Timmy

We have a new cat! We adopted Timmy yesterday. My allergies have already noticed! Timmy is about 4 months old, orange and white.

The Scott County Humane Society takes animals from the animal shelter (which euthanizes) and places them in foster homes. Then each Saturday they bring animals to the Pet Smart, which is where we went to check out the animals. We've been holding this over Charlotte as a reason she needs to be well behaved. This week, after our travel has been a real struggle for her! But we decided the timing was right, since I'll be available this week to enforce the house rules. So anyway, they had several kittens and a few older cats. They were all adorable and sweet, but everyone liked Timmy (in addition to other cats), so we went with Timmy. This was the name given by his foster family, but the girls weren't inclined to change it, so it has stuck so far. For some reason the name "Timmy Tiptoes" from the Beatrix Potter book keeps coming to mind for me, so I call him that.

His first evening we had the neighbors over so the house was a little crazy. I was worried this would stress him out, but he seemed to handle it well. When the last neighbor left, he went running from room to room, so I guess he noticed the difference! He has already found a favorite spot: the back of the couch. He also if fond of walking on the keyboard while we type. He's already litter trained and it really took very little effort to get him to find and use his box.

The girls have been handling him very well. At first Charlotte was a bit timid around him, but by the time we had him home, she was already trying to pick him up and turn his head so he could look at things!

Lazy days in PA

We had a great time visiting Peter's parents last week. It was all very relaxing and went very quickly. The weather was so perfect all week! On Tuesday, we visited Bushkill Falls, which Peter had been to back in school.

There were some lovely paths and waterfalls. At one point Peter and Sammy and Meghan decided to take a side path to visit some more falls while Baba Grampy and Charlotte headed back to the entrance.

After lunch, the girls went mining for gems. The gift shop sold bags of dirt with small stones (mostly quartz) strategically sprinkled in. Outside there was a fountain with water following a long chanel where the girls could sift through the dirt to find the "gems".

Thursday we went to Crystal Cave. We told the girls we were going "Spelunking". Charlotte liked this word so much that later when Peter was playing on the Wii later, she said, "That red guys a spelunker just like us!" The cave tour was about an hour. There were lots of formations that resembled food or animals, and were named after them. That was fun. They also turned off all the lights and showed us total darkness. The girls handled this well. The neat thing was that before turning on the lights, they showed us the level of lighting that the original spelunkers would have had. It's hard to imagine they could determine anything!

We also got to go out for our Anniversary on Saturday, which was a lot of fun. Meghan made a cheesecake, but we decided to eat it on Friday. Sammy for some inexplicable reason doesn't like cheesecake, so we made some Apple cobbler instead. It was good, but not as good as I hoped.

On the way, Charlotte kept singing "Old Man Tucker." She didn't know very much of it, but it made her want to sing the name game song. She asked me to sing it for. She would not be deterred. Fortunately, she didn't notice I kept omitting the "banana fana fo" line.

How did Peter and I raise a germaphobe?

Sammy amazes me with her fear of disease. Any disease; she doesn't discriminate infectious from otherwise. Once, we heard a radio commercial about a study for people with diabetes. Without thinking, I explained diabetes to her in kids terms. She looked as if I had just told her some terrible path her life would take. Later, a different radio commercial mentioned the word diabetes, and she covered her ears and whimpered.
So I picked up some books at the library for the summer reading program. Sammy likes chapter books, particularly silly ones or mysteries. Junie B has been a favorite character, so I was surprised when she told me she didn't want to read the book I brought home. "I looked at it, and it's about germs. I don't like germs." Seriously, I think she would find a story about the flu more frightening than one about monsters.
She's been at camp this week. It's "Twilight Camp". Like day camp, but in the evening. They had an opportunity to go creek stomping. Sammy saw some poison ivy and used her shoe to move it away from her. When I picked her up, she was concerned about this, so I told her we would wash her legs off really well when we got home. (It turned out when I did try to wash her leg, only the bottom of her shoe touched the plant). Anyway, in the car, I asked her about the rest of her evening. They had s'mores. Yum. She couldn't remember whether or not she finished hers. I asked if she wasn't hungry or not feeling well. She was thinking about the poison ivy too much to eat her s'more. I swear this child will have ulcers before middle school. I mean, I know I worry about everything, but really? I tried to reassure her that even though it was called "poison" ivy, it really only made you itchy, not sick.
On the one hand, I'm glad I don't have to battle her over hand washing the way I do Charlotte. But the child stresses too much, and I want her to enjoy her childhood! Would it help if she understood the different kinds of diseases? Or would she become obsessive about sterileness? What about chemaphobia? I really don't want to go there! She wanted to eat some fresh picked blueberries today, and I told her to eat the ones I had washed. Do I explain pesticides too? Where does she get all this worry from? ;)

As I said, no such issues with Charlotte. Instead, we have the problem with her saying she has washed her hands when she hasn't, or only wetting the tips of her fingers!

