Me love you long time.

Parents have lots of jobs to do when it comes to rearing their children. You have to teach them to poop in the potty, not to poop in the plant, not smear oatmeal all over themselves and the dog, how to properly strike a soccer ball so that it bends just a bit around the outstretched arms of a diving goal keeper and into the upper corner of the goal, and how to talk. Sometimes little things that we do can affect how our little offspring begin the process of learning, but often these aren't visible to the rest of the world. Not so with the process of learning how to talk.

For example, when Ryan was young he wasn't very specific when it came to his desires. A whine could mean anything, and even if he was pointing in the general direction of whatever it was that he wanted, it was often a guessing game to determine what, exactly, he wanted.

"You want this?" we would ask holding up a cup. Ryan would shake his head.

"How about this?" as we held aloft one of his many Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Again with the head shake.

"This?" More shaking.

This could go on for many minutes until we finally picked up on the one thing in the car that he was looking for. As a result, he spent several months thinking that everything in the world was called "this". Sippy cup, train, stuffed animal, goldfish crackers, it didn't matter. His misunderstanding led to him simply pointing at anything and saying, "This," which wasn't much of an improvement on the point-and-whine system we were used to. It was still a guessing game ("This?"..."How about this?") but now he was using a word instead of a sound.

We have recently run into a similar issue with Ethan, but it doesn't seem to be so innocuous. He doesn't call everything "This" like his brother did, and in fact he is fairly good at knowing the names for things he wants. He might use his own particular version of the word but at least most things have their own sound. For example, "Peng" is his penguin, "juice" refers to any liquid that is not milk or water, and "weenie" is Tortellini, his favorite dinner.

He is also remarkably good at delineating when something belongs to him, and when it belongs to someone else. "Ethans juice" is clearly his juice, while "Ryan cookies" are Ryan's cookies but with the caveat that if Ethan wants them he should be entitled to them.

One issue that he is having, however, is telling the difference between "me" and "you". This is understandable given that whenever he wants something, like a book read to him, we ask him "Do you want me to read to you?" He now comes up to me and says "Read book to you," which means "Read the book to me". We are trying to get him to use the proper word, but he is still only 2 and there is plenty of time.

All of these little errors can lead, however, to a big misunderstanding. This afternoon, for example, I was preparing tortellini for his lunch, and he wanted to make sure that everyone knew that it was his tortellini. He also made sure to throw in the fact that he wanted his tortellini as soon as possible. All of these ideas are not remarkable, but today at lunch when they all came out of Ethan's mouth, it sounded like this:

"You want Ethan's weenie now?"

To me, this sentence simply means that he wants his lunch right away, but a poor babysitter is going to think that she is being propositioned by a two-year old.

We'll just have to make sure that tortellini is not on the menu when Jen and I go out before dinner.

The coolest crash up derby in the world.

Scintillating conversation is not normally something you expect from a 2 year old, but sometimes you can get some amazing things to come out of the mouths of these almost talkers. Ethan, for example, is great at having conversations. The problem is that the person he is having the conversation with is generally completely unaware of what the hell is going on. I had this experience the other night at dinner.

I was putting Ethan into his seat for dinner when he said, "Foamers."

"What?" I asked, looking around his seat for something he might have dropped. With a 2 year old, context clues are everything.

"Foamers," he said again, this time pointing in the general vicinity of the rest of the house. Precision is not something he is known for.

Seeing nothing around on the floor or on the table that could be described as a 'foamer', I turned to my wife. "Jen? What is a 'foamer'?"

"No clue," she said. "He's been saying that all day."

I asked the same question of my oldest son, and he replied, "I think he means 'Transformer'. He loves his new shoes."

"Foamer shoes," said Ethan smiling, pointing at the rest of the house again. He has some new shoes that have Bumblebee, one of the Transformers, on the sides and back, and Ryan is right in stating that Ethan loves them.

"Do you want to wear your new shoes?" I asked.

Smiling and nodding vigorously, he replied, "Foamer shoes. Outside."

Another mystery solved. "Ok. After dinner we'll go outside and you can wear your new shoes. Does that sound good?"

Another vigorous nod and smile, followed by a single word, "Fants."

Feeling on firmer ground with this cryptic clue, I told him, "No, there are no elephants outside at our house. You don't have to worry."

