Big Day for Mr. T

No, not that Mr. T – though I do pity the fool.

Day four in the “Papa is out-of-town” fiesta, and since it was supposed to get into the 90′s here today, Torsten and I went off to the children’s museum and then to the aquarium to bask in the air conditioning, let T play with other kids (which he adores now), and distract Torsten with pretty fishies.

Mama is now exhausted. But… Torsten had a fantastic time. I’ve never seen the little guy so pleased and excited. First, there were all the kids, and the nice soft playing pond and carpet to practice crawling, and the toys, and the kids, and the other kids, and, oh, more kids… and then there was the fire truck, and more kids… and after we finished at the children’s museum, there were all the pretty fish. And, oh dear Lord, the SHARKS. And… and… a tiger two inches from Torsten’s face.

No, really. There are, for some reason, some tigers at the aquarium – and we showed up around feeding time, and so we ended up right in front of one of the tigers, who looked Torsten up and down as if he were a tasty treat, and Torsten just bounced with joy, flailing all of his arms in the Baby Björn and giggling.

Mama, Mama, he wants to EAT me! YAYYYYYYY! BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE! I’m deliciiiiiiicious! Whee!

And then… then there were the pretty tropical fish. Ooooo… clownfish and bright yellow fish and blue fish and more sharks and… and… what the Hell is that guy in a diving suit doing swimming around? OOO, so not exciting. Move on, Mama. I wanna see more fishies.

Let me say this about the Denver Aquarium – it’s a tourist trap, it’s pretty cheesy in parts (yeah, I want to scuba dive with the sharks at the city aquarium, so thank you for advertising it with that weirdo swimming around while we were looking at the fish, and the face painting/pet the stingrays/blah blah carnival at the exit, and the constant advertisements for the aquarium restaurant), and it’s not cheap. And then there’s the robotic orangutan, and the macaws, and the tigers – I mean, seriously, it’s an aquarium… unless the aquarium is their dinner, what the Hell are tigers doing there?

But.

The fish are clearly well-cared for, and if you only look at what you came there to see and your purpose is to entertain a baby with colorful fish (and, ok, tigers) and to enjoy air conditioning, let me just say that it was pretty cool. Torsten loved it.

Loved.

It.

He loved it so much that he skipped his afternoon nap so he could giggle with wide-eyes and his big, beautiful smile on the bus and coo to all of the other riders about how awesome his day was.

Sure, he was a little easily upset this evening when he got home because he was tired, and he’s already awakened once tired and out of sorts now that he’s in bed, but it was one Hell of a day.

The most mind-blowing thing about having Torsten is this… every day, every single day, there’s a moment or ten or one hundred where he shows me something I’ve seen a hundred times or never thought about or didn’t expect, and we both watch wide-eyed, amazed and dumbfounded.

My God, it’s full of stars!

Every single day.

I could not love you – or being your Mama – more, my little boy.