The Cats Suffer Needlessly During the Blizzard

Poor, poor kitties. I should point out that we do actually have poor, poor kitties that live outside. I discovered that the extra-fabulous black one hangs out under the front porch. Hopefully it's waiting for the snow to die down before it emerges to hunt at the bird feeder today.

Snow Day!

Just for reference, the first picture was taken a while back. Today, no hill in view, and in fact, barely any neighbors in view. Apparently we're due for more heavy snow until at least lunch time. Snow was starting to pile up against the back door, so I imagine that, by the time we get out to clear, it'll be a challenge just to find a way out that we don't have to shovel. Here's the part where I'm grateful we have room in the garage for everything including the snow shovels instead of having to forge a path to the snowed-in shed to get our stuff. And, obviously, that the garage is attached to the house.

To switch topics, because surely there will be more snow pictures and blizzard updates today, apologies to Auntie Lulu and Uncle Adam for the sad excuse for a Skype conversation last night. Clearly Alex was unmotivated, and Gabe was working up to an epic teething fit the likes of which have never been seen or heard before, so it's probably a miracle that they even paid attention at all. We did enjoy seeing Aggie (I swear, Alex thinks her name is Eggie, but anyway) up close, and wish that Diesel had been paying attention enough to swat at her when given the chance. We'll try again some other time.

Well, I should probably venture upstairs and see if anyone's awake or if the chocolate cake (purple icing as requested by Alex) is gone yet.

How Could I Forget?

Just a quick rant. We were at the Ecotarium (our home away from home) the other day, and we were looking at the African animals. To be clear, there are dioramas with taxidermied specimens mixed in with painted representations of other animals that would live with the taxidermied animals in real life. Alex has seen them many times and has a somewhat vague grasp of what's going on. As in, these animals were alive, now they're just stuffed skins to represent the actual animal, to be quite unromantic about it.

Well. Enter the 2 young girls with their father/grandfather. (It's dark in there, and he looked older. Doesn't matter.) These girls had to be at least 10 years old. The first words oout of one of their mouths was, "Oh wow, it's all 3-d in here!". She. Thought. The. Animals. Were. 3-D. Pictures. Seriously??!!??!! Then adult started to explain that they were in fact, real skins. (Having just read a fabulous book about taxidermy, I won't even get started about whether these animal representations were the actual impala, nyala, kudu, and dik dik skins or some other skin made to look like them. But I digress.) So, the brain child of the two says something to the effect of, "Or they could even be dead animals!". Gee, you think? Here I was assuming that the animals that never moved, have glass eyes, a few visible stitches where they've been patched together and who are in glass cases were real, live animals who never eat, drink, moves, breath or blink. Silly me.

I can't even comprehend how this could happen. Are there no field trips to museums any more? Do no parents take their kids to the museum -and- explain what they're looking at? I mean, come on. You don't have to know how to stuff a squirrel to be able to say, "That's a stuffed squirrel." and tell your kid the difference between alive and dead. It's not rocket surgery, parents, grandparents and other "responsible" adults. My three-year old should not be more educated about the fine art of taxidermy than your middle schooler.

Then again, maybe I'm the strange one for teaching my kid about everything I know. Craziness.

So I realized that yesterday's post ended a bit abruptly. There was an epic phone call and some naughty children stuff going on, so there you have it. Lucky to have posted at all.

But I'm happy to report that the rest of yesterday was not quite so harried. Well, OK, it was, but I got stuff done. Laundry, dishes, cleaning, all that usual jazz. But, due to a certain baby escapee who made it to the top of the stairs to pet Diesel instead of staying downstairs like he was supposed to, Operation Unobservant Parent was put into action. The living room and dining room have been fenced in to create a large play area for the Gabester minus cat bowls and stairs, so it was left to me to finish the job in the basement before, say, Diesel decided it would be fun to lead Gabe back down the steps. A skill he neither has nor is interested in acquiring at the moment.