"Scared. Elfants," he said. Then, pointing at the rest of the house agian,"Foamer shoes."

"Elephants are not going to eat your new shoes."

"Scared. Roars."

"There are no dinosaurs either."

"Elfants. Roars. Foamer Shoes. Crash derby."

The first three seemed to make sense, but I was at a loss to explain the "crash derby" reference. I know he had been to the crash-up derby at the fair with Nonnie and Papa a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it, but I am fairly certain that there were no elephants or dinosaurs involved. I wasn't there of course, so I could be wrong, but it seemed unlikely that a county fair would have the money or the desire to either bring in an elephant or genetically engineer a dinosaur. Again, I turned to my fellow codebreakers.

"Little help here," I said to both Jen and Ryan.

Ryan chimed in first. "Dad, I think he is worried that the elephants and dinosaurs are going to have a crash up derby to see who gets to have his new transformer shoes."

"That is quite a story, but I don't think that there is any way that he is thinking that."

"Ask him," Ryan said, smiling. Looking back on it, it seems that he said it smugly.

"Ok. Ethan? Are you worried that dinosaurs and elephants are going to engage in a crash up derby to see who gets your transformer shoes?"

Ethan smiled and nodded vigorously.

"Ethan?" I said. "Do you know what a crash up derby is?"

In response, he grabbed his two cars that were sitting on the table and smashed them together. "Crash derby!" he said.

"And do you know what a dinosaur is?"

"Sookis," he said, pointing outside. This is another cryptic clue that I know. "Sookis" is his word for Sarcosuccus, a 40-foot long Cretaceous crocodile. He is afraid of these, along with T. rex, Velociraptor, and cows.

"And you are worried that Sarcosuccus and an elephant are going to have a crash up derby in our backyard so that they can have your Transformers shoes. Is this right?"

Smile and vigorous nodding.

"And you still want to go outside?"

"Well, Dad, wouldn't you?" said Ryan. "That would be awesome."

Indeed it would. Then it hit me. "Ryan?"

"Yeah," he said, smiling.

"You wouldn't have told your brother that an elephant and a giant 40-foot crocodile were outside waiting for him, would you?"

Still smiling, Ryan responded, "I don't know."

As it turns out, Ryan is not as difficult to read as Ethan, and his "I don't know" is as good as a "Yes" to me.

"And you also told him that they wanted his new shoes, right?"

"I don't know." Smile.

"Please don't scare him with stories like that in the future, ok?"

"Ok." Smile.

Clearly this isn't the last time Ethan will be messed with in this manner, but at least this time Ryan basically admitted to it. The next time won't be so easy.

So after dinner we put on Ethan's Transformers shoes, convinced him that Sarcosuccus was still extinct and wasn't going to be in our backyard, that elephants still only lived on other continents, and that there were no cows that we knew of out grazing in the dog run, and stepped outside to enjoy the evening.

Fun at the Park

Ah, the park. One of natures greatest inventions, so full of bark, slides, swings, and strange screeching children. The Doyle Boys love going to the park, sometimes so much that they are willing to injure each other to get to one.

Allow me to explain.

The other night, Ryan and Ethan were playing outside when the metaphorical dinner bell rang and they had to come in and wash their hands. Ryan was unhappy that his playtime was cut short and asked if we might be able to go to a park after dinner. Jen and I both thought that his was a good idea, but we wanted to hold it out as a reward to increase the possibility that there would be no incidents during dinner. So we promised the little ones that if dinner went well we would go to a park. This went over fairly well, as did dinner. After dinner, however, things turned for the worse when Ryan and Ethan, in their excitement to go to the park, started running around the house jumping into each other and, in general, having a fairly good time. We tried to put an end to this, but short of physical restraint nothing was working. Eventually their boisterous play ended badly when both ended up injured after one body slam too many and we had to put off the park until the next day. This resulted in many tears due partly to the impact injuries but mostly due to the loss of the park for the evening.

The next morning, though, I surprised the boys by telling them that we would go to one of the big parks in the area. This particular park is basically 2 medium sized parks merged into one giant mecca of playtime fun. It also has a decent sized pond with walking trails, ducks, birds, and other fun nature things. There were, it must be said, no elephants or giant prehistoric crocodiles despite Ethan's testimony when we got back home.

