's got a few balance issues but seems to be really enjoying it.



Then at Grandma & Grandpa V's this weekend for Easter, he got his belated presents from them. As you can tell, he was only a little happy...



So much birthday fun and he's quite the ham for the camera, no?

The Coconut

Two friends of ours (and Morganator's Goddess parents), went to Hawaii on vacation and sent him a present:



Yes, it's a whole real coconut. The address is sharpied on the front (I edited out the address, sorry but weirdos abound). The stamps were glued and then stapled on.

The Morganator came home from daycare with Chuck to find it on the porch with a package from Amazon.

He was THRILLED! He carried it around with him for two days, cuddled it, wanted to sleep with it. Wanted to take it daycare....

Chuck says he's not going to desecrate the coconut by trying to open it - we don't hear any milk so it will probably not rot particulary quickly... And it might mean being able to miss the ER visit if the opening attempts backfire.

It's Snow

It's almost the ides of March and what did we get last night? Snow!

Now I'm not too amused but the Morganator is thrilled! He's outside right now (11am) scooping snow/slush off things and tossing it around.

Now, we all know that if he were older and, say, having to wait for a bus and there was the slightest snow, there would be nothing but complaint and whine. but right now it's apparently a ton of fun because it's his idea...

Kids....

Pictures

Here is the Morganator wearing the hat I bought in China when I was there last summer. When I emailed the picture to my chinese engineers, they told me he looked just like a chinese fisherman.


This is the Morganator on one of the giant stone/cement balls at Seattle Center during Folklife last summer. Quite the ham in both, don't you think?

Ah - Timeouts

When I got home today, Chuck and M were already home and I was greeted by the unmistakeable sound of wailing M.

Apparently C had gone into the computer room to check on M and he was busily getting into things that were NOT his computer or even his at all.

I had a feeling he was getting into stuff but this is the first time we've caught him at it.

Instant timeout and locking the computer.