I quickly realized that we were one gate short of a baby safe basement and immediately scooted one of our too many sofa beds in front of the non-landing hallway area leading to the steps. Gabe cannot even remotely climb up on the couch yet, and I reason that, by the time he can, he'll probably be a seasoned veteran of the steps. That's the theory, anyway. The cats, of course, will have an easier time traveling over the couch, especially since I've considerately provided them with a step stool on the backside. So, one exit taken care of.

The second was a bit harder considering the steps and lack of an easy place for a traditional gate, so I was forced to resurrect the fireplace gate. We've decided that, given the fact that we're always in the living room when there's a fire, Gabe is less than likely to burrow his way through the fireplace screen to his doom. Less. So anyway, no gating off the fireplace. Just lots of increasingly frantic warnings to Gabe as he crawls ever closer to the fire culminating in a daring rescue. Repeatedly until the fire goes out or he goes to bed.

Anyway...had I read the instructions and also gotten out the spare parts of the gate, the installation would have been much faster, but as it was, it took me the entire length of his too short (30 minutes, really?!?) nap. But we're gated off, and even Alex has an escape route from the basement (same one as the cats only she'll inevitably be less graceful in her travels over the back of the couch) so I can safely turn my head for more than one second without fear of baby escaping for a quick bruise on the one section of the steps without carpet. The part he always slips and falls on.

Alex had a less productive day, as she had a mystery fever with no other symptoms except extreme sleepiness. She racked up quite a few hours of tv viewing, ate next to nothing (business as usual there) and was shockingly quiet. Hopefully she's bounce back today because we have a play date down the street and then two feet of snow will be here tomorrow.

Some Days Start Better Than Others

This is Others.

Crappy Day Yesterday. Really.

It was actually not all that bad, relatively speaking, but yesterday could have ended better.

Alex and Gabey had a bath, spurred on by an unfortunate losing of balance and crashing into the steps by Gabey. Baths make a great distraction from minor head injuries. (Very minor, for those concern - not even a bump, but more of a tiny abrasion.) So, bath time went down with all the usual hitches - eating the bath toys, slurping up too much water while talking under water, slipping and almost pitching head first out of the tub, throwing bath toys at an undeserving Mommy. All the usual naughtiness. Alex was first out, shortly followed by Gabey because he was attempting to make the bath tub into a jacuzzi and Mommy got nervous. Turns out she should have been more concerned about Number 1 child.

Number 1 had her evening diaper on (Mommy and Daddy have little faith that she'll be out of evening diapers any time soon, but maybe someday, they'll change their mind.) and was sauntering around the house while Mommy was drying, rash creaming, moisturizing, and wrestling her baby octopus into a sleeper suit. Then, Mommy heard Daddy helping Alex close the bathroom door for "some private". Not a good sign.

Generally, when Alex wants "some private" it means she's doing something horrific that she'd rather not let the parents see. Daddy, being mostly too tired or busy to pick up on not so subtle clues like this, had no idea what evil was about to occur. To be honest, Mommy couldn't imagine either.

Well, Alex had pooped. Not believing her body, or perhaps plain not caring, she pooped in her diaper instead of high-tailing it to the bathroom to save us some grief. Doesn't matter. What happened next, though, was of concern. She proceeded to try and clean herself up behind closed doors. Sometimes calling to Mommy despite herself, because deep down, she knew she needed help righting the wrong. Alas, Mommy was too late. I arrived in the bathroom to find Alex with a long streamer of poop-encrusted toilet paper swinging from her left hand, poop smeared on her chest, hands, legs and other regions. Pretty much everywhere, in fact. Including the toilet paper on the roll.

Miraculously, the rest of the bathroom was "clean". I mean, as clean as her dedicated bathroom will ever be. Despite her best efforts to SHAKE OFF THE POOP there was nothing anywhere worth sanitizing off. Nice!

So, the issue was Alex herself. Daddy was put firmly in charge of the haz-mat cleanup, and quickly, a crappy situation was put to rest.

Today in Two Words

Poop everywhere.