cat named pig

Siena has been working on counting lately, and I love it. This school of hers must be pretty good, because I know I haven’t done much in the way of teaching her about numbers. My version of any math more complicated than adding single digits:

“Hon, what’s thirteen plus fourteen?”

Or this one, which really gets him since he hates buying storage containers almost as much as he hates being my human calculator:

“Hon, if these baskets are fifteen dollars each, how much would it be if we bought twelve of them? And do you think twelve is even enough?”   

And my specialty, guaranteed to make him turn purple:

“Hon, what’s the balance in our checking account right now, minus the cost of [insert large item I want to purchase or project I want to have done to our house]?” 

Especially when it’s followed by:

“Oh, it’s a negative number? But we really need [name of item or project].” 

He loves that conversation. 

So far, Siena’s counting begins with a numerical sequence solidly rooted in reality, then veers off toward the more. . . umm. . . fanciful approach I sometimes tend to take with numbers myself. For example, a game of hide-and-seek or counting the time it takes to put shoes on, or other counting/getting ready games we play, will often start out normally enough. One through ten, followed by eleven through twenty, smooth transition to twenty-one, and so on. But as we approach the upper thirties or forties, something goes awry. Today, thirty-nine was followed by eleven-one, then eleven-two, etc. 

Also, when estimating, Siena almost always uses the number “ninety-teen.” Especially for anything big or old. For example: ”There were ninety-teen birds on that roof!” as we drive by the Pigeon House. (Side note: why do certain houses consistently attract huge congregations of pigeons? And is there, like, a checklist somewhere of the steps you can take to ensure your house does not become one? I know what I’m Googling after this post is done.) Siena also frequently refers to things she will do when she is older, explaining to anyone who will listen that, when she is “like ninety-teen,” she will be able to do cartwheels or wear earrings.

This actually doesn’t seem that strange to me. I’ve been known to use “a krillion” and “a bazillion” in situations where real numbers I had actually heard of before didn’t have quite the oomph I needed to convey just how many pigeons we kicked at saw in the Piazza San Marco (warning: you will probably vomit in your mouth a little if you follow this link and watch the video) or just how many times I’ve asked Matt to clean the fish tank.

Anyway, one of the few things I do remember from high school math class, or maybe junior high math class, sometime that feels like a frillion years ago, is the fact that there are things called “imaginary numbers” and one of them is i or something. Umm. . . OK. Whatever. Are you guys (mathematicians) sure your three-year-old didn’t make that up? Because it sounds exactly like something Siena would come up with.  

We have lots of mathy and sciencey-smart friends who are gonna love this post. Maybe they can help my kids get through high school second grade math class. Because I’ll be busy. I have, like, i things to do that day. I mean ninety-teen.  

I shouldn’t be trying to sit down right now, as I have kids clamoring for snacks and treats and pet unicorns and BALL! and MAMA! but I really wanted to write a quick test post to kick the tires of this new theme Matt set up. He worked pretty hard on it, and then worked even harder fixing everything that inadvertently got messed up in the process.  

….. 

Siena claims that a kid at her school has a cat named Mr. Poopins. I don’t know if this is true or not, but the name has infiltrated every sentence to leave her mouth for the last half-hour. (”Elliot! Give me the Mr. Poopins toy! Mama, it’s time for the Mr. Poopins treats now. I need some apricots and some Mr. Poopins.”) Like many of my favorite swear words, it seems to function equally well as noun, adjective and verb. 

…..  

Time to hit “Publish” and see if the Tech Support Team at catnamedpig knows their stuff or not. Since changing the website doesn’t involve paintbrushes or rollers, I’m feeling optimistic that I won’t have to spend the evening pointing out flaws in the thing he worked on all day, like I occasionally typically do after home improvement projects.  

I’m going to play around with the design of our site over the next day or two, so there may be times when it is down or may look different from it’s usual red and white self. My apologies for this.

You’ll know if anything goes wrong, as you’ll read about it in Laura’s first post. Keep your fingers crossed.

………

Edit: I guess playing around didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Turns out that Laura had a theme in mind already and had saved it in our file management system. Although, you may have seen an error message pop up on the site if you tried to access it around noon CST today. Sorry about that.

To be honest, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to fix it. I’m pretty sure my exact words to Laura when she asked how it was going were, “I think I !@#$%! it up pretty bad.”

That can happen when your deleting, overriding and adding new files. We’re still going to add a Flickr link and some more categories to the sidebar, but that’s for another time. Let us know what you think.

According to Siena, Elliot might have an imaginary friend, too.

Only his is named Vava, because I guess he couldn’t pronounce anything as cool as Anderson or Arianna.  

And here I thought all his babbling was just baby-talk nonsense. He’s probably been having long discussions about art and politics, animals and BALL! with his invisible buddy Vava.  

There is a series of commercials on TV lately promoting the University of MN, where people can ask questions and University researchers will answer, describing the work they are doing to address that particular issue. My favorite version of this commercial features a woman addressing the camera: “I want to know what’s being done for people with hearing loss.” Then, in the background, her husband hollers “I already let the cat out.” (Or something to that effect.)

This cracks me up every time I see it, but it makes Matt sigh in recognition because it sounds exactly like every exchange we have when we’re not in the same room. 

Apparently Siena has inherited her hearing from my side of the family: 

Siena:  Daddy, why is all that snow blowing in front of us?

Daddy:  It’s blowing off that truck. It’s kind of silly for us to be driving behind this truck, isn’t it?

Siena:  What?

[Daddy repeats himself.]

Siena:  Daddy, why did you say hippopotamuses? 

I feel like I have spent a million years in the car, saying “Siena, you need to share the puffs with your brother or we’re going to take them away” every five seconds. And every five seconds for a million years is a serious lot of time. 

