Cat Science

The girls were combing Nelson (the cat) on the radiator this morning, and they were fascinated that as Nelson shed, his fur rose up in the air rather than falling on the ground.

So we had a discussion about why that was -- I asked them where they were sitting, and they figured out that the warm air from the radiator would rise, and carry the fur with it.

Then they did the experiment of moving Nelson off and away from the radiator, and sure enough, his fur stopped rising!

Science in action -- you gotta take advantage of any opportunity for a home science lesson!

Fine Arts & Fine Artists

This past month Abra had ballroom dance lessons in her school PE class, and so the kids had a dance recital the other night. It was very short, and so I actually missed the opportunity to get picture of the kids dancing, but here is a shot of some of the dancers: Katie, Abra, Caroline, and Maddie:


Then the other day when we had snow and Nelson was at the window chattering at the birds outside (like this:


), Thalia pulled out her sketchbook and drawing pencils and sketched a pretty darned impressive picture of him:


She then followed it up with a crayon drawing of all four of our cats:


(the dancing panda is actually on the other side of the piece of paper she used to draw this one.)

Her Aunt Pauli had a role in this one -- you might notice that those cats look like Ed Emberley cats, and sure enough that's where Thalia learned to draw cats, from the Ed Emberley drawing book Aunt Pauli sent the girls last year.

(If you are looking for a drawing book for kids, I can't recommend Ed Emberley's books enough. We had them as kids, and the girls love them...)

School Picture Day

OK, here we go with the obligatory school pictures.

Abra, 3rd grade.


(Dear School Photographer: when posing kids wearing glasses, you might try a little harder not to have the lights reflecting off the lenses, you know? a slight tilt of the head is all it takes. ok, thanks, bye....)

And Thalia, 1st grade:


That one turned out really well, I thought. For once Thalia does not have her "death rictus" smile that she often uses for posed pictures.....

Halloween 2010

So this year the girls were a gypsy (Abra) and a little black cat (Thalia). The fun kicked off on Friday, when they had a Halloween Parade at the school. Here's Thalia getting ready for the parade:


and then Abra coming out with her friend Maddy:


Here are the kids parading down the street:


Then on Saturday, Thalia and I made a scarecrow. Thalia was a bit skeptical about my scarecrow making credentials, but in the end it turned out pretty well! We put a plastic pumpkin on his head, and filled it with lights, and then draped chili pepper lights around him (why? why not!?!). And we topped it off with a "Psycho Killer" baseball cap -- one that previously belonged to none other than Tommy Lee (thanks, of course, to Ant Cat for that one!) -- what could be scarier than that?

Thalia poses with the scarecrow:


And here he is all lit up:


And then tonight it was time to get ready for Halloween parties and trick-or-treating. Brenna applied the whiskers to the little black cat (love that tail!).


And here they are all ready to go!

So off the girls went, first to their Halloween parties, then trick or treating with Brenna. They got quite the haul. I stayed home and manned the candy station with Mr Scarecrow and the pumpkins:

Doll Surgery

So Abra has been asking to get her American Girl doll's ears pierced. Now, you can pay to ship the doll to the American Girl store, and pay another $25 to have them pierce the doll's ears for you.... or you can get out your power drill. Hmmm, pay money or use power tool? Not a difficult choice. So Abra carefully marked Nataly's ears...


... and then Dad pulled out the power drill!

The fun part of this is that you don't just drill through the ear, you drill right down into the skull. Driller Killer!

But everything worked out just fine, and Nataly is borrowing Ivy's earrings until she can get a pair of her own.


(Does anyone but me remember the Velvet Underground's song "The Gift"? Yeah, I kept thinking about poor Waldo Jeffers as I did this...)

Early Halloween Project

So the girls appear to be working on an early craft project for Halloween. Last night I found this hidden behind the cats' scratching post.

Now, I must say that, uh, the "craft supplies" they have used are an interesting choice, but I guess you use the things you have that are in abundant supply....


and you open it up and find....


hmm, those ghosts in our house must be drinking a lot of beer....

Wedding Dress Voting!

