Why We Don't Have Pets

Shelly and I were talking one night and she started staring at my face. Eventually she said something about my eyebrows and how she wanted to touch them because they looked fuzzy (not really a great compliment, is it?). Then she wanted to stroke my nose. She actually just wanted to be petting my face, I guess? I told her it's because she doesn't have a cat. And that started this.

Shelly, we can't have a cat or a dog because I can barely keep up with feeding the three kids in this house and there's just no way I can manage more living things. She understood and nodded.

Shelly, in some families the kids have Small Rodent [gerbil, guinea pig, hamster, chinchilla, rabbit] and the kids play with it and clean up after it and feed it but that just doesn't work for us. She told me about some friends who have Small Rodent and those kids take turns with their siblings to feed and clean cages etc. etc.

Shelly, here's the problem with Small Rodent. At some point, Small Rodent will escape its home and roam around where we can't find it, and you'll come to me crying that you can't find Small Rodent. Is it in your room? You don't know? Was the door closed when it disappeared? You think so? So maybe Small Rodent is somewhere in your room under all your stuff, or maybe Small Rodent is out in the house somewhere else? You're sad and Mom is annoyed and Dad says everything will be ok. And then it's the middle of the night and Mom gets up to go to the bathroom and Small Rodent scurries across her path and Mom freaks out and then everyone wakes up and freaks out and somehow even though Mom saw Small Rodent scurrying around, Small Rodent has now disappeared again and what if it's in her bed? And no one sleeps until Small Rodent has been rooted out of whatever den it is creating in Mom's bed and evicted from the F5 household, with many tears from all involved. And that is why we cannot have Small Rodent, no matter how much it teaches kids "responsibility" and "maturity."

Shelly nods her head in understanding.

Shelly says, "What about a fish?"

While the Cat's Away - Day One

The Cat, aka The Dad (he doesn't even like cats, this whole analogy might not work...) is away for six days. I said to David, what will I do without you? He said, what you always do. Meaning, our schedule rolls on, school, work, homework, laundry, bickering, laughing, did I miss anything? I told the kids that Dad is the one who reminds me to be nice to them, and without him around, who knows what's going to happen. Maybe pizza for dinner every night. (For real. I really thought about that. Except I don't even like pizza that much, so maybe not. Maybe ramen noodles instead.)

Anyway. On my way home from work I saw approximately 147 people out walking their dogs because it was a balmy 43. I was inspired to get outside and told the kids they had to go for a walk with me. They agreed, on the condition that they would get shamrock shakes afterwards. We proceeded on our 0.8 mile walk and Eli wiped out only three times. We had dinner, went grocery shopping, found a new turtle friend (his name is Fasty because, um, he can jump really high?) and the kids were thrilled when we FINALLY picked up their shakes. Bonus - We listened to Queen on the ride home. Awe. Some.

We played a lot tonight. We fooled around and there was almost no crying and we all just spent a couple hours being silly. Everybody said lots of funny stuff and I remember almost none of it. Shelly told a story about how her class got to use tablets in the library at school today, and Mr. Librarian was very protective of these devices and asked everyone to be extra careful. "They're my babies, please be very gentle with them." Class Comedian jumps in and asks, "Did you marry a flatscreen TV?" Mr. Librarian worked very hard to hide the smile on his face but all the kids knew that he thought it was funny too.

Shelly and Elijah and I were sitting on the couch and Shelly decided she wanted to watch TV and told Little Brother to go get the remote. He immediately got the remote and brought it to her and then, without any judgement, just asked the question. "Shelly, are you just lazy or what?" Can you hear it? The honesty and the curiosity in his voice? Shelly, without missing a beat, launches into a little speech about humans and how they're just naturally lazy and that's just how people are and yes, she's lazy. Can you hear the matter of fact justification in her voice? And as she goes on, he curls into the corner of the couch and covers his face with a pillow and I hear him say, sadly now, disappointed in his sister's answer, "I just don't think that's how it should be." Hugs all around for everyone. And quit being lazy!

The Cat, The Dad, called to let us know he made it to LAX and he had a few spare minutes to chat with us before he had to head off for work stuff. I guess we're all keeping busy without each other, but I'm definitely counting down the days till the cat is home again.

