I woke up this morning at 4am.

Have you ever woke up early with your heart racing, your mind clear, and ready to meet the day?

Well, it wasn’t like that.

My three year old is having nightmares.  I’m not sure why, but it may have something to do with our trip to the Columbus Zoo on Saturday.

The day was hot and sticky.  The kind of day that makes you turn on the air conditioner in May even though you swore it would never happen.  The kind of day that fills your lungs with steamy humidity, making every breath a sort of water torture.  The kind of day that makes you wonder why you’re at the zoo and not at the water park.   That kind of day.

The zoo was packed.  Of course it was packed.  It was a Saturday and Memorial Day Weekend.

I don’t like large crowds.  I don’t know when this aversion began.  When I was younger I sought out the biggest crowd and then tried to be the center of it.  Now that I have kids, I just want them to go away.  The crowds I mean, not the kids…..so much.

We were on a mission to see the monkeys.  My son loves monkeys.  And where were the monkeys?  At the very back of the zoo.  The second part of our mission was to navigate the crowd and get to the monkeys before my son got cranky from the heat and lack of a nap and became well, a monkey.

We never found the monkeys.  But we found the carousel.  I wonder whose idea it was to insert a carousel into the middle of a zoo and charge everyone $1 a ride?  A freaking rich genius that’s who!  We waited, and waited, and sweated, and waited.  Finally it was our turn.

My son loved it.

Then we found the snakes.  Or the petting zoo for snakes.  My son petted a rat snack, tapped on the glass of the rattle snake’s cage, and then sat on the ledge of the python’s cage.  The python was easily twice his size.  But my son’s pink tongue stuck out at it defiantly just the same.

We found the aquarium with the manatees.  My son was so impressed with the ducks floating in the tank.  He could see their feet under water and see them up top at the same time.  He yelled, “Mommy!  Mommy!  Mommy!  Duck!”  the entire time we were at the manatees.  He was not so impressed with the huge dinosaur like lumps on the bottom of the tank.

We found the gorillas.  Not monkeys mind you, but close enough.  They were sitting and sleeping in a tiny bit of shade.  There is only one thing hotter than standing in the humidity of a 97 degree day on pavement watching gorillas do nothing.  And that is holding a 40 pound child up so he can see the gorillas do nothing on a humid 97 degree day while standing on pavement.

We stood there.  We stood some more.  The gorillas slept.

Finally, my husband declared an end to this trip and we headed toward the exit.

That is when we found play land, long colorful tubes of thick plastic pipes kids slide down and play in, amid nets and ropes and every imaginable outdoor apparatus.  And no shade.  As hot as we were watching him play, imagine the heat inside those tubes.  A perfectly normal child could go in and come out well, well done.

My son loved it.

As we were walking out my son experienced such a trauma I believe it is where his nightmares stem, and thus my early morning risings.

“BEE!  BEE!  Mommy BEE!”

Yup.  He touched a snake, wrangled the heat, played in hell land, and a bee was his undoing.

Last summer my oldest was rolling the garden hose up while my youngest looked on two feet away.  My oldest son’s labor attracted the attention of some nearby bees who thought him dangerous.  They attacked.  He ran away screaming and crying.  Ran away and left his little two year old brother standing there to face the hostile bees alone.

Ever since that moment the scariest word in my toddler’s vocabulary is ‘bee.”  Nothing can produce the kind of blood curdling scream as that one word.

Which wouldn’t be so bad I guess if he knew the difference between a bee and well, any other flying insect.

Flies are bees.  Bees are bees.  Mosquitoes are bees.  Dragon flies are bees.  If it creeps, and it flies, it is a bee.  And much screaming ensues.  No amount of explaining or scolding changes this drama.

My son dreams of bees.

So for the last three mornings I wake up to a screaming child telling the bees “NO GET ME!  HELP!  HELP ME MOMMY!”

Yeah, it was that kind of morning.