Holy Moly, Green Anole!

When Gorgeous George and I announced we wanted to adopt a baby girl, we received all kinds of advice and insight on what we could anticipate while raising a precious little girl. Little girls like to sit and read books, play with puzzles, and rock their baby dolls to sleep. As the mother of three rowdy, noisy, made of puppy dogs' tails kind of boys, I drank that pink Kool-Aid as quickly as it was being doled out in bone china teacups adorned with delicate floral patterns. Make no mistake, I love my boys. As a matter of fact, I always wanted to be a boy mom...you know the kind that is at every baseball game cheering them on to victory, the kind that is out in the garage helping them build a skate ramp, the kind that dotes on them in the form of fresh baked cookies and clean laundry, and the kind that loves them so wholeheartedly that it takes a very special woman to steal their hearts away. Yes, I love my boys, but I found myself hoping for a little pink to balance the blue.

Fast forward a few years, and we have our Princess Vivie, who just turned 3. Let me just tell all of you boy moms out there, if you are under the impression that raising a daughter is quieter and slower paced than raising boys, well then, I am afraid you have been grossly misled. Here is where I tell you that I love my girl. She is my precious princess sent from the Lord. She is, just like my boys, an answered prayer and nothing short of a light in my life. What Vivie is not is still and quiet and content to just play with puzzles and host the most serene of tea parties. No, not my girl. While she is a girly girl who can appreciate a hot pink tutu and sparkly silver shoes, she is a wild little pistol of a girl who in her tender preschool years can out climb the most spirited of monkeys. No lie. By the time she was 2, one of her favorite places to be was on top of our refrigerator...of course, that's where we kept the chocolate. When she first started climbing up there, Vivie's method was somewhat conventional what with hoisting herself up onto the adjacent counter top and then pulling herself up the side of the refrigerator, but it wasn't much later on that she discovered she could just scale the front of the refrigerator using only her upper body strength and the suction cups that are her hands and feet.

Yes, Vivie is my little wild warrior princess. 

One of her favorite things to do during the day is watch the family of little green anoles that live in the lamb's ear in our flowerbed. Every time she and I are out in the yard she says, "I pet lizard!" and heads straight for the anoles' favorite spot. One afternoon this summer, Vivie and I had gone out to check the mail and were heading back toward the house. We were just about to the door when all of a sudden, Vivie bolted toward the flowerbed to look for our little green friends, shouting, "I pet lizard!" Well let me just say, it was the heat of the day, the temperature was in the triple digits, and I really didn't want to look for our friends. I wanted to get back inside and have some ice tea all the while appreciating the a/c., so I kept walking toward the door optimistically thinking that Vivie would turn around and follow suit, which she did. I got to the door and I looked over my shoulder to make certain that she was still with me but I couldn't see her as one of our craftsman style columns was blocking my view. All of a sudden, I heard thud thud thud...just like that...thud thud thud in a matter of 3 seconds flat. I ran to the other side of the column because I couldn't imagine what had made that noise and there right before my very eyes, I saw Miss Capuchin herself almost 6 feet up from the ground clinging to the downspout of our rain gutter. She was smiling from ear to ear and just about a foot above her head, I spotted the most panicked looking green anole, red dewlap and all. "I pet lizard, Mommy," she said with all the pride she could muster. "Yes, Sweetie, I believe you did."

The Little Green Anole                    

(a poem written for my Princess Vivie)

                  

Holy moly!

It’s a little green anole

Hiding in my flowerbed.

Watch his dewlap glowing red!

Holy moly!

“My little green anole,

Don’t you worry your tiny head,”

I quickly and quietly said.

Holy moly!

My little green anole

Turning from green to brown instead,

Just like in a book I read.

Holy moly!

My little green anole

Running away to his leafy bed.

He must be a sleepy head.

Holy moly!

Sweet dreams green anole.