I was way too tired to post tonight, buuuuttt I can’t sleep until j is asleep bc we are in a hotel room and it freaks me out that he will try and escape all magic-like out of the room while i am sleeping to head down to the lobby for a complimentary chocolate chip cookie or something. and little david copperfield over here had a 45 minute nap at 5, so I’m up crap creek without a paddle.
so anyway, y’all might have noticed that we are in Atlanta for spring break. I mentioned coming to my parents back in january-ish because they have an amazing aquarium. even before I had kids, I’ve always kinda been an aquarium junkie. I blame the audubon aquarium. im looking at you New Orleans. but other than the aquarium they also have a great coca-cola museum, a zoo, stone mountain, a natural history museum (helllloooo dinos) and a children’s museum that we were interested in.
we got here mid-afternoon Monday and went straight to stone mountain. we had a lot of fun there and ended up closing the place down. Tuesday because the weather was going to be nice, we hit the zoo.
intro bobo:
1 year old jack and his brother from another mother.
daddy j and I went to the San Diego Zoo on vacation when I was about 10 weeks pregnant with j. we wanted to get “the baby” (since we didnt know he was a boy at this point) a souvenir from our trip. a panda bear seemed pretty gender neutral and I remembered my mom saying something forever ago about babies only being able to see in black and white. also, this was the first place j and I had seen pandas ever. ta-da! incidentally, a 10 week old baby-in-belly looks a lot like a panda.
what up, baby pandahuman? how’s it hanging floating?
now the boy has some stuffed animals– metric tons to be exact. but bobo got bumped to the front lines (constant presence) about 9 months old. we called him panda for a long time til j started going to daycare and he came home one day and just started calling him bobo. pretty much all of our friends and family know just who we mean when we say bobo. he’s a big part of our family.
whenever I was growing up, I always heard that the “ideal family” is 2.3 children. and i wondered how the hell someone gets a .3 of a child. now I know.
j calls himself and bobo “your two sons” ( but Siamese twins might be more like it)
I don’t have to diaper bobo or feed bobo, but I better be damn sure I know where bobo is at all times and that he’s generally in good condition. there will be NO SLEEP for anyone in my house until j has positive control of the bo-bs. we even have to prep j on the days bobo has to go to the “spa” (yes we call it that and it’s code for washing machine) and make sure that bobo is back from his mani-pedi by nap.
so when we got the opportunity to bring j to Atlanta to a place where the pandas lived, we had to bring bobo along (he goes on all trips anyway, but stays in the room usually). we told j that he and bobo were going to just meet the other pandas originally. I don’t remember what j said about bobo seeing his daddy that made it snowball into bobo meeting his birth parents, but it did.
we took bobo with us to the zoo (which we normally would never do bc he might get lost, stolen, flushed down a toilet, abducted by aliens, etc) and we made a BIG DEAL about taking him to meet his family. we talked a lot about “birth” family and how sometimes just because you aren’t born to a mommy and daddy that it doesn’t mean they’re any less your mommy and daddy. that cued j to say that I was a “perfect mommy” for bobo and he was “not a birth brother, but a best brother.” insert- tears.
“birth brother po” and “best brother j”
at one point, j said “I’m sad. maybe bobo should stay” and I reassured him that bobo was our family now and that bobo belonged with us. j agreed.
we met bobo’s mom and bobo’s dad and bobo’s brother. j seemed pleased and said “thank you for sharing your family” to po. that made my heart leap into my throat a little- ok.ok. a lot. we even spoke with a zoo keeper who hopped right on board and told j how happy she was that bobo was with us bc all of po’s other brothers and sisters had to move back to China.
at the end of the day, j said that meeting bobo’s birth family was the best part of the day. I agree.
he may not be a real panda, but bobo is definitely part of our family.
bobo is currently acting as a pillow for his boy’s head. but, I doubt bobo minds too much.
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