The Misadventures of Biggie and Smalls

There was a potential Covid exposure at the daycare, so we felt it was safer not to take Troy in today. It would have been his first day in his new classroom, but we feel that the daycare made some poor decisions that unnecessarily exposed the teachers and students to a known Covid positive environment. We didn’t want Troy in that mess, so I took the day off, and we had a guy’s day.

The first thing we did was to call Troy’s Big Daddy to sing him a happy birthday. We got to video chat with him and Big Mama, and they got to enjoy listening to Troy speak a hundred miles a minute and watching Troy wrestle me down on the bed. When we finished our call, we got ready for our adventure.

I didn’t want to just sit around the house, trying to make the same old toys and games exciting. We do that almost every weekend, and he’d done it yesterday when the daycare was closed. So, I decided to pack Troy up and head to the Grapevine Mills Mall. He’d never been to the mall before, and I thought he might enjoy the overload of sights and sounds and people. I was also hoping walking around the mall would tucker his little body out.

From the get go, Troy was amazing. He obediently wore his mask without complaint or attempt to remove it. He faithfully held my hand as we navigated the mall, although I think he was just as scared at being lost in the crowd as I was at losing him. And he didn’t throw a single temper tantrum or act out the entire time. I rewarded him by following him into whatever store he chose and letting him play with, touch, and talk about whatever he found.

He was a blast to hang out with. I’ve never seen someone get so excited about everything. A woman in one of the stores even made a comment when she saw how enthusiastic and overjoyed Troy got about a motorized car, describing every detail to me…it’s mirrors, doors, steering wheel. He wanted to pick up and check out every toy or “mysterious” new thing he saw. But he didn’t ask me to buy him anything. He just played with it for a few seconds, and then he put it right back on the shelf in the exact place he’d found it and moved on to something else. And each time he’d say, “We’ll have to come back for that.”

We visited a bookstore, mostly because they had lots and lots of toys as well. Of course, he found dinosaurs there. He seems to find them everywhere he goes! And he found figurines and superheroes from his favorite videos and movies, correctly telling me the names of each one. I, for my part, asked him questions and dutifully made appropriate comments, just engaging him and being interested in what he was looking at. You know, just spending time with him and enjoying what he enjoyed.

After that we went to a toy store, the Disney Store, and a store with accessories for young women (I tried to tell him that it wasn’t a toy store, but he was insistent). We also spun a giant wheel to win a vacation to…Dallas (yes, the stupid wheel landed on the exact city we were standing in), touched the fake grass on a smoothie kiosk, played with every single toy at every single kiosk along our path, and watched the carousel in the food court. Finally, we ended up at the Rain Forest Cafe, where we checked out the animatronic crocodile and boa constrictor, watched the fish in the giant blue tanks, talked to a gorilla hiding in a tree (it was really just a face in the tree, but Troy insisted it was a gorilla), and played with all of the toys in the gift shop.

Troy was getting tuckered out by this point, so I carried him the rest of the around the mall and out to the car. We stopped for some lunch on the way home before he passed out for his nap.

When he woke up, I asked him if he’d had a good nap, and Troy said, “Yeah, now I’m all ready for my chocolate cake.” I had gotten him a mini chocolate Bundt cake at The Corner Bakery for being such a good boy today, but I wouldn’t let him eat it because I told him the sugar would make him amped and crazy. He followed up by saying, “I’m going to eat my cake and then I’m going to be like this!” And he proceeded to shake his arms and legs and head in a random chaotic fashion while screaming, just like I had done when I was trying to demonstrate why he couldn’t have his cake yet. He’s hilarious.

Later on, we went upstairs to play, and we discovered that our robotic lizards had turned into zombies! We spent the next hour running from the “zizards” (zombie lizards), as they chased us around the room. We topped it off with a round of zebra-lawn mower racing, before calling it a day and heading down for dinner. We both had a good time today, and I was glad for the chance to spend some quality time with Troy.