Conversations with an Amy

Just now.

Amy is being very chatty at the moment. I said to Mike, who just got home, “She didn’t even have a nap today!”

Amy: You said no nap, Mummy! Teachers said no too.
Me: That’s right, I said no nap.
Amy: Jae pushed me into the doors.
Me: Which doors?
Amy: The sleep-room doors.
Me: When? Today or yesterday?
Amy: Yesterday.
Me: And what did you do?
Amy: I tolded him STOP DOING THAT.

Ethan is in the University of Canterbury’s alumni magazine today. They have an article about multiculturalism in the classroom, and came to Ethan’s school and took a photo of his class, which has at least half a dozen ethnicities represented, maybe more. His face is half-obscured by another child but his face will be half-seen by, I’m guessing, one or two thousand alumni.

‘Ware!

Dropping Amy off today at preschool, I noticed they had a big wooden castle set up complete with knights, dragons and royalty. Amy wandered over to investigate and found the dragon, which she waved threateningly at me before placing in the castle courtyard, inside the walls. I did the “ooh, a dragon, how scary” thing and she laughed before looking sympathetically at me.

“No, Mum, the dragon’s not scary,” she said in a teasing voice. I said yes, I was scared, so Amy picked up the dragon, placed it in a nearby wire basket, then picked up the basket and carried it through to the bathroom where she put it up on the highest shelf she could reach.

“You can’t see it now, Mummy, so it’s not scary,” she told me.

Let me explain, no, let me sum up

* Placement starts next Monday. I am underprepared in terms of paperwork right now. Woo! However, I am well equipped wardrobe-wise, thanks to my mother.

* Over the past week we’ve had gas-powered hot water installed and ripped out an interior wall, as our new heatpump made the gas fireplace redundant. Renovation is fun, in an unexpected “oh crap, no one said there was a huge lump of concrete behind this wall” sort of way. Our bank account is unimpressed.

* Mike may be allergic to our new kittycat, who is tentatively named Kira. We’re going to hold on for a few more days. If things don’t work out (as in Mike doesn’t stop sneezing or wheezing), then she will hopefully return to her previous owners.

* I took Ethan to Horton Hears a Who today. He loved it. It was very spur of the moment and not conducive to my placement preparation [see first note, above].

(Renovation photos will undoubtedly follow.)

“There is something about the presence of a cat that seems to take the bite out of being alone.” - Louis J. Camuti

We are currently three in our house, Mike being on a work trip to Rhode Island and Maine. I am amusing myself in the evenings by watching Sopranos DVDs, spending too much time on the internet, and doing laundry. Life sure is exciting! I have to limit myself to two episodes of Sopranos at most per evening because otherwise my adrenalin levels are so high I need to eat something just so I have dishes to wash.

Anyhoo.

I got us a cat! Poor Mike. A college friend has had kittens (well, obviously, her cat had them, she only feeds and shelters them), and had offered us a kitten a couple of months ago. I thought about it, and talked to Mike, and he thought about it, and neither of us was willing to make the decision. Getting a pet is a pretty big decision, really.

Going back a bit further, like, uh, to when Amy was about 18 months old, she developed a paralysing fear of animals. We went to a friend’s house one day for coffee and playtime, and Amy and Ethan ran to the door and rang the bell. The friend’s daughter opened the door without thinking and their large labrador cross leapt out straight into Amy, barking loudly and jumping excitedly all over us. He was just happy to see us, but he towered over poor Amy and she has never been the same since. It’s slowly getting better, but for a while she would see a dog across the road and start whimpering and trying to literally climb my legs to get away from it. Now she will stop and think, and sometimes she will try commanding a barking dog to BE QUIET! but if it turns towards her she does the whimper-leg-climbing thing again.

So I knew we needed to give her plenty of experience with smaller, gentler animals to help regain her confidence (obviously caution is good, but not in such great doses), and the kitten seemed ideal. But then there’s toilet training, behavioural stuff (kids and cat), what happens if we go on holiday, etc.

With Mike away this time for slightly longer than usual, and the kids being tired and cranky and sick for part of the time, I have been tired and cranky and stressed off and on as well. They’ve actually been great, really, but they have the usual periods of grump and fighting and whingeing and in the evenings I collapse, too tired to do much else but dread the next day.