Other than repeating that particular phrase until I was hoarse, we all made it back home in one piece and on relatively good terms with one another. We were at the house by noon today, which left plenty of time to start washing the STENCH out of everything Matt took with him to Man-cation.

We even went out to dinner to celebrate the fact that we all still like each other (for the most part) and had a lovely meal punctuated by Siena’s multiple trips to the bathroom and multiple spillings of water on the table. She uses potty breaks in restaurants the way I use parentheses in my writing (or salt in my food) — in other words, frequently, copiously, with reckless abandon.

Whenever we got too boring for Elliot, he would just turn around and smile flirtatiously at people at neighboring tables. He has learned to enjoy restaurants, because it is almost guaranteed that at least five strangers will smile and wave at him and comment on how cute/friendly/happy he is. [I look forward to re-reading this in two years when people at neighboring tables in restaurants are offering to buy our meal if we will just get it boxed up to go, and take our screaming two-year-old home, for the love of all that is holy.]

Siena has learned to enjoy eating out because she can have all the milk or apple juice she can drink, but nothing beats the restaurant we went to in Marquette, Lagniappe, where she was offered Mardi Gras beads as soon as we walked in. They also earned my everlasting love by giving Elliot a green plastic alligator toy to play with, and by bringing Siena some mac and cheese that “didn’t look weird.”  

There will be more posting about the trip, once we recover a little more and wash Matt’s clothes a few more times. For now, I will just post this picture of us in Heather and Sean’s kitchen. Siena is carefully preparing her “extra-cheesey” pizza and Elliot is doing two of his favorite things: eating and smiling.

Photo courtesy of our gracious hosts at stinkerpuppy.com.   

I think the most memorable quote from this weekend came when I started to pour some infant cereal into a bowl for Elliot (it comes out as tiny white flakes or powder) and Heather said:

“Here you go, Elliot. Here’s your bowl of dandruff.”

Pretty sure this image will come to mind every time I feed him from now on. 

[Hi, Heather! Reading this at work? I hope not!]   

1. Half a mug of coffee (fortunately, only on the wood floor; easily cleaned up).

2. A bowl of dry dog food — scattered everywhere. They will be finding pieces of it under the furniture for months to come.  

Actually, the list is only two items long so far. Not too bad, really. If we were at home, it would probably be a lot worse.

However, the day is young. Plenty of time left to trash the place. I’ll update later if we have any particularly memorable destruction.

[Again, Heather, if you’re reading this at work, just kidding!]

But not really.
 

Hmmm. . . .

Overall, I’d say the day has varied from Far Better Than Expected to Fairly Unpleasant. With right now veering towards Significantly Unpleasant.

Getting on the road was probably the best it’s ever been for us. Our most memorable fights not relating to the fish tank have probably all taken place in the context of getting out the door to drive somewhere a few hours away.

Based on what you know of me, you’re probably thinking it’s my hysterical over-packing and general nagging tendencies that cause most of the tension — but, amazingly, you’d be wrong. What typically happens is Matt FREAKS OUT and loses all control over his temper when we are not in the car by whatever time he has determined would suit him us best. (And his temper was able to withstand two pregnancies and all the accompanying hormonal instability on my part, as well as multiple daily assaults on his patience from the three-year-old, so to say this FREAKING OUT typically surprises me would be an understatement.) 

[In case you’re wondering if I’d rather use this blog for one-sided rants about my husband than charming anecdotes about my kids, well, sometimes I would. But Matt actually agrees with everything I’m saying here, and has admitted multiple times that this one particular issue sends him over the edge more than anything else.]

Anyway, today we got out the door really well; only 30 minutes behind Matt’s Time of Departure but with little or no FREAKING OUT on anyone’s part.

We had a lovely early dinner at Pizza Lucé in Duluth (because the three Pizza Lucés in Minneapolis aren’t enough for us — we are Pizza Lucé groupies who will follow it anywhere).

And then there was more driving, with Shrek on the laptop for Siena to watch, and a gradual crescendo of displeasure on Elliot’s part for the last hour of the trip. This culminated in a symphony of discontent to which we all contributed, but then we arrived at our motel and were relieved to find that it didn’t totally suck, like some of us had feared it might. 

But then bedtime proceeded to totally suck, was actually worse than I had feared, and is still not completely resolved. As I write this, Siena is tapping me on the back and declaring in stage whispers that she is not planning to sleep at all tonight. She is going to “stay all the way up until the morning” and “won’t be tired at all.” Excellent.

Meanwhile Matt’s mood has deteriorated to the point where I am relieved that the baby is asleep so we won’t be talking much for the rest of the evening. He is currently lying face-down on the floor, taking out his frustration on some Sudoku puzzles and counting the minutes until he can drop us off tomorrow and head to Man-cation.

Whew.   

This is just a few of many reasons, I’m sure. Feel free to add your own in the comments. 

1. We named the cat Pig, that whole thing. Had to put that one on here.

2. We live in Minnesota. All year long.

3. We have two Ford Tauruses, one with super-dark tinted windows that are illegal in some states.

4. Minnesota might be one of those states.  

5. We have decided to pack both kids and much luggage into one of those Ford Tauruses and drive for at least eight hours to one of the few places that is even colder than Minnesota: the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

6. We are going on a road trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in February. With two kids. (This is basically the same as #5, but bears repeating.) 

Assuming we decide not to evict anyone from the car on the way there, our friends Heather and Sean can expect some very restless kids to arrive at their house Thursday, at which time Matt will continue on to a cabin with no indoor plumbing or heat, to bond with his guy friends as they huddle for warmth and take turns peeing in a bucket. At least, that’s how I imagine it. He seems to think it’s going to be fun. You be the judge of who’s really crazy around here.