They Call Me Cat Vader

Our adult cats are now over a decade old, so I had forgotten that kittens are insane little balls of fluff and energy. If I could bottle up kitten energy, I'm pretty sure I could solve all the energy problems in the world. Plus, then the kitten might take a nap instead of constantly attacking me around every corner of the house or pouncing on my face when I'm trying to sleep. The first time that happened, I was convinced that Death was imminent.

The other day, I was cutting up some carrots for dinner and every time a carrot piece ended up on the floor, Vader came dashing through the house, got the carrot stuck on one of his teeth, and proceeded to choke and gag, while running away from me. So of course, I had to go after him, fish him out from under whatever piece of furniture he had wedged himself, and get the carrot out of his mouth. You'd think that he would have been cured of this lunacy after doing it once or twice, but no. He now does it with every other vegetable that happens to find its way to the ground, too.

Perhaps due to his feral roots, he has no idea how to cuddle. If someone tries to pet him, he flips himself onto his back so he can bat at their hands. If someone (*cough* Weston *cough*) tries to kiss him, he bites their head. But miraculously, in the middle of the night, he becomes the coziest cat in the world and sits on me and purrs as loudly as his little body can manage. In theory, it's cute. In reality, it wakes me up and his razor sharp claws dig into me and I get very grumpy.

He climbs everything. He chews power cords. He tries to throw himself off the upstairs landing. He falls on his head. He attacks the adult cats, who are tolerating his craziness exceptionally well. And the only way to trim his little needle-claws is for one person to hold him up in the air and rock him slightly while the other person quickly lops off claw-edges.

All this to say: Dear Future Self, you're really not cut out for this kitten stuff! Stick with adult creatures, please! (Better yet, let's not add any creatures to the house for a while, hmm?)

Say What?

At a park with some friends:

Adult friend: Weston, do you want to walk over to the slip and slide with us?
W: Um...will my shoes be discovered?
F: Will your shoes be...what?
W: Discovered. Will my shoes be discovered?
F: I think it's okay to take your shoes off in the water area.
W: But will they be discovered?
F: I'm sure no one will be looking at your shoes...
W, sighing: If I step into the water with my shoes on, will the water be high enough to go over my shoes? Will the water discover my shoes?



Earlier today, as I was smelling some eucalyptus oil:

Me: West, wanna smell?
W, sniffing: Mmmm.
Me: It's eucalyptus. Remember what likes to eat eucalyptus leaves.
W: Ants? Oh, and also, Choo-alas.
Me: ....Yes....Koalas.
W, haughtily: I like to say Choo-alas.

Gardens and Dragons

• I have neglected to plant a garden this year. I did it on purpose because I know how previous attempts at gardening have worked out (spoiler: not well.) And yet, somehow, we have kale and possibly a tomato plant growing in our garden. I'm trying not to look at them very hard, in the hopes that reverse psychology might work on plants.

 

•  There was a spider in the bathtub. I liked him there. The children and I visited with him from time to time and nobody freaked out over the existence of said spider. I felt it would be perfectly reasonable to cede the bathtub to the spider, but McMoose disagreed and has moved the spider...somewhere. In the house. Now, I'm not opposed to spiders in the house, but I do prefer to know where they like to be because the worst moment with a spider is the moment of discovery.

 

• The phrase, "Do not breathe at him when he does not want to be breathed at," exited my mouth today. What is happening to me?

 

• A few nights ago, Weston put a gem sticker on me and declared me a dragon. It was a cute moment. The next day, I was at the store and a small child came around the corner, got wide-eyed, and said, "Whoa! A real dragon!" and then hurried off to tell his mother that he had found a real, live dragon. It gave me a bit of an identity crisis. I had to look at my reflection in the window to make sure I was still human.

