The Day We Brought A Swamp Creature Into My Kitchen

It was exactly 7:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was standing in my kitchen wearing my husband’s ten-year-old college sweatshirt with a mysterious bleach stain on the sleeve. I hadn't even taken my first sip of lukewarm oat milk latte yet. That's when Leo, my four-year-old, marched through the sliding glass door holding his hands tightly cupped together like he was guarding the world's most precious, muddy diamond.

"Mommy, look at my baby," he whispered, his eyes entirely too wide.

I thought it was a rock. Or maybe a really big beetle, which wouldn't have been my favorite thing, but I could deal with a beetle. Then his little fingers parted, and sitting right there on his grubby palm was a tiny, pulsing, wildly slimy amphibian. A literal baby frog. And before I could even process what was happening, Leo gently placed it directly onto my clean quartz countertop.

If you've never had an uninvited swamp creature staring at you next to your toaster, let me tell you, it's a jarring way to start the morning. This is exactly the moment where you shouldn't panic, grab your good glass meal-prep Tupperware, and trap the poor thing inside it while your kid screams bloody murder. But of course, that's exactly what I did.

Please don't Google their dietary needs

So there we were. The frog is trapped in the glass container I usually use for leftover lasagna, and Leo is practically vibrating with excitement because he has decided he's a father now. Naturally, the first thing a four-year-old wants to do with a new pet is feed it. He immediately ran to the fridge and pulled out a limp carrot and some string cheese.

I was frantically typing what do baby frogs eat into my phone with one hand while trying to keep Leo from dropping cheese onto the frog with the other. Let me save you the horror of this search history. I always assumed these little guys just nibbled on, like, grass or whatever algae is floating in a pond. I read somewhere—well, my husband Dan read it to me once from some nature documentary—that tadpoles eat boiled lettuce. But once they actually have legs? Oh god, it's a nightmare.

Apparently, they need live prey. Live. Moving. Insects. I was reading about pinhead crickets and fruit flies and mealworms, and my stomach just dropped. Dan casually walked into the kitchen, assessed the situation, and was like, "Oh cool, want me to run to the pet store for crickets?" I just stared at him. I stared at him until he slowly backed out of the kitchen. I'm not, under any circumstances, bringing a bag of jumping insects into my house to feed a wild animal that currently resides in my lasagna dish.

My sister Facetimed me right in the middle of this crisis, saw the frog, and asked if I was talking about that old Bratz baby frog accessory toy we used to play with in middle school, and I just hung up on her because I don't have the mental capacity for 90s nostalgia when there's actual wildlife on my counter.

The doctor called them walking bacteria bombs

While Leo was busy telling the frog a story about a tractor, my mom-anxiety kicked into overdrive. I remembered a conversation I had with Dr. Aris, our doctor, back when Leo was obsessed with trying to catch lizards at the park. She's seen me spiral over every minor rash and weird poop since Leo was born, so she usually gives it to me straight.

She told me that amphibians and reptiles are basically just cute little carriers for Salmonella. I'm definitely not a medical expert, and my brain only retains about forty percent of what doctors tell me, but I'm pretty sure she said the bacteria just lives right on their skin. It doesn't even make them sick, they just carry it around waiting for a toddler to touch them and then stick their fingers directly into their mouth. Which, let's be honest, is a toddler's favorite sequence of events.

So I'm looking at Leo, who's entirely coated in mud, realizing his immune system is about to go to war. I had to convince him that we couldn't keep his new friend inside, which involved a highly unscientific explanation featuring:

• A made-up story about how the frog's real mommy was crying in the bushes
• Some vague nonsense I remembered about frogs needing to drink water through their skin
• A promise of two popsicles before breakfast
• The absolute lie that our house was too warm for the frog's sensitive toes

Eventually, we got the whole operation back outside, and I scrubbed his hands with so much antibacterial soap I'm pretty sure I removed a layer of his fingerprints.

He was wearing the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao during this entire muddy fiasco, and I honestly have to give it a shoutout. It's my absolute favorite piece of clothing he owns, mostly because it's soft enough that he doesn't rip it off in a sensory rage, but also because by some absolute miracle of the laundry gods, the swamp mud actually washed out of the organic cotton. I don't know how they make this stuff, but it survived the great frog incident of Tuesday morning, so it gets my eternal loyalty.

