Woofy and Meowy

I asked our girl yesterday, "Do you want to come with me to church to get your brother from Youth Alive, or do you want to stay here with Daddy?"

"I want to go get Woofy," she said.

For just a second, I wasn't sure what she meant. Then I remembered that she is "Meowy" and he is "Woofy" when the two of them play Animal Rescue, an amusement they cooked up based on their individual interests—his in rescue vehicles and hers in animals.

They play AR daily, often first thing in the morning and again when "Woofy" returns from kindergarten. In fact, they're playing right now.

As you might imagine, "Woofy" is the alpha dog, providing leadership in dreaming up dramatic rescues in which elephants are hauled to the animal hospital in the back of Army jeeps or lions are carried off in aerial ladder trucks. (The fact that I know what an aerial ladder truck is frightens me just a little.)

While the throaty siren sounds "Woofy" is extremely skilled at making sometimes get annoying, the cooperation between the two of them to find something mutually satisfying to do together is more than worth tolerating a few loud whoops and wails.

More on the Perfect Pet

Just to keep you all posted, I did some research online and discovered that Makayla and Mackenzie, the green caterpillars that infested our broccoli and our hearts, are cabbageworms that will eventually (and perhaps only theoretically) turn into those ubiquitous white butterflies you see all over in the summertime. I found very little information on their care and feeding but plenty of tips on how to remove or destroy them.

I had gone looking for details on their development after they both started pupating (is that a word?) shortly after they took up residence in a cereal bowl on our kitchen countertop. It seems that the time spent in our crisper drawer simulated the onset of winter, sending them into their coccoons for a long seasonal nap. I'm hoping, given that their winter sleep will occur at room temperature, that they'll not take months to hatch, but my Google searches yielded no timeframe for their reemergence.

The Perfect Pet

Big news on Twelfth Street! We have pets!

Their names are Makayla and Mackenzie, and we welcomed them into our home—and more specifically, our crisper drawer—about a week ago.

In preparing some broccoli for steaming at lunchtime yesterday, I discovered two inch-long green caterpillars happily noshing on the florets of one of the two heads remaining in the bag. Sadly, we'd eaten a third one a couple of days before. (In the name of frugality, I went ahead and steamed the insect-free head yesterday but couldn't bring myself to eat it once it was on my plate.)

When I plucked them from the stem to show our son, he immediately said, "Let's keep them! They can be our pets!"

So I put them in a cereal bowl and only wondered for a few seconds what to put in there for food. If they'd survived on broccoli at 37 deg F for seven days, then clearly the crucifer was the right choice.

My first animal-tending error was not putting anything over the bowl to keep the critters inside. When I went to peek at them a couple of hours later (yes, I'd fallen for the little buggers), I only found one. A thorough inspection of the kitchen turned up the other, who was crawling down the leg of the butcher block table.

With perforated Saran wrap in place, "Caterpillar Cove" has effectively contained the creepy crawlers for over 24 hours now. I'm not sure how long we'll keep them, but what I am pretty sure of is that I can keep them alive longer than I did our last pet—a goldfish I believe I asphyxiated by not treating the tap water with which I filled his bowl after cleaning it. Just a couple of crudite and a little peace and quiet and they seem to do just fine.

To Sleep, To Dream...

There is cornmeal and orzo all over the dining room floor. No less than four loads of laundry threaten mutiny in the basement. Our shrubs are bullying each other for space, demanding in the passive way of plants to be pruned.

And yet I spent almost two hours asleep this afternoon.

I did the same thing yesterday and both Saturday and Sunday last weekend. If I could remember that long ago, I'd probably tell you this has been going on for weeks. But I'm too tired to recall accurately.

There are several reasons for all this napping, the first and most important of which is that I'm tired. I don't like "wasting time" in this way, but it seems it's necessary. I'm guessing it's mostly because, with almost eight prime hours of my weekdays now taken up by dropping kids off, working, and picking kids up, I have been trying to squeeze more life out of the neglected hours between 5 and 6:30 AM and 8:30 and 11 PM.

For example, one day this week I got up at 5:25 AM to meet a girlfriend for a workout at the Y. That same evening, I met another girlfriend for a glass of wine, returning home at 10:30 PM to read the newspaper for a half hour or so. There have been pre-dawn runs and post-twilight shopping trips. It's a bit odd skulking around at odd hours like that, but it's what I have to do to keep the refrigerator stocked and maintain friendships and sanity.

My habits are healthy in some ways, but are apparently not healthy in at least one critical one. I instituted the "family nap" several weekends ago partly because our three-year-old has grown accustomed to naptime being a communal activity, something she does with her day care friends, but mostly because I'm just so doggone tired in the afternoon.

Relationships with others and self, exercise, work, play, and sleep...how does it all fit in a day?

I think I'll sleep on that.

A Surprising Grasp on Vocabulary

The other night as we proceeded through our bedtime ritual, our three-year-old squirmed out of my arms as I attempted to brush her teeth.

Having reached the point in the ritual at which I had lost patience with disruptions, I said to her, "Come back here! We don't get up and march around while we're brushing our teeth!"

