Frogs in the Kitchen

Everything was worked out. Diaper bag was stocked with all the necessities. I was watching a friend’s kids until 12:30 pm. Wake Jacob from his nap at 12:31. Feed him lunch in the highchair. Shoes on all the kids. Out the door. Load them in the car. Drop of my kids at 1:00 pm. On time to my 1:30 pm in Manassas. Like clockwork. Planned and prepared. Ben, Maddie and their friend Ben were catching frogs in the backyard and having a ball. Ben’s mom came to pick him up and off they went. My Ben turned to me and asked if he could catch frogs with his friends in the afternoon. Sure. No problem. He could go ahead and bring his frog catching gear (two nets and a bug cage he got for his birthday last year. I told him to take it in the front yard and have it ready to go. I got the high chair, bib and baby food ready. I turned to head upstairs to go get Jacob out of his crib when my foot knocked into something. I looked down and saw that I had tipped over his big cage onto the kitchen floor and there were dirt clods with grass in them all over the floor. I hollered, “Ben, come clean this up. We don’t ever bring your bug cage inside the house, right? You know that.” As I finished, I saw one of the dirt clods jump. Then another and another. “WHAT DID YOU DO?!?!” I screamed. He rushed into the kitchen and exclaimed, “Oh NO!!” with panic on his face. He knew exactly what I was so upset about and there was fear on his face. I told him to get the nets FAST. He got both and I caught two that had hopped off generally in the same direction under one net and set it on top of them. Then put the other net on top of the third frog. Okay. Situation under control. I could tell that he was panicked enough. No need to lecture him. Let’s just teach him a lesson now about why we shouldn’t bring frog into the house, let alone three at a time. I told him it was his job to catch the frogs and get them back into the bug cage. I picked up the net and handed it to him. He freaked out. The frog started jumping away again. I grabbed the net and put it down over the frog again. We talked about a plan while the frog waited under the net, fearing for it’s life I’m quite sure. I told him we were going to start on the single frog. He was petrified about the thought of touching them with his hand or even his hand on the outside of the net. I told him to get the net sideways so the frog got caught on the fabric and a myriad of other ideas he could try to catch it. I ended up helping him catch it and told him to dump it himself. He missed. I caught it again. He missed the bug cage a second time and started crying. I helped him deposit the frog from the net into the bug cage and we turned to get the other two frogs under the second net. As I told him we would need to do the same thing again with the second frogs, only faster so the other one didn’t get away, he was scared for me to lift the net. We mentally prepared. Then, I lifted the net. EMPTY. What? They both escaped under the edge of the net. Ugh!! Quick. Find them. We found one and I put the bigger, heavier net over it as Ben yelled, “It’s right there!” NO!! The frog was in the crease between the vinyl flooring and the cupboard about two inches (or one frog jump) from a big hole in the floor. A hole from which I knew a little frog might never return and I would be stuck looking for frogs in my kitchen the rest of my life! NOOO!!! We still haven’t replaced our flooring from our kitchen remodel over a year and a half ago, so the vinyl isn’t sealed and has several holes all over. Yuck. I told Ben to watch the other frog to make sure it didn’t get out from under the other net and I caught the final frog, got it into the bug cage. Then I relieved him of his frog watching duties and caught the final frog, dumped him into the bug cage and banished the bug cage to outside for the rest of eternity. He was happy to oblige. I have to admit that even though I had nasty, squeamish thoughts about having three frogs hopping around my kitchen, I could totally see the humor in the situation. After I got them all in the nets the first time that is. It was not the least bit funny until I had them all caught and felt at least a little bit in control. There was one point where I had to stifle a giggle while I watched Bens first attempts to capture the frogs and dump them in the cage unsuccessfully to keep my “this is a serious lapse of judgment on your part” stern face. It really hit me how funny it all was and what a circus we must look like. I almost lost it too as I dumped the second frog in the bug cage and was grateful I was facing away from Ben. I had to regain my composure and turn around with my serious face so as not to leave any doubt in his mind that we do NOT bring frogs in the house. Still, as I collected the last frog, I couldn’t stop thinking how hilarious the whole situation was and WISHING I had a video camera recording of the entire thing. This is exactly the kind of thing good memories and good stories are made of. I made Ben sweep up all the grass and dirt and dump it. Then I retrieved Jacob from his crib, went straight to the truck and loaded the kids and dropped them off with my sincerest of apologies for leaving a groggy, hungry baby to be cared for. I also clarified before I left that absolutely NO frogs were to find their way into the Hyatt house that day or ever. He was happy to obey after his traumatic adventure. Ahhh…I’m laughing again just reliving our adventure. Everyone knows that motherhood comes with all sorts of surprises. Sometimes those surprises are just slimier than other ones. Maybe I should point out that there are about a million frogs in our yard area right now. The bigger ones are normal sized fatties, but most of them are tiny little ones about the size of a quarter. We had quarter sized frogs in our house. He’s never caught a big one…yet.