Bluebonnets are Barfy

Imagine a peaceful, serene Sunday afternoon with a full belly after a big meal of Turkey, vegetables, and Barley (oh yum) and as many Cheerios as I could shove in my mouth. I'm snoozing in my Mom's arms, dreaming of turning stereo knobs, frolicking in the meadow with my Aunt Nessa, and splashing unabashedly in the dog's water bowl, when I hear a fuzzy conversation and my Mom saying to someone "Ok, we'll be there in a minute."

All of a sudden, my onesie is being ripped off of my still limp body and Mom says something about 'not being able to wear that dirty old thing for pictures'. I scream with dismay over such an abrupt awakening. How dare she? Its not like I've ever deprived her of her rest before!

Mom quickly changes me into my hip and trendy velour jogging suit and we hop into the car. She sits with me in the backseat, presumably to allow me to give her dirty looks and make her feel like she's a strange, alien-like being the entire ride to wherever it is we're going. She kept trying to make me laugh with her out of control noises and movements, but I was still holding a grudge. I refuse to give in that easily, so I just looked away and shunned her. Its going to take some seriously funny gyrations or possibly the use of her cell phone for my teething pleasure to mend what she's broken just now.

We drove for quite some time, just enough time for me to fall back into my previously interrupted slumber....until I was again awoken by Mom putting on my shoes and unbuckling me from the carseat. Has she no shame? You would think that she had some personal vendetta against me, like she was getting back at me for some similar instance of interrupted sleep she may have herself endured. I mean, I used to wake her up at least every 3 hours for the first few months I was alive, sometimes even every hour on the hour, but she liked it! She would get this glazed over look in her eyes when I woke her , I assume from the excitement she felt in hearing my sweet cries once again.

Anways, back to the topic at hand...

We get out of the car and I look around to discover that I got woken up to stand on the side of the highway in the middle of the country with some blue flowers all over the side of a tiny hill. I was appalled and immediately disgusted, not to mention bored already. My 2nd Mom was there with a huge camera too, and asked Daddy to set me in the middle of the blue flowers!

I was not happy about this, these flowers provided me no satisfaction whatsoever. Why was I placed here?

Dad tried to bribe me to cheer up. He promised he would give me as many teething biscuits and Cheerios as I wanted once Mom was at work on Monday....

This just wasn't enough for me, although I attempted to lessen the scowl on my face for Dad's sake, I wouldn't mind a little uninhibited snack time tomorrow. I just couldn't fathom why I was positioned in a field of flowers that could potentially cause me allergies and provide me no apparent benefit. The adults continued to make annoying noises and call my name incessantly for what seemed like hours, it was exhausting.

From what I gather, this is some Texan Rite of passage that all Texan children are forced into at a young age, and therefore become accustomed to it as they age. As you can see, Abby seems to be enjoying herself and her pretty smile seems to turn on almost robotically as soon as she steps into the flowers.

Even Caleb is falling for this...

Eventually I gave into the crowd of my friends and parents doing every silly thing imaginable to coax me out of my doldrums, and leaked out a smile, I suppose it was sort of fun.


I wonder if this is just a Texan thing or if babies in other states are subjected to similar situations?