After a relatively uneventful half hour of playing on the slides and jumping around in the sandbox, I asked if they wanted to cruise down the trail and around the pond. Both boys shouted their approval and off we went, Ryan at a run, me at a walk, and Ethan at a run/walk/complete stop/walk the wrong way back to the swings/run away from me when I tried to catch him/walk again. This particular trail starts up on a fairly steep hill and follows a switchback route to get to the bottom. From the top of this trail the entire pond is visible, as are the various bridges, paths, and open spaces surrounding it. It is rather beautiful, but Ethan didn't waste any time protesting.

"Scared," he said, pointing to the open land to the east of the pond. "Elfants."

Confused, I asked him to clarify. "Are you scared of Elephants?"

He nodded and pointed again. "Scared. Elfants."

Ryan joined the conversation and tried to be helpful. "But Ethan, there are no elephants out there. Do you see any Elephants?"

"Scared." Point. "Elfants." Point Hard.

"No," Ryan said again. "No elephants!"

"ELFANTS!" yelled Ethan.

I could see that this was going to go nowhere, so I just said, "Why doesn't Daddy pick you up, and we'll go show you that there are no elephants here, ok?"

Ethan paused for a second while he appeared to think it over, nodded, and put his arms up in the universal childhood symbol of "pick me up". I grabbed him, and set off again down the path. I kept reassuring him that there were no elephants down there, that elephants did not live in this area, and even if for some reason one or two relocated from their African or Asian homeland (I'm not sure which type of elephant he imagines is down there) they would be very visible due to the fact that they are the largest land animals around.

When we got to the bottom of the path, Ryan led the way ("Just like Nigel Marvin, I'm in search of giant dinosaurs...") and Ethan squirmed to be put down. I obliged and we followed our tour guide.

"I've been here many times, Dad, so you just follow me and we'll be ok."

"OK," I said, "but just be careful not to get too close to the water, and watch out for ducks and geese."

"Why?" Ryan asked. "They're not that big. And they are kinda slow."

"Sure, ducks are small won't normally do anything, but geese can be big and will bite if they feel that they are in danger."

Ryan turns around, looks me right in the eye and calmly says, "I'll fight a goose."

Trying hard, and mostly failing, to suppress a laugh, I said, "Really?"

"Really."

"Fight Goose!" said Ethan, flailing about with his legs and hands in his best Power Ranger impression. "Quack!"

The time had come to lay down the law. "Ok - No one is going to fight any animals while we are here, understand?"

"Why not?" asked Ryan.

"Fight Animals!" said Ethan.

"Because," I said pushing on, "this is where they live. You wouldn't want an animal to come into your house and try and fight you, would you?"

Ryan thought for a second. "No, but if a goose ever comes to my house, I can fight it then, right?"

"Right. You can fight a goose if it comes into the house."

I bet you don't have to have this conversation with little girls.

The rest of the walk went well and we eventually made it back home. And Ryan was a little disappointed to see that in our absence no geese had invaded our house.

Atch Ow!

We went out clothes shopping for the little ones this afternoon and, unfortunately for Jen, they are still boys. She has said many times that she would rather not be the only girl in the family because little boys don't get to wear cute dresses and frilly little outfits. Unless, of course, they happen to be her little brother. She apparently dressed up her youngest brother in dresses from time to time when they were both kids. Not that there is anything wrong with that - I'm not here to judge. Anyway, it is nice that she now has a few friends with little girls so that she can indulge in what appears to be a pathological need to purchase little pink dresses.

It has been said that little boys and little girls are different from each other, and not just in the genitalia. As the rhyme goes, little girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice, and little boys are made from frogs and snails and puppy dog tails and they are fearless and don't give a rip about their own safety and are, it seems, completely willing to jump from a ledge about 4 1/2 feet off the ground onto, thankfully, a large air mattress despite the fact that they have yet to reach their 2nd birthday.

I might have that a bit wrong, but it is fairly accurate.

The other day we were at a dinner gathering that was both adult and kid friendly. This means that the party had both beer and a other little kids that our little kids got along well with. As an added bonus in the kid-friendly department, there was a bouncy castle which belonged to the host family. For those of you without kids or without a soul, a bouncy castle is one of the greatest things ever in that it is a room sized contraption that is totally inflatable. This inflatability results in a safe, bouncy, fun little room loved by kids of all ages. I think I might have actually seen Ryan wipe away tears of joy when this castle was unveiled.