She gave me a little look and began lifting her knees up in front of her, high-stepping around the hall outside the bathroom with her toothbrush hanging blatantly from her mouth.

Kids.

Houses of Cards

My beloved, our son, and I just finished playing a few rounds of Crazy Eights. When the young one wandered off to the computer to check out Playmobil.com, his papa remained on the living room floor where we'd been playing, building squarish, cabana-like card houses connected to each other by single-card bridges.

Our boy, frustrated that one of his favorite Web sites was temporarily out of service, stomped off to the couch to sulk. To cheer him, I pointed to the card houses and said, "Hey, look at what Daddy's doing!"

He gave them a quick glance and, in demonstration that last summer's Jerusalem Marketplace vacation Bible school had had some impact, said, "Cool! He's building a little Jesus town."

Our Reading Specialist

I took our kindergartener for an assessment with his teacher this week. He and all of his classmates met one-on-one with Mrs. W. during the first week of school so she could have a little look-see at their basic skills—counting, literacy, and the like.

I paced outside the classroom while I waited for them to finish. I'd been planning to go for a midday walk (I don't often escape from my office during the day) until Mrs. W. said she'd only need a few minutes to check things out. After I'd read the school board minutes posted outside the office and made a lap around the island of coathooks to browse the names of our boy's classroom companions, I resorted to flipping through a copy of Nick Jr. Magazine.

I was reading with interest a "clippable prank," an "official" school postcard kids could send to their moms and dads inviting them to participate in the Parents' Gymnastics Expo and Flugelhorn Concert—one I found funny since my beloved actually plays the flugelhorn—when teacher and pupil emerged into the hallway.

Bringing our boy to me, Mrs. W. said, "He reads!"

"Yes, he does," I said. "I couldn't remember if I'd told you at the Back-to-School Picnic."

"Well, it's probably better that you didn't," she said. "Lots of parents tell me that their kids can read, and they can't."

We went on to discuss what she thought would be the best course of action. He'd meet with a reading specialist to determine the level at which he'd need to work to keep learning, and then during class time focused on reading, he'd probably meet with the specialist instead.

While hearing that your child is advanced beyond his peers is a boost to the ego, I didn't take this plan in without some trepidation. "I worked independently on reading in first grade, too," I said, remembering that while the other kids clustered at tables stacked with books intended for the Brown Group or the Green Group, I sat alone, the sole member of the Pink Group. "I do want to make sure he's learning as much as he can, but I'll want us to keep a close eye on how he's doing with being separated from the other kids."

For the child that told me he didn't get lonely when he played by himself, he "got happy" instead, I'll start by assuming that trudging onward and upward at his own pace will be a good thing. But you can be assured that Mama will be watching.

Back to School

Our boy started kindergarten this week, the same week my beloved resigned from the job he'd held for 16 years to pursue a new one. Plenty of change is afoot here, and it's had me thinking about choices and progress and supporting each other through unknown territory.

Waiting on the playground with our boy for the morning's first bell has been a time of reflection for me—remembering my childhood on a similar playground, recalling the two years I spent at home alone with our first-born before his sister came along, wondering whether working is the right thing for all of us while the kids are still relatively young. Running through the pea gravel to scale the jungle gym would have probably been a better, more sanity-producing use of my time. Instead, I stood with the other kindergarten moms I knew and made small talk that failed to chase away all that was on my mind.

I wonder how much longer our boy will want me to escort him to the wall where the kindergarteners line up before class starts, how many more days or weeks will pass before he just climbs out of the car in the morning, waves goodbye, and dashes off to play without a worry.

I wonder whether we'd be happier, all of us, if I were pushing the kids in the stroller to drop him off, taking in the morning air and chatting about what we saw along the way, instead of rushing out the door for two drop-offs, one at school and one at day care, so that I can rush to work, rush through my to-do list there, and rush back for an on-time pick-up.

I wonder how I can make changes to my work schedule so that we can all have what we seem to enjoy—for me, the ability to participate in something productive and stimulating outside our home while still having time for family and friends; for our girl, some time to socialize with playmates; for our boy, ample time to play alone at home; for all of us, a rhythm that is mutually satisfying.

But when I stop wondering, I see that even though it's tough sometimes, the kids are happy, they're learning and growing, and they're still the same kids they were before my transition to work in the spring. I see that our boy loves kindergarten far more than he did day care. And I see that one of my most important roles as mother is setting the tone in our home. It's all too true that if the matriarch isn't content with her situation, ain't nobody content with theirs.

(Liquor)ice

A Saturday or so ago, my beloved and I decided it was a good night to share a bottle of wine over dinner. The problem was that we didn't have any, so he determined he'd run out to get some.

Since I was outside both gardening and attending to the kids, he chose to ease my burden by taking one of them along. He asked our daughter, "Honey, do you want to come along with Daddy to the liquor store?"

"OK," she said, "but will you give me some licorice when we're there?" We had just picked some up while back-to-school shopping, so I figured that's what she was interested in.

"I can get you some to take along in the car," said Daddy. "Is that what you want?"

"No, I mean we're going to the licorice store, so we have to get some licorice," she said.