The other green monster in my bathroom

It's funny because when you say the words "baby frog" in our house, it usually means something entirely different, and honestly, almost as gross. I'm talking about the potty urinal.

If you've a toddler boy, you've probably seen these things. It's a bright green, plastic frog that suction-cups to your bathroom wall so little boys can learn to pee standing up without needing a step stool. Dan bought one off the internet months ago, totally convinced it would be the magic bullet for potty training. It has this little spinning wheel target inside its mouth.

I hate it. I hate it so much.

In theory, the spinning target helps them practice their aim. In reality, it just is a sprinkler system for urine. The kid gets so excited about making the little wheel spin that it just flies everywhere. The baseboards, the bath mat, his own socks. It's a disaster. Plus, you've to unhook the little plastic bucket part and dump it in the big toilet anyway, which means I'm constantly carrying a sloshing bowl of pee across my bathroom.

Dan tried to make a whole game out of it. He bought the Gentle Baby Building Block Set from Kianao to use as like, an obstacle course or something around the potty area. The blocks are just okay for this, honestly. They're totally fine as actual blocks—super soft, no weird chemicals, safe to chew on—but in my bathroom, Leo just used them to build a literal barricade around his plastic frog urinal. So now I've to dismantle a soft-rubber wall every time I need to wipe the floor.

Anyway, the point is, whether it's a real amphibian or a plastic one, they both just end up making a massive mess in my house.

Check out Kianao's collection of organic baby clothes and safe wooden toys if you need things that actually survive toddler chaos without adding more plastic to your bathroom.

Keeping the wild outside where it belongs

After the mud was cleaned up and the Tupperware was run through the dishwasher on the hottest sanitize cycle legally allowed by my water heater, I sat down and finally drank my cold coffee. It made me miss the days when Leo was a tiny baby and his biggest obsession wasn't catching wildlife.

When my daughter Maya was little, we didn't have mud crises. We just had teething crises. I remember pacing the hallway with her at 2 AM, completely delirious, while she furiously gnawed on her Panda Teether. That thing was a lifesaver. It’s flat enough that she could hold it even when her coordination was basically zero, and it didn't have any weird crevices for gross stuff to get stuck in. Sometimes I look at Leo running around the yard looking for bugs and I miss the days when a piece of cold silicone could solve all our problems.

Now, we just try to observe nature from a safe, non-touching distance. I think I read that frogs absorb all our hand lotions and natural oils through their skin, and it's honestly really bad for them. So we built a little pile of rocks in the corner of the garden and called it a "toad abode," which sounds very Pinterest-mom of me, but really it's just a desperate attempt to keep my kid from bringing live animals into my kitchen.

We watch them from the patio now. No Tupperware required. And honestly, my blood pressure is so much better for it.

If you're dealing with a toddler who loves to explore but you want to keep things safe and sustainable, check out the rest of the Kianao shop for clothes and gear that can handle the mess.

The messy reality of toddlers and nature (FAQ)

Is it okay if my kid touches a wild frog in the yard?
Look, I panic every time, but from what my doctor said, you really want to avoid it if they're under five. They carry Salmonella, and toddlers literally always have their hands in their mouths. If they do grab one, just drop everything and wash their hands with lots of soap immediately. Don't even let them wipe their hands on their pants first.

How do I get my kid to stop trying to catch everything that moves?
If you figure this out, please email me. But really, we just started giving Leo a little magnifying glass and telling him he's a "nature scientist" and scientists only look with their eyes, not their hands. It works like 40 percent of the time, which I consider a massive parenting win.

Are those frog potty urinals seriously worth buying?
My husband thinks it's the greatest invention ever, but I think it's a mess. The spinning target just flings pee everywhere. If you've infinite patience for wiping your baseboards, go for it, but honestly, just teaching them on a regular toilet with a step stool is so much less gross for whoever cleans the bathroom.

What should we do if we accidentally brought a baby frog inside?
Don't put it in your good food containers, for one. Just gently scoop it into a plastic cup, march it right back outside to a damp, shady spot, and let it go. And whatever you do, don't Google what to feed it unless you want to spend the rest of your afternoon researching how to buy live crickets in bulk.