In addition to a thick inflated floor, this particular bouncy castle had a climbing wall which was a little over 4 feet tall. This wall then led to a slide which could be either used as a slide or, in a pinch, as a slanted trampoline capable of propelling the kids into the opposite wall a few feet away. I'm not sure I ever saw it used as a slide and I was, to say the least, a tad anxious for the safety of all involved.

We had kept Ethan out of the castle because we were worried that he was too small and might get pushed around by the bigger kids. He was unhappy with this and kept pointing to the castle, saying "Peas! Peas! Bown!" (Translation: Please! Please! Bounce!). We could distract him with a variety of things, but after a short break his eyes would invariably wander back to the castle. After some of the larger kids got out for a break, I thought it might be a good chance for Ethan to get a shot at it, so I put him in there along with Ryan and the other 5 year old boy, Thomas.

Ethan took a few minutes to get used to walking on the bouncy surface, but eventually got comfortable and began running around. He crashed into Ryan a few times yet seemed more interested in staying in the castle than crying, so all seemed to be going well. He even successfully scaled the climbing wall which led to the slide and became the first kid all night to simply slide down. I was impressed. My little boy was doing quite well in his first bouncy castle and seemed to be really enjoying himself. The beer was cold, the birds were chirping, the kids were having fun, and all was well with the world.

For a while.

Then, at the instigation of his older brother, he climbed up the slide and stood at the edge of the climbing wall. Nervous, I looked sternly at him and said "Ethan, don't jump. Go back down the way you came," and surprisingly, he did just that. Then, a few minutes later, this time with no instigation from his big brother, he climbed back up the slide and stood at the edge of the climbing wall.

Again, I looked at him sternly and said, "Ethan, don't jump."

At this point it seems prudent to mention that I was outside the castle and could do nothing about what happened next.

Ethan yelled, "Atch Ow!" (Translation: Watch Out!), and proceeded to leap from the top of the climbing wall, smacking into the inflatable floor with a squeal of laughter. He scrambled back to his feet and looked at me as if to say, "Get used to it, old man," and then clamored back up the slide to the top of the climbing wall ("Atch Ow! - Wheee!") before I could get in and stop him.

I was able to grab him after his second solo jump and make sure that he was ok. He seemed to be fine and considering that the bouncy castle was designed to allow such things, I let him stay in to continue jumping. After a few more jumps, the host, Bob, asked that either we get him out of there or I sign a piece of paper exempting him from legal action should something happen to Ethan. Bob is a bit of a cautious soul, so I pulled Ethan out and that was the end of his little jumping expedition.

He still enjoys jumping, and every now and then while he is in the living room and I am doing the dishes or otherwise engaged in the kitchen, I'll hear "Atch Ow!" followed by the thump of his landing after his latest leap from the couch. I'll have to keep the ladder locked up so I don't find him on the roof when he is Ryan's age. Despite the fact that I did it when I was younger, the last thing I want to see is Ethan on the roof with a sheet ready to "parachute" into the bushes.

No Dad. You are wrong...

I have to write this one down before I forget it.

I was just upstairs reading Ryan a few books before his afternoon "rest time". We can't call it "nap" anymore because 5 year-olds don't nap, at least according to our resident 5 year old. Anyway, I always give him a choice of books, and today I jokingly asked if he wanted to read "Your Inner Fish", a college level book about human evolution written by Neil Shubin, instead of the latest "Power Ranger" cartoon book.

"Wait. Inner Fish?" he asked. "Do I have a fish inside me? I thought they were all in the tank."

"No, you don't have a real fish inside you," I answered. "But since we evolved from fish 400 million years ago we all have little bits that come from those fish."

"Dad," he said in a condescending tone. "I have skin, not scales."

"I know, but you do have some bits left over from the process of evolving from those fish."

He looked at me, clearly not getting it. I had to try a different tactic. "You know how you have that LEGO set where you can make two different motorcycles OR a car from the same parts?"

"Yeah."

"Well, we built the motorcycles first and each cycle looks pretty cool. But if you take those pieces apart and built the car, you have a car that isn't exactly like one of those motorcycles, but you can still tell that some of the pieces came from the motorcycles."

