How to Make an 11 Year Old Boy Really Happy

We had a whopper of a storm today. A rare deluge here in beautiful sunny Northern California. Luckily our house is at the top of a hill, so there isn't any danger of flooding, but streets below us became lakes as storm drains overflowed.

It was fun to watch while warm and cozy inside. Not so fun for running around in the car with the kids. On one journey, I picked up Jungle Boy and we made a dash from the car to the house as we got pelted by buckets of rain. We'd park the car in the garage, but that's full of important stuff like legos and my sewing machine. So through the rain we ran and I was a little ahead of him, gimp and all (he had to dig his backpack and trumpet out of the car).

Then I saw it. There in front of me. In a huge puddle at the base of my front stairs. A big lizard. It wasn't moving. In that split second of decision, I weighed my options; I could scare or scoop him out of sight, or I could be the cool mom and call my son over to catch him for a pet.

I opted for cool mom. I'm an idiot that way.

The poor waterlogged beast attempted to escape but couldn't move fast or far in all that water so within a few seconds I had my son's trumpet in my hands and he had a lizard in his. There we stood, in the pouring rain. One of us was elated.

My brain went into overdrive. We had a terrarium somewhere. We both went to work and within 15 minutes we had a clean terrarium with a very scared lizard in it. We were wet but proud of our mission accomplished. We don't know the lizard's gender but my son named it "Monsoon."

I was going to snap a picture of our new family member, but he's hiding in the little frog house in the terrarium right now. I'll need to go to the pet store tomorrow and get him some better accessories and some crickets.

I just hope this earns me some "cool mom" points. Never hurts to get a few of those.