So we got the cat, who is now about five months old, housetrained and children-trained. She has been here for just over 24 hours and we have only lost her once! This morning I made the executive decision to let her out to explore the section, and she immediately disappeared next door (who would’ve thought?). We went to find her and she turned out to be stuck up a cabbage tree and only came down in the end because the back-fence neighbours started a car right below her perch, which scared her half to death. She hasn’t been outside since. She is asleep beside me, and having a cat to snuggle with and pat and be nuzzled by, and for the kids to talk to and amuse, has given us all a much-needed distraction while Mike is gone. Amy is still nervous if the cat approaches her, but happily follows the cat around the house, making cootchie-cootchie noises at her. Ethan is putting into practice things he has been learning at school about caring for pets and reminds me that our cat needs food, water, sleep, and cuddles.

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” - E.L. Doctorow

“My name is Spongebob,” said Spongebob.
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“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” - Tennessee Williams

Ethan has become a big schoolboy fish in a small daycare pond. When we pick Amy up after school, the four-year-olds rush to gather around Ethan, hug him, ask to play tag with him, show him the cool cardboard-box truck they’ve made that day. I caught him being hugged and kissed by two girls the other day in the middle of a game of Duck Duck Goose. One of the girls in lives just down the street from us, and seems to really like Ethan, so I invited her to our house last week (via her mother).

The two of them, and Amy, had a fantastic time playing, riding their scooters, eating ripe figs and grapes and Kit-Kat bars for afternoon tea (the chocolate bars being a gift from our visitor (via her mother)) and playing board games when it got cold outside. After they’d eaten and returned outside, I came out to put a jacket on Amy. Ethan came up to me in the middle of a race with his friend, and leaned to whisper in my ear, “I like her!”

It was adorable. I think he was taken by surprise; he tolerated her at daycare because she was one of his adoring fans, and I don’t think he cared one way or the other that she was coming to play. But then it turned out that she liked scooters and Megablocks and playing BiJingo just like he did! She was actually kind of cool! And so they could be friends. Aw.

…

Also, Ethan has written a book. About Spongebob. I will follow up with photos and translations of his phonemic-style spelling.

More words from Amy

It can work! No, it can’t work.
[What can’t work?]
The heat pump can’t work.
[Why can’t the heat pump work?]
‘Cos it’s, ‘cos it’s broken.
There’s two cars. ‘Cos two cars broke it. [How?]
‘Cos they’re naughty. They’re naughty, eh? ‘Cos their battery’s flat.
We have to fix them. We have to pull the batteries out.

(Roleplaying — apparently the aforementioned two cars are Mum and Dad.)
Mama. I don’t know. Dad, what are you doing, Dad?
I said what are you doing, Dad. Ummm, I’m doing work. Okay, bye.
I’m broken, Mummy.
Want a cuddle? (kissing noises) Good. Bye Daddy.
How was your work? Mum, how was your college? Good. No, I didn’t go, I’m at college.
…
[What are you doing?]
Um, I’m working. You’re the Dad, Mum. I’m the Mum.
What are you doing, Dad?
[I’m working at work. What are you doing, Mum?]
Um, I’m just driving. Mrrrooommmm. [Where are you going?]
Um, I don’t know. In the garage. Okay bye!

Because I want you all to suffer. As I have suffered.

Magic Pen, a Flash game using REAL PHYSICS!! and crayons. It will keep you up for hours. And hours.

And then, four days later, you’ll finally put down the mouse, gaze blearily at your neglected family, and say something like, “I don’t know who I am. Help me, strange people.”

Finally, after the intervention, you can thank me.

“You might be a firefighter if your kids are afraid to get into water fights with you.”

I don’t know what the Firewise mascot’s name really is. I hope it is Krispy Kiwi, with a sort of singed-around-the-edges look. We went to the Rangiora Volunteer Fire Brigade’s open day yesterday at which the kids saw a car get cut open, an airport firetruck, a, well, a guy dressed up as a firefighting kiwi, and Ethan ran an obstacle course to save a giant stuffed bear from a fire. The bear survived, thanks to Ethan’s courage and dedication to the safety of bears everywhere.

“The one thing children wear out faster than shoes is parents.”

I didn’t think to show that they have cool detachable ankle straps, so you’ll have to take my word for it.