Next month my dear sister Cat will be getting married, and she and my bro-in-law-to-be Drew have asked Abra and Thalia to be in the wedding. Which of course means that the girls have to dress up in something nicer than the usual "homeless urchins selling newspapers on the street" look that they often seem to sport.

So Brenna took them out shopping on Sunday, and they came home with two options. Well, Abra did. Thalia has her dress picked out. So the question is do the girls kind of match each other, like this:


or does Abra go for a different look, like this:

(Abra looks like she's ready to run the elementary school library in that one -- taking after her Yiayia and her cousin Deby.....)

So everyone gets to vote -- Cat gets a vote, Drew gets a vote*, and everybody else gets an advisory vote.

(My first question was, of course, "well, how much did each one cost?", but it turns out there is no difference in price, so that was of no help in the decision-making process.....)

Oh, and did you notice those glasses on Abra? Yep, new glasses -- here they are, very cute...



* Drew, my man, while you get a vote, of course, be prepared that husbands lose a lot of 1-1 votes....

Nuthin Good

I bought a new toy the other day*, a Squeezebox Duet player to patch my mp3s into my stereo. So I got it all set up last night, and was happy as a pig in a poke a clam at high tide, being able to play my 55,000+ song list at the touch of a button.

Then the girls came in, and the following conversation ensued:

Abra (coming in): What's that?
Me: My new music player.
Abra: Can it play Justin Bieber?
Me: No.
Abra: Can it play the Jonas Brothers?
Me: No.
Abra: Can it play the Cheetah Girls?
Me: No.
Thalia (coming in): What's that?
Abra: Dad's new music player. But it can't play anything good.

sigh.


* Even as cheap as I am, I do buy toys once in a while. Although the last one was the HDTV in 2005.

Threatening the neighbors....

So I'm a bit worried about what the neighbors think of us these days.

Driving home from a dinner at Stacy and Anne's the other evening, I had to slow the car as I neared our house because there was a cat lying (quite happily) in the middle of the road. The ensuing conversation in our car went something like this:

Me: What are you doing in the road, cat?
Abra: What cat?
Me: That cat.
Abra: Is that Mary's cat? It is -- that's Tiger!
Me: Well, Tiger better move.
Abra: He's going to get hit if he stays there.
Me: He'll move.
Tiger: (lazily gets up and saunters out of the road)

We pass.

Abra: We better tell Mary!
Me: I'm sure Mary knows.
Abra (getting more worried): But he might get hit! We have to tell Mary!
Me: Mary knows.
Abra (as we near Mary's house) Dad, stop the car, we have to tell Mary!!
Me: (keeps driving)
Abra (as we pass Mary's house, yelling out the window): MARY, YOUR CAT'S GONNA DIE!!!!

Which is all well and good, and I appreciate Abra's concern for the cat, but from Mary's perspective (if in fact she was on her porch, which I'm not sure she was....) the exchange was much briefer and went something like this:

Car drives by with small child yelling out the window "MARY, YOUR CAT'S GONNA DIE!!!!!"

Now, we get along well with Mary, so I think all is good, but I do wonder if she heard it, and if she wonders why we have a vendetta against her cats. Honest, we like her cats!

Harry Potter meets Cheapskate Dad

So the girls are way into the Harry Potter series these days -- thanks to Gramma, who got them the books. They are both reading the series avidly, watching the movies, playing Harry Potter games, etc.

Of course, Dad gets to mess with the story a bit.

For example:

Abra: I'm wearing the sorting hat! I'm in Gryffindor!
Thalia: I'm wearing the sorting hat! It put me in Huffenpuff!
Me: No, I'm wearing the sorting hat: I'm in Cheapenskate!
Abra and Thalia: DAAAADDDDD!!!!

or:

Abra: I'm reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire!
Thalia: I'm reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets!
Me: I'm reading Harry Potter and the Wallet of Closure!
Abra and Thalia: DAAAAADDDDD!!!!

This is kind of fun....

