Just when I thought I was a really horrible mother for subjecting my poor sons to days stuck inside, melting their brains with endless video games and movies, due to their father's four things-resembling jobs and need to rapidly finish the PhD dissertation for defense, coupled with my daily, lengthy rehearsals for the feminist theatre production I'm in, I found a spot of free time in the middle of the day and used it up on taking them to the Botanical Gardens to look for the chameleon who lives there. We found him on a vine.
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Then we looked at all sorts of other bugs and animals, identified birds and butterflies, discovered a colony of leaf cutter ants carrying bits of leaves in orderly lines several yards long, noted rainforest plants that collect water high in the canopy, played with toys, went for a walk outside, then trekked to the Winking Lizard restaurant where they have a live iguana in a huge built-in tank. Finally, we got Aleks' hairs all cut.
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I would like to take this to mean that I am not such an awful mother after all.