Art Review

Shelly's art was selected, along with some of her classmates, to be displayed at the district office. What a nice display! (Shelly's is in the top row, with the bright blue sky and one lone tree.)

Eli had a creative answer to what animal's teeth he would want, and why. I love his illustration of himself with elephant's teeth. What do you think, good choice?

Shelly created a self portrait as if she had been a girl arriving at Ellis Island in 1892, I got to see this at school recently. I tried to encourage her to use this idea for a short story but she didn't take the bait. She's got more important things to do.

JLS International Festival 2017

For the second year, JLS has hosted a festival that takes us around the world and home again in just a few short hours. Each classroom studies a country and then puts their findings on display in the hallways throughout the school. Parents cook traditional foods from places around the world and bring them to share. Groups perform cultural dances and music in the gym and library.

JLS has an international focus that comes into everything they do. I love how they encourage families to share their heritage with the students at the school, and it broadens the kids' view of the world. They are never in a tiny bubble of "my family, my city," everything is stretched to the bigger view. Our heritage, where we come from, and how we fit into the world with everything we do.

When we arrived at school we walked under a gateway inviting us to "Travel the World" and were handed passports to stamp at every country we visited.

Elijah's class packed their suitcases and boarded a plane to Spain. He told me that he got to try churros while studying Spain. I didn't hear much else about Spain, but it sounds like they had a fun trip.

Shelly's class studied the Philippines. We had a nice chat about that last week when she told me about the Chocolate Hills. What a strange feature of the landscape there! After we visited her classroom's display she told me which part of the information she had researched. Unfortunately, she was then absent for two days and didn't have a chance to update the display before Thursday night's event. So the population density of the Philippines wasn't exactly accurate. But it was still a very nice presentation, and E stamped another country on his passport.

Elijah had talked about looking forward to trying new foods, but when we made our way to the gym, the line was extremely long for the food samples and we decided to go out for dinner instead. I told him we'd get something new from the grocery store the next time we went shopping, and that settled it. We were all hungry and ready to go.

Eli and Shelly get to experience the typical elementary school stuff at JLS, but as we left the school on Thursday night, I told them how incredibly fortunate we are to have a treasure like JLS in our community. What a wonderful place for them to learn and grow.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day Developments, over the years.

Archer in 4K, 5K, and maybe a year or two more - The List of names comes home. Trip to the store to find The Best Valentine Cards. The child (or the child's parent) addresses every single little card, folds the cards, puts little heart stickers on them. The little heart stickers don't stick very well. An especially ambitious/generous parent also buys some kind of candy treat and attaches that to the cards.

Shelly in 4K, maybe 5K? and the years beyond - The List of names comes home. Inspired by some other past Valentine event, Mom decides that Students should write the names of all their classmates by themselves. This requires much advance planning. Student can only write a few names each day before getting worn down and starting to complain. This also requires super extra planning, go to the store to pick out The Best Valentine Cards at least two weeks before the Big Day. Also, dig around in the closet to see what cards are leftover from last year, so we can buy the least number of new cards possible. Forget about candy treats, now we're supplying cards for two classes (older brother, younger sister), double the kids. That's too much candy to buy. Besides, we'll probably eat it before it even gets sent off to school.

Elijah in 3K, 4K, K - Forget The List. We get a message telling us how many kids are in the class. Writing classmates' names is no longer required, in fact, please don't write other kids' names, it takes too long to sort the cards out at school. Only write your own name in the "from" part of the card. All the leftover cards from past years are too crumpled up to use, or the characters aren't cool anymore. Buy The Very Best Valentine Cards, don't even think about buying candy, that's too many kids to feed. Those little heart stickers still don't stick very well. Mom is now past the whole "other moms do better/more than me" and now is just focused on getting the task done and getting those cards out of the house and on their way to school. Other moms send cookies to school? Great! You send the cookies, I'll just make sure my kid shows up on time and mostly clean.

We're at the point where only two out of the three kids have parties at school, the oldest is too grown up for candy hearts and stuff. At this point, it would actually be too embarrassing to tolerate. Doesn't keep him from stealing his siblings' candy after school though. How did I almost forget that Valentine's is almost as big as Halloween for the candy haul?