Lawyer-in-Training

Dinner conversation at my house:

Brenna (to me): ...so my client got busted because they found residue on a razor blade...
Abra: What's "residue"?
Me: Residue is the stuff that gets behind when they've used drugs on something.
Abra: So they didn't find any drugs?
Brenna: No.
Abra: Then they have NO PROOF!

Abra Plays Fur Elise

This is a bit late coming, but Abra played Fur Elise at the Fairfax Cabaret in January. Here she is, enjoy:

Officially Worried

The remaining male members of the household are somewhat concerned with recent actions by the ruling female party.

Anansi Girls

So a couple of years ago, in kindergarten, Abra read a story about Anansi the spider. If you don't know Anansi, he is a spider god from West African folklore, well known for being a trickster. As part of that kindergarten reading she made a construction paper Anansi which she brought home and we hung on the floor lamp by the front door. It was very cute, and we left it up for a long time.

But finally, as with any child's art project, the time comes to take it down. So last week, Anansi was removed from the lamp and tucked away.

I came home a few days later and, much to my amazement, Anansi was back, hanging from usual spot on the lamp. A trickster, indeed.


I scratched my head for a while, and finally figured it out: Thalia must have just done the Anansi reading in her kindergarten, and brought her own Anansi home.

But, rational explanation or not, clearly Anansi wasn't ready to leave, and I have learned my lesson. Anansi stays.

Abra at 8

Abra had her 8th birthday yesterday. Actually it seemed like her doll Nataly did. Abra/Nataly got a new doll bed (thanks Yiayia and Papou!) and Gramma made about 800 new outfits for Nataly. Here is Abra with Nataly sleeping in her new bed:

And for breakfast Mom made piggy pancakes (with a tip of the hat to my high school friend Cat who gave us the idea) for both Abra and her sister:


And when Abra went to school today, her whole class made her a birthday book. Here's the cover:

And all of the children colored a cupcake drawing and added a nice note. Here's Lily's:


And a very nice note from Kaitlyn:


And then there's that nice boy Ricardo:


Uh, wait. What? Ricardo, you dog!

New Year's Snow

As usual, we were all in bed by 10:30 on New Year's Eve, trusting the new year would dawn without our needing to stay up for it. And with the dawn came snow. The girls went outside to shovel the front steps...

...and catch snowflakes on their tongues:


After that, Lily came over and we walked down to Coventry to go sledding.



Happy New Year, everyone!

Merry Christmas 2009

Last night the girls began tracking Santa on the computer using the NORAD/GoogleEarth site. We got the globe out as well, and they tracked him across Europe and into North Africa. It turns out this is a good way to learn some geography!


After dinner, the girls hung up their stockings:


and a very excited Thalia did a little Christmas dance:


Then the girls set things out for Santa and the reindeer. Santa got cookies (koulourakia, in fact!) and milk, and all the reindeer got carrots. All but Blitzen, of course, who (as Santa explained to the girls in his annual letter a few years ago) prefers broccoli to carrots. So the girls set out a piece of broccoli along with the carrots. Healy, of course, tried to muscle in on the action before Santa came:


Later in the night, Santa stopped by, and left the stockings full and presents under the tree, including Thalia's American Girl doll!


Early this morning (at about 6:20) we heard the girls sneak downstairs, and about 10 minutes later we followed them down to find this sight:


And Thalia was just about jumping out of her skin she was so excited about her doll:


And it turns out Santa left a note:



The girls gave us our presents first. Thalia had made a calendar for us in school, which she wrapped beautifully:


and the girls collaborated on our other gifts: a dollar bill for each of us -- woot!

Lots of other presents were then opened, here's just a small sampling. Abra got the Harry Potter set from Gramma, which will definitely keep her busy:


Thalia got Lemony Snicket from Papou and Yiayia:


And "Ant Cat" got the girls an Easy Bake cupcake kit:


And there were lots more presents; thanks to all our family and friends for taking such good care of the girls and us. After it was all over, and wrapping paper, boxes, and bows all littered the floor, I sprinkled catnip (from the cats' stocking) into a few cardboard boxes and hijinks ensued:

So now I need to get busy working on the turkey for Christmas dinner. Merry Christmas, all!