Barnaby At The Farm

Posted November 3rd, 2009 by Sean Williams

Today was Barnaby’s field trip to the farm, and I agreed to chaperone him, along with a slew of other parents. I was pretty excited because I thought it would be a great time for me to hang out with some of my other Stay-At-Home-Part-Of-The-Time-Gender-Inspecfics, but it turned out we were mostly chasing children. Here is a photo essay of the trip.

Click for LARGER.
Barnaby was so excited to be on a “tool bus” that I thought he would be severely let down by the actual farm. This was his face when he saw that first tractor.

There was an area where the kids could chase the chickens. In the background is Hutch, who I put money on to actually catch one. He caught three. Barnaby ran in circles, screaming his head off and laughing, and completely ignored the chickens.

One of the more frustrating digital delay moments, as this cow had, one second earlier, been staring Barnaby right in the eye.

The audio portion of this photo would be Barnaby yelling, “Doat! What’s your name DOAT? My name is BARNABY!”

Yes, this was a class trip. And yes, Barnaby is on the other side of the farm, running in circles, laughing his ass off, making up lyrics to “Old McDonald”, wherein the cow gives us eggs and Daddy gives us shoes. Chasing him was basically my whole day.

Barnaby has a small group of girls who like to do his school work for him, including Lulu, here, and Angela, holding Lulu’s hand. Lulu tried to hold Barnaby’s hand, but he said, “I tan’t, I’m holding on to my DADDY.” I just thought, “dude, give it a couple years…”

Me and Barnaby on the front of the hayride. Barnaby thought it was pretty cool, but we had to stop halfway through because they were shooting an episode of “Damages”, and when Barnaby heard that, he asked if he could watch TV.

This is a sheep, falling in love with Barnaby.

This is Barnaby, falling in love with a sheep. When he said, “I need to snuddle her!” and then buried his face in her wool, you could hear the collective snap of a hundred parents’ hearts breaking. He put his arm around her and felt her wool on his face for about two minutes before making a bee-line for a giant pile of sheepshit and stomping in it.

At the end of the day, everyone got to pick out a pumpkin. Barnaby found one for himself, but then decided he wanted to find one for Mommy as well. This is Mommy’s pumpkin.

By the time we got back on the bus, Barnaby had decided that one pumpkin was for him, and the other pumpkin was for Mommy and Daddy to share. He was pretty wiped out on the bus and begged to sit on my lap. I figured he would either sleep on the bus, or when we got home, but, of course, he did neither.