"Oh," he said, apparently getting it. "But that's because they did come from the motorcycles. I took them apart myself."

"Right. And that is the same thing that happened with us and fish. Evolution sort of took the fish parts and made us."

"You mean if we look at us, we can see fish parts inside?"

"Kinda."

And then he said my favorite thing of all time, "I totally want to read this book now."

So I grabbed it off the dresser and we fell onto the bed, one of us eager to impart the beauty of evolutionary biology to my son, and the other of us totally ready to find out whether he could breathe underwater.

We just basically flipped through the book looking at the pictures, and it all started well when we got to the first image of what we science geeks like to call "homologous limb structures", but what dads need to call "same arm bones". There were 4 pictures, each one showing the front limb of an early transitional tetrapod (translation: fish with arms).

Image similar to the one in the book. This one also includes
Tulerpeton, which is not found in the book.



"Which of these looks most like our arm?" I asked Ryan.

He pointed to the Acanthostega image which did, indeed, look most like our arm.

Then I asked him, "Which of these do you think we are more closely related to?"

"This one," he said, pointing again to the Acanthostega.

Cool! He seems to get it, but anyone can make a guess, so I ask him the next, more important question. "Why?"

Again with the condescention. "Cuz it has those little bones which look like my fingers and the other pictures don't." If he were a few years older he would have thrown in a "Duh, dad!", for good measure.

"Good!" I am fairly excited at this point because this kid seems to be getting something that my high school and college students sometimes fail to grasp.

On to the next pictures. These are just of a cladogram ("Evolutionary Family Tree") which shows relationships between humans, dogs, fish, and jellyfish, and a few other animals. He asks what it is and I tell him that it just shows that we are all related and that he has animals like a jellyfish in his really distant family tree.

"Older than Nonnie and Papa?" he asks

"WAY older than Nonnie and Papa."

"Older than the Dinosaurs?"

"Yep. They dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, and these Jellyfish were around about 500 million years ago or so.

"Nope," he says with total confidence. "Dinosaurs went extinct 65 hundred ten hundred thousand years ago," - We are still working on his large numbers - "You are wrong."

"You are wrong," I say with the confidence that a masters degree and 11 years teaching the subject will give you. "65 million years ago."

"Whatever dad."

Really? Whatever dad? When did he become a 13 year old?

Anyway, the next set of pictures we flipped to showed one of the more interesting bits (at least to a 5 year old) of our "inner fish".

"Hey!" he shouts as I initially flipped past this picture. "You missed one."

I flipped back a page and, sure enough, he was right. I missed one.

"Those are testicles," he says, pointing at the picture. Then, smiling and grabbing at his groin, "I have testicles."

The were two sets of pictures on this page. One set was of a dissected shark showing the location of the testes, way up in the body cavity near where an armpit would be. The testicles Ryan noticed were on a line drawing which showed how during development, the human testes form up in the armpit area and gradually descend into the pelvis.

"Why does that little man have testicles in his armpit?" he asked.

"Because we all have testicles in our armpits when we are developing."

"So I peed out of my ARMPIT?"

"No. Back then you had an umbilical cord so you didn't pee out of anything. Besides, testicles don't have anything to do with peeing." Whoops. I realized my error a fraction of a second too late.

"What are they for then?" asks the five year old innocently.

Tactfully, I changed the subject. "Can you IMAGINE having to pee out of your armpit? Wouldn't that be WIERD?"

He laughed. "Totally wierd!" Then he proceeded to pretend he was peeing out of his armpit for the next few minutes.

"A snail poops on its head!" I said naking sure the subject stayed changed, "and an abalone has 5 butts!"

"I want 5 butts!" he shouted and proceeded to pretend to pee out his armpit and make as many farting noises as a 5 butted abalone.

Evolutionary biology might fascinate his dad and hold Ryan's interest for a little while, but pee and fart jokes are still a 5 year olds favorite things.

Ethan! What does a duck say?

During car rides to keep the Littlest Doyle happy, we have taken to playing a game called "What does a (blank) say?" Ethan is typically good at it, but has a few mistakes. The following illustrated guide will give you an idea on his progress.











As you can see, we gotta work on a few.