Literal MInded

Violin Teacher: Your elbow is not invited to this party.
Luke: What does that mean?
VT: Think about if your friend invited you to a party and your parents decided to tag along, even though they weren't invited...
L: Well, unless the friend was my neighbor, I wouldn't be able to go to a party without my parents anyway because I can't drive yet. They would at least have to take me there.
VT: Ok...what if your friend's party was in a super cool fort that he had built and it was just big enough to fit you and your friend? And then, your parents not only tagged along to the party, they also got into the fort? And broke it? Wouldn't you be mad?
L: Well...no...I don't really like parties...or forts.

(I'm pretty sure he likes forts AND parties, he just likes bedeviling people even more.)




VT: You can use those crayons. All I ask is that you color on the wood floor instead of on the rug.
Weston, after frowning at her for a moment: Can I just color in the coloring book? It will be hard to clean the floor...

Splendidly Seven!

Luke turned seven a month ago--hey look, this might be my latest birthday post yet! He had his first "big kid birthday party" this year at one of those arcades with mini golf and go-karts. I think he smiled the entire 3-and-a-half hours (why yes, it was the longest birthday party in history and we should be hearing from the Guinness Book any day now) that we were there.

A few days before his birthday, a new kitten joined our family. Notice I didn't say we got a new kitten? Because we didn't. No, a new kitten got us. He found us in a friend's yard and climbed right up McMoose's pants, so obviously we had to bring him home. (Big mistake.) Luke is alternately terrified of and fascinated with the kitten, who was named Cat Vader at the children's insistence. (Luke has since decided that this is not how Sith naming works and really, he should be called Darth Cat, but too late.) Vader has the rather rude habit of greeting us by biting our ankles and a few times, I've found Luke perched atop his desk or the dining table, grinning and crooning, "Aww, you're so cuuuuuute!" to the ferocious little beast pouncing about on the floor in front of him.

When we go anywhere, I know that I should plan for some time to save insects along the way. A couple of years ago, we started moving earthworms from the middle of the sidewalk to the grass because he didn't like seeing all the ones squished by bikes and people. It has now progressed to moving every blessed insect he finds on the sidewalk or bike trail when we're out. Just today, we had to stop to save a roly-poly beside the car in the parking lot, a millipede from the violin teacher's driveway, and an caterpillar from the sidewalk. On the flip side, he feels no remorse killing ants that come into the house, citing the argument that when we're outside, we're in their home, so we should treat them with respect, but when ants come into the house, they might eat all our food, so they've got to go. (Other insects get a pass, apparently.)

Most of the time, he's patient with his brother, who admittedly takes advantage of that fact to annoy Luke half to death. He loves baby animals and tolerates baby humans, especially when their ages are compared with Another Baby. Anyone younger than Another Baby gets a pass for annoying behavior; anyone older is sighed at for their childishness.

His favorite extra-curricular activity this year has been to join Cub Scouts, with McMoose as his...adult-helper-person. (Sorry, but I will never remember what they're called. Pack leaders? Den masters? Troop wizards? Whatever.) He got to go camping with scouts a couple of times, which he loved without reservation. He enjoyed T-ball for the first half of the season, and then was mostly annoyed at having to continue to go. Instead of paying attention to the game, he and a friend mostly tried to push each other off the bench and engaged in general tomfoolery.

He's still enjoying violin lessons, as well--though he would very happily do without the daily practice. When he asked to take lessons, I said okay in large part because I wanted him to learn that some things are difficult, but with practice, they get easier (or at least more doable) and he's learning that nicely. His teacher asked him to practice a piece three times a day this week and he responded, "Just three? Wouldn't it be better if I did it seven times a day?"

So far, seven has been a pleasant, comfortable age and I'm looking forward to experiencing this year of growth and learning with him.

