Cluck

The boys were extra fussy and whiney this morning (is that a word?), so I decided to bundle them up and take them for a walk. It's about 50 degrees and gloomy today, but we just had to get out of the house for a minute for some fresh air.

Before the walk, I bundled up Hudson. I could only find a 12 month sized jacket, so that had to do. Hudson was swallowed up in the jacket with a blanket wrapped around him. Then, I found Elijah in Hudson's room, with a bunch of chickens lined up in a row. Yes. It was as odd as it sounds. (Mama Bugnar very sweetly sent her chicken collection to Elijah to borrow for his Barnyard party. So that's where the chickens came from.) Of course, Elijah insisted on taking a chicken on the walk. He chose the one whose eyes popped out when you squeeze his neck. Lovely.

So I throw on some yoga pants that I hadn't worn in a while. Obviously. I wore them when I was pregnant and then post-partum, and they were now very loose. Don't get me wrong, it was a good thing they didn't fit. But not realizing it until we were walking down the street wasn't a good thing.

Off we go. I am pushing the stroller with one hand, pulling up my pants with the other. Hudson is quickly disappearing (and probably suffocating) inside his 12 month jacket, and Elijah is squeezing the chicken's neck, eyes popping out. We pass a man in his yard, and he smiles at us. I couldn't tell if he felt pity for us, or if he was silently praying for us, or if he was grimacing at his plummeting resale value. We all know that having chickens in the neighborhood doesn't help with resale.

You can see this coming. Elijah decides he doesn't want the chicken anymore. So he "gives" it to Hudson. The 'sharing' looked a little more like 'shoving' from my angle. After telling him not to shove the chicken in Hudson's face for the 20th time, he gives it to me. So now, I am pushing the double stroller with one hand, pulling up my pants with the other, and balancing a chicken on the hood of the stroller.

By this point, I'm feeling like it's 80 degrees outside. We get home, and Elijah obeys with a "happy heart" and goes inside. Thank you, Lord. (He whined about wanting to mow outside but Hudson needed a nap.) But when I got Hudson inside, I realized he lost a sock on the walk. And it was one of my favorite ones, too.

Maybe we should have just spent those 20 minutes inside? And maybe one day, I can look back on this story and laugh?


Update: Julie found the missing sock on a walk around the neighborhood with Jonah! Thanks, Julie!