Don't Read This If...

Don't read any further if you are the kind of person who is very concerned for Stellan's well-being. If you're the grandparent type, who worries when you see a photo of him jumping on the bed, just stop right now.

I'm serious. This will just make you want to fire me as a mother if you are the kind who stays up at night wondering if I should allow him to stand up in the bathtub so often.

OK, hopefully we have weeded out the killjoys who might report me to the authorities. We went to Everglades National Park again today, this time with Grandpa and Grandma Steward (my dad and step-mom). More details on this to follow. But central to this post is an observation I made. We saw many gators strewn around the canals, draped over the walkways and festooned about in sunny spots. We had a more difficult time keeping Stellan away from them this trip than we did last trip. We were 100% successful in keeping him from being eaten, so don't be concerned about that. What does worry me is that every time he would get near one, he would excitedly shout, "Doggie! Doggie!" Despite an in-depth discussion of the taxonomic differences between mammals and reptiles, and even more specifically, the canidae family and the order crocodylia, he still insists that they must be very lazy, very scaly dogs.

Knowing Stellan's love for doggies of all shapes and sizes (his first word was "doggie"), one grandma has already forbidden us to return to the Everglades.