The difference between pets and siblings

I found this on Imogen's door. I took a picture before telling Imogen it wasn't very nice and taking it off and throwing it away. Theoretically, if Imogen had more than one sibling, the sign would simply say "Keep out". But then, this is Imogen we're talking about. It might say "Keep out Geneive and Imaginary Sibling One and Imaginary Sibling Two (etc.)"


This is Imogen with Melly, who Jeremy calls Smelly. Dads do things like ruin the names of your pets and/or stuffed animals. Yeah, I still don't forgive mine for the Fuzzy Wuzzy thing.

Shades of green beans

I find this very disturbing.

Kindergarten Graduation

Kind of belated, but oh well. Here's a picture of the girls at Imogen's graduation.

Tall

Look how tall they've gotten. I took a picture next to a doorknob so it would be fairly easy to see how tall they are. Of course, I told Genevieve to not block the doorknob and this is the picture that I got. Imogen is only six! She just shot up this past year. I bought a uniform at the beginning of her kindergarten year that was huge on her. She just swam in it. So I put it away, only to pull it out for her spring semester. I just ordered a pile of uniforms I'm hoping will last us a good while, but we'll see.

Genevieve, asleep

When Genevieve was first born, she had her days and nights mixed up. She slept during the day and screamed all night. Of course, Imogen was 18 months old, so I couldn't sleep during the day so I tried everything I could to get her to stay awake during the day. With most babies, when you blow in their faces, they gasp for breath, thinking they are suffocating. Not Genevieve. I jiggling her around, laid her on the hard floor hoping she'd be uncomfortable, I played loud music or movies. I gave her baths thinking that'd get her good and awake. She screamed during the bath and fell back to sleep after they were done.

Genevieve is, and has always been, very very stubborn when it comes to her sleep. These days if she falls asleep, it takes a long time and very much effort to get her awake, and even when you do, you're unlikely to keep her awake. If you do succeed in waking her, she will make you regret it by being such a deplorably unpleasant person that it's really just best to let her sleep when she wants to. You just don't mess with Genevieve's sleep.

Trip to the zoo

We went to the zoo recently with some friends from Imogen's school. The girls had tons of fun and have already asked to go back.


At the zoo they have these boxes where you can put in your "zoo key" and they will sing an informative song about the animals nearby.


The day we went to the zoo was the day after Genevieve got her latest stitch. You can see it just by her left eye. The bruising under her eye only got worse. You can see some slight bruising under her right eye from unrelated accidents (yes, plural) that also got worse so that for several days she was walking around with two black eyes. I'm going to get reported for child abuse one of these days, I just know it. I got so sick of her hurting herself a few days ago that I gave her a notebook and a pencil and made her sit in a chair and not leave it for a while. I'm shocked she didn't find a way to accidentally stab herself with the pencil.


Imogen on the train. She's got such a fabulous smile when she's not trying so hard to smile.

An appreciation for the unique

I think every house with children has that special cup. There's only one of it. But every child in the household argues over whose turn it is to drink out of it. This frustrates everyone. The children because milk doesn't taste quite the same out of lesser cups, and parents because they are wondering why they didn't have just one kid and if they can get away with throwing The Cup away if they do so in the middle of the night.

In my house, cups aren't such a big deal because The Cup was given to Genevieve at her day care and Imogen can not deny that it actually belongs to her sister. Sometimes Genevieve benevolently lets Imogen borrow it, but Imogen doesn't get too worked up about it. However, there was this one incident where Zach came over and unthinkingly used it. He walked out of the kitchen sipping water from it without a care in the world and Genevieve saw him and burst into tears. He stared at her dumbfounded. "Oh..." I said, "You aren't supposed to use that cup."

Spoons, however... Well, there's another story. Everyone wants the Circle Spoon (otherwise known as a sugar spoon). There have been lasting arguments about the Circle Spoon. When we acquired another sugar spoon I thought our problems would be over, but the new sugar spoon was not as circular as the Circle Spoon, so what I thought was a treaty was only a short cease fire. Eventually, I told them that I'm sick of the argument and that they had to take turns with the spoon and they had to keep track of whose turn it was to eat with it. And keep track they do. Having relegated this task to my children, I care not which spoon I grab, but woe to me if I accidentally give the Circle Spoon to the wrong person.