What a doll!

How could I forget to write about this? It was so dear! The day before Georgetown's Graduation I had already turned in grades and didn't need to be on campus. So I keep Charlotte home for a special Mommy Daughter day. We snuggled and read stories. I asked her what she would like to do. She wanted to go into work. It did not make a difference that I didn't need to go. She drew on my dry-erase board and colored in a coloring book. We had talked about going to a Chinese Buffet for lunch. (We've recently discovered that Charlotte loves shrimp. Go figure.) I did need to get somethings at a store in Lexington and suggested that we could look for Sammy's birthday gift. So in Target I let her play in the toy aisle. She is always drawn to the baby dolls. She found some miniature ones, maybe six inches tall, and had three of them scooped up in her arms. I've seen her do this before, but it is so sweet the way she cares for and talks to the babies. She loves feeding them and washing them and putting them to bed. "Mommy, I want to get these!" Well, it turned out they were only $3, so I let her use some of her money to buy one. Usually this is a prompt for our children to lose all interest in a toy, but she had that doll with her every second for the next several hours, barely letting it out of her sight for a moment before bedtime.
Peter put her to bed. When he went in to check on her, she was talking to one of her other dolls, an old fav named "Sally".
"Now Sally, she's a new baby, and you're the big sister. You are two and she's only one, so you will have to be careful. She's going to sleep with us tonight. She's only one and you're two, so she might want to snuggle with me, and that's okay. You're two and you're her big sister, and she's only one, so you have to help take care of her...."
She went on like this for some time, gently trying to reassure her older doll and squelch any budding sibling rivalry. :)

Sometimes its just fun to explore the way kids think about things. Charlotte was swinging at a playground, with me pushing. Predictably she shouted, "Higher, Mommy, Higher!" (She and Sammy are SO different). She was making me nervous by letting go and whatnot, so I told her she was already high enough to go over the moon. One the next push She was high enough to go to the stars. Suddenly Charlie realized something.
"Mommy, it's daytime, there are not stars."
Curious as to what she would respond, I asked, "Well where did they go?"
Charlie thought about this a bit. "Heaven."
"How far away is heaven?"
"Really Really Really Really far."
"How long does it take the stars to get there and get back at night?"
"Um, one minute."
At this point something must have struck Charlotte as incongruous. I don't know if it was the timing or the indoctrination from Sunday School.
"Mommy, heaven is all around us!"
"That's right. So are the stars all around us too?"
"No, they're on the other side of heaven."
"Well, what else is in heaven?"
At this point Charlie overhears another conversation on the playground and says, "Strawberries."
"Oh, that's good, what else?"
"Peanut butter."
"Oh, there's lots of food in heaven. Is there anything to drink?"
"Yes. Milk. And Oranges. And orange juice."
Ah, she's a kid after my own heart. It's always about the food.

New Creation?

Ah Charlotte. So, do you know about Jack and Annie? They are characters from a popular "Magic Tree House" series. They go on adventures and find answers in books. Sammy loves them, and therefor Charlotte thinks she loves them. (They are chapter books, so Charlie can only handle them in small doses).
Charlotte likes to open the books in the pews at church and follow along with us. Sunday she happened to pull out a bible. She did in fact identify it as a bible. Then she started to "read" from it. (Charlotte can barely recognize her own name on a good day). What I heard was something the the effect of, "So Jack and Annie decided to go on a trip. They took their bag. They got on a boat, and their Mommy and Daddy weren't there so they had to go by themselves...." I hadn't realized that they were biblical characters!
This morning she was telling me about caterpillars. She almost sounded as if she were reciting The Very Hungry Caterpillar (except the numbers): "So he built a small house around himself for more than two weeks and 40 and a million and a billion days. And then he came out..." So naturally I asked, "Was he a beautiful butterfly?"
"No. A Armadillo."
Cheers!

Scientist in the future?