A night of soccer with Ryan

One thing that most people know about me is that I love soccer. I played most of my life (with a few years off here and there for a variety of reasons), I coached for 7 or 8 years at the high school level, I play on an over 30 team, and I plan on coaching my sons Muppet soccer team in the fall. I stopped coaching high school due to the time requirement and I have been totally happy with the decision. However, sometimes I totally miss it. One of the things I miss is getting to see a different side of the students I teach. It is almost impossible to connect with students in the classroom in the same way that you connect on the practice field.

The other night I had a chance to take my son, Ryan, to watch the old Mustangs battle it out for the regional championship against the Vikings, a team that, to be honest, was their superior in almost every way. Ryan doesn't do well with sitting around and he kept asking me when he could go on the field and run.

"When can I run, dad?"

"Not right now. In a little while."

Ryan sat there vibrating in his seat for about 7 seconds. He turned and looked at me, pleading. "How about now?"

"Not yet. In about 20 minutes you can run."

This conversation repeated itself about 5 more times, and then the Mustangs, against the run of play, put one in the back of the net. The game now stood at 1-0 with about 15 minutes left in the first half. The rest of the half passed uneventfully and at halftime, we proceeded to run around the base of the stands for the entire time. We played Follow-the-Leader which basically consisted of Ryan running as fast as he could while I trailed behind trying to keep up. This kid of mine has limitless energy. One of the things that made this a little wierd were all of my current and former students who were cheering us on. Oh well. It is good for them to see that I can do more than just tell stories and occasionally teach them some biology.

The second half began and proceeded in much the same manner as the first, only with the Vikings pressing even harder and the Mustang defense working that much more to maintain their slim lead. With about 5 minutes to go in the game, a poor clearance on a corner kick saw the ball pop out to a Viking player who hit a 20 yard shot into the upper corner making the score 1-1. A few minutes later the buzzer sounded and the game went into "golden-goal" overtime.

At this point in the game, Ryan was getting a bit cold and began arguing that we needed to leave so we could go get ice cream and warm up. I pointed out the flaw in his logic, and he simply repeated his position louder and with more jumping up and down. I told him that we had to wait until the game was finished before we could go, and he reluctantly agreed that he did, in fact, want to see the end. So with that discussion at an end, the first period of overtime began.

It wasn't long before an injury to one of the Mustangs put a stop to the action. This injury was serious enough to require the assistance of an ambulance, and Ryan had a bunch of questions.

"Why is that girl lying in the ground?"

"Well, she seems to have gotten injured," I replied.

"What does 'injured' mean?"

"It means that she got hurt. Someone pushed her over."

He looked at me, a bit puzzled. "Why would someone push her over? That isn't nice."

"No," I said. "It isn't nice. But sometimes that is how the game is played. Two people going for the ball don't always agree on which of them should have the right to get it."

"You mean like when Ethan has my ball and I want it back so I push him over or hit him and take it from him?" he asks, seemingly oblivious to the what he just admitted to doing.

"Yes. Like that. Only you shouldn't do that to your brother. Unless you two are both playing soccer and you are both going for the same ball. Then it is ok. Except if you are playing for fun in the backyard, then it is not ok. But if he has the ball and is dribbling it, go ahead and take it. Except that he is not even 2 yet, so always be nice to him." Man, this parenting thing is hard.

"Ok. Well, why is she going into the ambulance?"

Not really thinking it through, I said "Well, the ambulance takes care of people when things are wrong with them. Remember when mommy had to go in the ambulance when she was gonna have Ethan?"

"Yeah...OH! So the girl got pushed over and now she is going to have a baby?"

I busted out laughing. "NO! She isn't going to have a baby!" At this point, some of the fans are looking at us a little funny. "She is not going to have a baby. She probably hurt her leg and the people in the ambulance will take care of her until they get her to the hospital."

"Oh," he said, slightly disappointed. "So no baby?"

"Nope."

"Just a hurt leg."

"Yes," I said, thankful that we were done with the baby talk.

After a few more minutes, the game got undeway and the first overtime period ended with no one scoring. The second one began and right away, unfortunately, one of our girls made a bad tackle in the penalty box which resulted in a penalty kick for the Vikings. Our goalkeeper got a hand to it, but it wasn't enough to stop it from going in and the game ended in a 2-1 defeat.

It was an unfortunate way to end the season, but the girls put in a great effort and Ryan got to learn that ambulances are sometimes good for things other than childbirth.