Little Bunny Foo Foo

The other day I was visiting with my kids and we dug up an old memory I had long forgotten. My oldest two children were 9 and 11 when the baby was born. When my second child (boy) was born, my daughter was only three. I did everything the parenting books said you should do to prepare a three year old for a sibling. I took her to the doctor with me.... Let her help paint the nursery. I thought I had done everything to insure she felt love, excitement and joy about having a little brother. I WAS WRONG. The birth didn't go as planned and I had an emergency c-section. My recovery was hampered by the extensive recovery they forgot to warn me about in the childbirth class. Things actually went fine, right up until the point when we got home and she wanted to hold him. I placed the little bundle of cuteness in her arms and my husband and I stood back with my mom and dad to capture the moment.... Well, I say stood back, I was more humped over, sweating bullets and praying I didn't pass out due to the pain
of having my abdomen ripped apart, but other than that, I was just ducky. Then he began to cry. It was feeding time. We tried to let her give him a little water from the bottle they sent home from the hospital, but that wasn't what he wanted. As I reached down to take him from her arms, I could see the disappointment on her face and I told her we'd try it again after he had nursed and got settled in. Her daddy took her outside to play with the bunny as I ever so gently walked to the nursery followed by my mother. I began to change the baby as she began to tell me that she was just going to have daddy take her back to Tulsa since it was apparent I didn't need her.... She was really mad because I was the one who dressed him in his coming home outfit. I stood in the nursery, shocked, in a lot of pain and just wanting NOT to have that conversation at that particular moment when my husband came in with a bellowing three year old in his arms. Our pet rabbit had bitten her and she had gotten stung by a wasp. Okay... Lets count them off together.... Baby boy home less than an hour... Baby momma with her guts cut open... Nanna feeling left out.... Three year old feeling neglected, bitten and stung... And a husband who was at his wits end. It wasn't a made for TV type homecoming I'd planned on, but it did remind me of the "I had blue eyes first" commercial, only I was living it. Thankfully the arrival of number three was much better... Although we did almost have an incident in the hospital when the nurse informed my 11 year old it was against hospital policy to allow her to carry him out to the car in his carrier. I thought... "Oh boy, here we go again." She wasn't a happy camper on the way home, but once home things got better and everyone bonded with the baby according to plans. The baby was without a doubt the easiest child on the planet to raise!!!! As long as he was dry, fed and in his crib for nap time, he was happy as could be. Not many children will crawl to their crib and shake it when they are ready for a nap, but he did. Of course the downside was when we weren't home when nap time came.... He wasn't one to pass out just anywhere, the crib was where nap time took place or else (that should have been my first clue). When he got older we

noticed that he took everything very literal. The kids loved to sing Little Bunny Foo Foo to him in the car. They took great delight in the part where the fairy says.... "Or I'll turn you into a Goon" The idea of being turned into a Goon at the age of 3 terrified him beyond belief which delighted the two of them because he seldom cried about anything. Once he moved from the crib to the bunk bed.... He didn't take too kindly to his brother threatening him with suffocation while he slept (you know the typical type of torment dished out by big brothers). That's about the time he decided sleeping with Sissy was safer than sleeping in a room with Bubba. It's funny how I'd forgotten little things like that.... Well, they were little to me, he's probably going to need a lifetime of therapy to recover from Little Bunny Foo Foo, the threat of being turned into a Goon and suffocation while you sleep. Gladys Knight should change the beginning lyrics to The Way We Were to say....

"You know everyone's talking about the good ole' days.... Well let's talk about the good ole' days. Come to think about it as bad as we think they are, these will become the good ole' days for our children. But why don't we try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh so mellow. Try to remember and if you remember, then follow. Oh why does it seem the past is always better? We look back and think.... The winters were warmer, the grass was greener, the skies were bluer, and the nursery rhymes were filled with..... Fright."