Man, I wish I had the time to get on here more regularly and tell you the stuff that comes out of our girls' mouths, especially Charlotte! Life is busy though. Never thought we would be a family with over scheduled kids, but it seems we are constantly on the go to practices or games or Girl Scouts (Not to mention my own meetings for church and school)! Can I just say I can't wait for summer... Oh wait, I teach at 8 am every day for a month. Sigh.
Anyway, I called Charlie a "NIT" on facebook recently: a nerd in training. I know its mostly because she just likes being like her parents, but she's been all into sciency stuff lately. A couple weeks ago she noticed something in the bathtub, so I told her, "That's a good observation!" Her response was, " I made a guess and it came true! That's what scientists do!" It was adorable, if completely wrong.
Then last week she pulled out this hard plastic ball and started bouncing it. She announced, "it sounds different on the kitchen floor than on the carpet." I was trying to clean up lunch or something, so to keep her occupied, I followed along. "If you bounced it on the table, would it sound more like the kitchen floor or the carpet?". Then she surprised me. She looked at the dining room, then the breakfast table. The dining room table has a pad on it. She said, "If I bounced it on the dining room table it would sound more like the carpet, and if I bounced it on the breakfast table it would sound more like the kitchen floor!" So I told her to try it. She decided they were all different, as were the sounds of bouncing it on the linoleum by the front door, the bathroom door, the oven, and any other surface she could find before I decided it might be best to change the game. But I have to say, she's got some brains this one.
She loves to do the stuff that Sammy does, including Girl Scouts. I did an Earth Day activity for the troop, and of course Charlie came along. I asked questions here and there of the girls and Charlie was, if anything, more eager to pipe up (often with reasonable answers!).
Charlie is quite the story teller. She'll get halfway through a story about something that happened at daycare, and then say something like, "And then the dogs ran around the room a bunch of times." I'll say, "did this really happen or are you making this up?" She won't miss a beat, "It's pretend, but I'm not done yet. LISTEN!"
Of course, Charlie has an interesting interpretation of the word listen. Somehow she seems to think it means "do what I say." When she wants a treat,but hasn't had a decent dinner, she'll demand dessert for some time, repeating, "You're not listening to me!"
One of Charlies favorite phrases these days is, "Just to remind you," She uses it like others might say "Just so you know." Last week at church she was so wild and crazy I took her out of the sanctuary. I couldn't get her to decide to calm down, and she ended up in the nursery. Then, right as the sermon was ending, she pops her head in the back of the sanctuary and stage whispers: "MOMMY! Just to remind you... I set up the chairs for Sunday school so you don't have to do it!"
Sammy's in softball these days, the violets. Charlotte is doing Tball, the red socks. Charlie's first game was rained out today, so I can't say much there. Sammy seems to have figured out how not to spend the entire game playing in the dirt. However, every girl on the team seems to a) wait until they are told to run, even though we repeatedly tell them to run as soon as the ball is hit, and b) Decide they must slow down and stop at home plate rather than running on through. Thus far they are 0-2. Sammy is so disappointed when they lose, and I try to tell her, it doesn't matter, they are just learning the game and are supposed to have fun. For some reason they have a post season tournament with this age group. So unnecessary! Also, the girls have to have face masks on their helmets and have to wear a face mask to be the pitcher's helper. It all seems so bizarre to me. They play 2 games a week too, which is murder on my laundry schedule!
One final rant. I can't decide weather this country is too germaphobic or too chemiphobic. It seems every fun thing I can think of is taboo either because of germs or chemicals. I can't tell you how many parents I have heard describe water fountains as "disgusting" in the past few months. Now, to be fair, I understand when we have a terrifying disease like swine flu out there that specifically targets children, we get antsy. But flu season is over, and these people do not seem to be talking about any sort of conditional sense of "disgusting." But okay, maybe the idea of ingesting something from a place where hundreds of other people have put their mouths is a wee bit gross. But Sammy isn't allowed to hug her friends. They might have germs! Are you kidding me? Didn't they do some study in the 70's that humans just need affectionate physical contact? How sad that kids of all people have to guard their expressions of love and friendship. Then on the flip side, as I'm looking up some fun science activities, I come across these pages with reader comments about how don't we know these activities are exposing our kids to all kinds of chemicals. (I'll only say it once, because the chemist in me has to: It's all chemicals! Even water! even oxygen!) But do people not realize that we are and have always been exposed to harmful chemicals? From the PBBP ethers in the flame retardants that all our furniture and pajamas are coated in to the carcinogens produced from cooking meat to well done (because if its' not well done, we hey there might be some germs!). Most chemicals have good and bad qualities to them, and you have to weigh the risks of exposure to this one versus that one, or the benefits of the chemical (such as a flame retardant or really great cleaner) to the potential risks. But mostly, I just want my kids to be able to hug their friends, whether they have swine flu, or flame retardant covered clothes, or (in the most likely scenario) just didn't bother to wash their hands after pottying.
I have misplaced my camera card adaptor, so I'll get pictures up when I find it.