Evidence of Photographs

It's been an incredibly long time since I've posted any pictures here. And also, my phone recently threatened to quit me unless I found alternate storage for some of the pictures and videos that were on it, so I now have access to said pictures and videos from my computer. (I had access before too, through the cloud or whatever, but my brain firmly refuses to grasp the concept of cloud computing. I have had multiple people explain the concept, I have read several explanations online, but just...no. What? Clouds? And pictures in clouds? But not real clouds? But where do the water droplets go? There are no water droplets? So then how is it a cloud? What kinds of droplets are there? Who? So I'm currently not on speaking terms with the cloud. I'm sure I'll come around to it eventually, but by then, we'll probably be storing data in a virtual Hundred Acre Woods or something.)

((On a somewhat, but not really related note: we have Amazon Prime Now in Raleigh now, which means that we can order $20 worth of things and then have it delivered to our door 2 hours later. If we're in a hurry, we can pay $8 for shipping and it'll be here in an hour. One. Hour. I can't even get the kids together, find matching shoes, and drive to the store and back in that time. The other day, we ordered a book at, I don't know, midnight? And when we woke up the next morning, it was waiting at the door. What is this crazy new world we live in? And more to the point, when did I get so old?!))

Getting back to the point: Pictures. Here they are.

Luke with his new favorite book, written by his new favorite author. As a result of all this favorite-ness, I decided to read the other Michael Crichton books we have on our shelves, so as to decide whether they're appropriate for him (they are decidedly not) and he told me with great concern that he thought they might be too scary for me.

I don't know why I ever try to get this kid to smile for a picture. This is, obviously, his new favorite picture face.

Took the kids to an open gym at the local community center. This was their game of choice. It's all fun and games until someone gets hit in the face with a ball.

We took the kids to their first football game in December. This is the closest thing I have to a nice family portrait this year. Whoops. Why are the children dressed to go hunting, you ask? Well...because you try finding summery orange and maroon gear in Mississippi in December because you packed a bunch of hoodies and then it ended up being 80 degrees.

He winds up like this every time he jumps. Inevitably, the jumps are so enthusiastic that he fails to land on his feet. He has a similar wind-up process before running, but involving one arm back and one forward. I die of the cuteness. He's like a little cartoon person!

When you find an enormous bee, what better course of action than to climb it?

A blue morpho butterfly landed on Luke at the butterfly house at a local museum, which was really cool at first because we got to see it up close and they both got to hold it. It got considerably less cool when it refused to leave Luke's hand and kept flying back over to him, despite his best efforts to put it on a branch and run away. The attack of the blue morphos!

Beauty

I was recently sitting with a group of family members and someone asked about the most beautiful places and things we had ever seen. I loved hearing everyone's answers about the places they had seen and the sights and experiences they would carry with them, but when it was my turn, I found myself having trouble coming up with an answer. The most beautiful place?

The valley in Vermont with mountains all around, where you can watch the fog retreating back into the clouds every morning, where everything shines in shades of green, where the words Emerald City are never far from your mind.

Flying into the Chennai airport in the middle of the night, when you can see the lights of the ships off the coast and feel like they're leading you home.

Glaciers off the coast of Alaska viewed during a midnight sunset in July from the deck of a ship.

A path on the campus of Virginia Tech, where there is a bend in the sidewalk and a sudden, unexpected patch of wildflowers that seem always to be happy to see you.

A field covered in a foot of snow with no one around and quiet as deep as the ocean.

A beach in India that's clean and empty, where you can sit and close your eyes and listen to the ocean and feel connected to everything that has ever been, will ever be.

A stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway that's littered with tiny, trickling waterfalls and twisty roads that leave you wondering whether you should have stayed on the interstate while being simultaneously grateful that you didn't.

A coffee shop that's actually a double decker bus and is decorated with colorful bits of glass on the tables and walls.

Home at the end of a long journey. My bed at the end of a long day. My children first thing in the morning. A fire in my fireplace on a cold night. Steam rising from my morning coffee. A cardinal at the birdfeeder. The first seedlings that grow in my garden. A book and a blanket and a cup of tea. Secret, undiscovered places that make you feel like you're the first person there ever was. A sky glowing with stars that reminds you that you're not.

There's beauty everywhere. How do you decide?