Then, of course, there is the Yellow Plate. There was only one, the rest of the plates being lesser shades of pink and blue. Even during the hight of Genevieve's pink obsession, the Yellow Plate was preferable. However, somehow, we found another yellow plate. Now there are two, and suddenly, while yellow plates are still fairly special, they don't have the same status they did when there was only one.

All of this would be normal enough child-weirdness, without the chipped spots thing. My stoneware, after seven years of marriage, has become chipped in places. While I consider this not such a great thing, my children argue over who gets dishes with the most chipped spots. I pull two bowls down from the shelf for breakfast and they are examined. One is not chipped, the other has two small chips. Discussion ensues. Voices are raises, threats are made, tears are produced in copious amounts. People are sent to the corner to get over it.

Jeremy...

As he was untangling computer cords he said to me "How can you live like this?"

I stared at him, confused. "I just don't think my quality of life is affected by computer cords."



I was making pasta from a box. "Oh no! I did it wrong," I said, rereading the instructions.

"How wrong?" Jeremy asked, immediately concerned. Deviating from The Directions concerns him greatly.

"It'll be ok," I reassured him. "I've done it wrong like this before."



Today he asked me to buy him something. I bought it, came home, and lost it. He came home and asked for it.

"Yes, I bought it. It's in a brown paper bag about this big, somewhere in the house," I said. He walked around the house aimlessly looking for it. I finally took pity on him and helped him look.

It's a wonder I haven't driven him nuts by now.

Problem solving

Parenting is like... wrestling a grizzly on the Fourth of July. *

Basically, you're always trying to solve all these problems. And as soon as something works, something else crops up. And maybe the new problem is one you've solved before. But the solution that you had before isn't working this time for some strange reason. So you have to think of a new one.

I sent the girls to go clean their rooms. They wined, they moaned, they complained. I suggested that I could clean the rooms myself. They begged me not to (bad things happen when I do their chores for them). They went to their rooms and proceeded to not clean their rooms. They ended up back in the kitchen telling me various stories.

I'm the type of parent who teases my children and often says things that I don't mean. One child will ask for something (say, a piece of candy) and I say yes. The next one asks and I say no, just to get a reaction. Obviously, I give them both the candy in the end.

So as my non cleaning children are hanging out in the kitchen not cleaning I randomly said "Imogen, go clean Genevieve's room." I expected outrage, arguing, protest. She laughed. I said "Genevieve, go clean Imogen's room." They looked at each other. Then ran to the bedrooms and proceeded to happily clean each other's rooms.

I was baffled. Confused. Bewildered. Jeremy arrived home. They told him that I had told them to clean each other's rooms. He looked at me, confused. "Why?" he asked. "I was joking," I whispered.

Both rooms were cleaned in record time. I'm not sure why, or how. I doubt this will work again. But it worked this time.

*I couldn't think of an appropriate metaphor so I made one up.

Imogen's hamster

Yes, Imogen got a hamster today. During Genevieve's dance class last week we walked around the corner to a pet shop, just to kill time. Imogen thought everything there, from the doves to the goldfish was the coolest thing she had ever seen. She has a thing for animals. I look at goldfish and I see a fish tank that will need regular cleaning (and fishtanks are such a pain to clean). I look at doves and see birds which will poop a lot, chew on things, are probably noisy and will doubtlessly hate me. Because I hate them.

Nonetheless, Imogen begged me for a guinea pig (and a parrot, but I digress). She had some money left over from her birthday and she wanted to buy one. She had a cage left over from her other guinea pig which bit the dust shortly after we bought her. Kiba was her name, and she was sickly when we got her though we didn't really realize it until it got worse.

