Saturday, February 25, 2006

Because of A's fascination with cats, I called up http://catsinsinks.com/ to fill half the computer screen, while I read more interesting things in a separate window. Each time she started to wiggle, I'd load a new cat, and all was well. But my site had pictures too.

I wasn't surprised when she said "pie" (her nickname for Paco) upon seeing Dooce's dog; I've noted his resemblance to Paco before. But when I scrolled down to the first picture here, she got all excited shouting, "Mommy! Mommy!" and pointing from the picture to me and back again. Apparently I'll need to pay close attention to her when we're out so she doesn't go wandering off with someone else, thinking it's me.

facial hair

Dan fashioned his beard into a goatee our first day in Florida, and no one noticed. (I even made a comment like "you spent forever in there; what were you doing for so long?") He didn't get to test me on his next step, because he told me he was going to do it, but when he shaved his moustache, neither Mala nor the kids seemed to notice. Nana and Yeye didn't say anything about it, either.

But today, as Dan shepherded C to a birthday party, Karen's 8-year-old brother Hum Fay ran right up to him and said, "Hey, you shaved! It looks great!" Glad someone is paying attention to him-

Florida

It was sunny and warm, the kids got to play outside, and C had a blast feeding the horses/ goats/ peacocks/ ducks. A was afraid of the horses and peacocks (after a peacock bite), ambivalent toward the goats and ducks, and fascinated by the cats. One of them occasionally let her pet it, and A tried to hug her the whole time we were there. Needless to say, the cat tired of this quickly, but A kept on trying. She only got scatched once.

Everyone enjoyed the beach, the county fair, and Mala's workplace, along with swimming and boating and watching the birds and absorbing the sun. Coming home to the cold and indoors has been a rude awakening.

going to Florida

I had a vague recollection of hating the Philadelphia airport, but couldn't remember why until we were stuck there for two hours. To switch terminals, you need to take a bus (of course it's Philadelphia; they wouldn't have those bourgeois train-things like in Atlanta or Seattle) through a third-world country, and apparently vast numbers of lazy or disabled people frequent the airport, because golf carts threatened to run over A every 30 seconds.

Valentine's Day

C, being C, spent a week making funky personalized valentines for everyone in his class at school. We knew that no other kindergartener would have exerted that kind of energy, but we were sad to see that only one other kid in the class had made her own and most of the rest of them were REALLY hideous. In my day, storebought valentines were pretty lame, but they were actually cards with envelopes. Now they are generally 2 by 3 pieces of paper folded in half, and I suspect that it's virtually impossible to find them without licensed characters on them. I find it disturbing that 5-year-olds think Bratz are cool. We very glad, however, that the valentines weren't all the over-the-top gifts that C received in preschool, each with a goody bag of candy, pencils, games, etc. attached.

C's friend Karen, whose family owns the Chinese restaurant, did have a card with an envelope- a "thank you" card in fact, inside which she had (probably painstakenly) written "Happy Valentine's Day" and her full name. We're not sure whether her parents are opposed to the other valentines available, if that's just what they had on hand, or if they figured that was what this bizarro tradition called for.