Two Guineas

The boys have been wanting a pet for a long time so Marc and I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get them something to cuddle. We didn't think we were ready for a dog so we went to the pet store and talked to the owner to help us decide what might work for our family. The owner is a lovely woman who knows my family because her daughter was in the toddler class I was teaching in the fall of 2014. She went through several different options that might survive my boys' love. Turtles, lizards and rats topped the list of hearty animals. I told her we were hoping for something a little more furry. She said I hoped I wouldn't be offended but hamsters were out. My boys would kill a hamster. Guinea pigs though, they might work. They don't die if you drop them, they don't bite and you can hug them without crushing their internal organs. That sounded good. It was decided, we would get a guinea pig or two. We didn't want our new pet to be lonely. The pet store lady made them sound really easy to take care of too. You just feed them pellets and water and change the litter in the bottom of their small cage 2x per week. You can even just line the cage with a garbage bag she said so you just tie up the bag, put a new one on and sprinkle some litter in the bottom. Easy peasy. The boys should be able to handle this pet completely independently.

The Tooth and Nothing but the Tooth

Gabriel lost a tooth last night. I have mixed feelings whenever this happens. For one thing, losing those baby teeth is a sign that these kids just keep growing up, darn it. Not a fan sometimes. I'm happy for the boy who is excited about losing his tooth, but I'm also nervous because you just never know about our tooth fairy. Frankly, she's the worst. She forgets or doesn't show or comes late or leaves the tooth behind. I don't know what tooth fairy academy she was trained in but she must have baaaarely passed. I mean, when I was kid the tooth fairy assigned to my house never missed a tooth pickup and even left sparkly fairy dust behind. She was a pro.
Our boys have definitely noticed the delinquent ways of our tooth fairy so they have developed several theories about her. First of all, she lives in New Jersey. I'm not sure if the boys have developed a stereotype about people from New Jersey or if New Jersey was just the farthest place from North Dakota they could think of. Anyway, because she lives in New Jersey it takes a long time to fly all the way to North Dakota. I mean, that's about 1700 miles. The boys also theorize that the weather often holds her up. You know, ice on the wings and such. Sometimes, though, when the weather is nice and she doesn't show up for two nights in a row- yep, she's that good- they start to really wonder about her character. And who can blame them if they think that she's lazy, forgetful or scatter-brained? It's probably the tooth.

Update: The tooth fairy was a no show last night but did come sometime during the day because when Gabe got home from school there were four shiny quarters under his pillow. At least she doesn't leave dirty money.

Flakey

The boys and I made a bunch of snowflakes to hang up as January decor. I love how it turned out. I also made individualized snowflakes for each of them with the letters of their name and then a small one with a theme of their choice. I was pretty happy with the elephant one and the bird one especially.

Memo Musings

Every January I look at the little memo I keep on my phone of random thoughts that I jot down for possible blog fodder. Every year I am left with several unused ideas. Maybe I should submit them to some language arts teacher as writing prompts. Some are self-explanatory. Some, I can't even recall the exact context for. Anyway, it's become somewhat of a tradition for me to publish these little snippets from the previous year. This time I thought I'd reproduce exactly what I wrote in my memo and then tell the short story that goes with it. It's an interesting way to recap a year.