I mentioned to Jeremy that Imogen wanted another guinea pig. He groaned. "Kiba hated us and she DIED! What's the point of that? We have Zeus. Wasn't that the point of getting Zeus?" Now, I remember before we got Zeus several discussions about the type of dog we wanted and what we wanted in a dog but I don't recall ever either of us saying "Hey, if we get a chihuahua, we won't ever have to get any other pets!" So I let Jeremy stew about the whole guinea pig for a while (he needs to get used to some ideas) but one thing he said was "Why not a hamster?" Why not, indeed? They're smaller, cheaper (ie, easier to replace when they croak). They eat less, poop less. Their toys are even cheaper because they're smaller.

But Imogen wanted a guinea pig. So we went to the pet store with the idea of buying one. However, when we got there, there was only one in stock and the stupid thing was $28! Call me cheap but seems like a lot for a glorified rat. Hamsters however, were $9. So I convinced Imogen to look at the hamsters. She peered into one of the cages. Two fat, healthy looking hamsters with thick fuzzy fur were sleeping in one corner of the cage. One thinner straggly looking hamster was shivering in the other corner of the cage.

"I want that one," Imogen said, pointing at the littler one. I pictured her 15 years from now writing a book about how all of her pets died when she was a little kid and how her parents failed to shield her from the pain.

"What about these ones?" I said. We agreed on one of the fat ones. Imogen named her Melly. (I don't think I could have handled another Lucy or Susan- *everything* around here gets named Lucy or Susan ever since Jeremy read them The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.) We had to buy her a cage, ball, food, etc.

Melly chewed the inside of her little box in a valiant escape attempt as I frantically assembled the cage while we waited for Genevieve's dance class to end. We put her inside the cage and she began climbing all over it and exploring. Already she has been more outgoing, friendly, curious and active that Kiba was. Hopefully she lasts longer too.

Theology, by Imogen

"God is a miracle! He was there before the whole earth was made. Like, whoa, that's cool." -Imogen

The Tooth Fairy, unmasked

We don't do Santa, because I think it's silly. Why do I want some idiot in a red suit to take credit for gifts that I bought during the shopping season from hell, brought home, wrapped with no help from a Grinchy husband, and put under the tree late at night on Christmas Eve? No thanks.

But when Imogen's teeth started falling out, I figured, there's a fairy tale I can get into. Sure, she's taking credit for giving your kids money, but it's only a couple dollars. It's mysterious as well, all the unanswered questions.

Unfortunately, Imogen doesn't get along well with unanswered questions. So she asked them all. Who was the tooth fairy? What did she look like? How tall was she? How did she get in the room? What did she do with the teeth? Where did she get all the money? What did she do when she had to visit lots of kids in the same night? I finally had to say "How should I know?? I haven't met her!"

Imogen is very literal. To Genevieve, I think, these things didn't matter, because somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew. But to Imogen, the tooth fairy was a real person. She started keeping up a correspondence with her. I was constantly having to scribble replies from the tooth fairy and slip them under her pillow, thanking Imogen for various notes and pictures and drawings.

But she has long been suspicious. Tonight, the truth came out.

"Mommy, I think you're the tooth fairy," she said.
"Oh you do?" I said. My usual strategy is to neither confirm nor deny.
"Yup! Guess how I know," she said.
"How?"
"The hearts," she said, referring to the hearts the tooth fairy drew on notes and envelopes.
I gasped. "The tooth fairy and me make our hearts the same?"
"Nooo... You are the tooth fairy! You and daddy," she said. "Also, your handwriting is the same."
I reflected that maybe I should have made at least the slightest effort to mask my handwriting. I had decided it was unnecessary, given the ages of my children, but I underestimate Imogen's observational skills. I tried for surprise again.
"The tooth fairy writes just like me too!" I said.
"Nope! We figured it out," she said, giving Genevieve some of the credit. "You're the tooth fairy!"

Does this mean I don't have to pay her for her teeth any more?

The average voter...

Actually, she'd probably do better than the average voter.

This is an old picture, obviously. But hey. The dumb smile is just too perfect with the sticker on the forehead.