Perplexors

Hannah and I have been doing logic puzzles from the book Perplexors.  She loves them, and is getting really good at them.  Yesterday, though, one was more perplexing than usual.  As she was reading the story, she read out, “…and they sold raffle tickets for charity.”  She stopped abruptly, looking at me in confusion.

“Why would anyone sell raffle tickets for charity?  Nobody wants charity!”

Snippets

Sim:  [to one of our dinner guests, who was at the table, having just finished her meal]  Read me a book.

Me:  Sim, how do we speak politely?

Sim:  [indicating the direction of the living room]  Let’s go.

*****

Naomi:  Mama, I love the bunnies more than I love you.

*****

Hannah:  [making gagging noises and nasty faces as she takes the bunny laundry down to the washer]  Mama, the books all say that bunnies poop.  None of them said that bunnies pee.  I wish they didn’t.

Guess what?

After over a year of research on Hannah’s part, she got a new bunny yesterday.  And Michael got one, too.  Because bunnies do better when they have another bunny to play with.  They’re two girls.  Heh heh.  We’d like to stick to having ONLY two bunnies for a while.  Theyr’e about 8 weeks old.  They’re really cute. 

Before they arrived, we (and I use the term we somewhat loosely here) built them a cage.  Michael pretty much built the cage.  Hannah and Naomi assisted.  I come into the picture as the one who did the research and found that you can use wire shelving cubes and zip ties to make rabbit cages. 

Really, though, it’s important to try out the cage first.

Preferably with a WHOLE BUNCH of people.  Just to be sure. 

 

It was deemed worthy of its soon-to-be inhabitants.

Here’s Naomi, helping Michael in his efforts to secure the support bars for the shelves in the cage.  She’s in charge of holding the screws and passing them to him when he needs them.  If you look closer…

You can see where she decided to hold them.  Ingenious!

Why, yes, the bunnies are in the cage.  How could you tell?

Here’s a view of the cage in its almost-finished state.

Since they’re pretty young, they’re not yet really jumping too high.  Or maybe that’s because they’re still getting used to their enclosure.  In any case, the higher shelves will be covered (eventually) with something absorbent and soft.  Bunnies pee, you know.

This is Hannah, holding Gypsy, her very own bunny.  Gypsy is a Dominican bunny.  Well, her breed is Dutch, but she’s sporting the black and white of the Dominicans.

Here’s Mimi, holding Hildegard von Bunny, Michael’s bunny, which he obligingly shares with everyone.  He chose the name.  We call this bunny Hildy, for short. 

Naomi likes to kiss the bunnies.

Gypsy.  This is while we were cleaning the cage this morning.

They spent some time slipping on the floor.  Turns out that newly-refinished floors + fur-covered feet = slipping. 

Hildy is adventurous.  She’s trying to check out whether she can get into the guest room.  

Ah!  A towel!  Respite from the slipping!

Gypsy decides that the corner looks like a likely spot for a rest.

Hannah and Naomi really like the new bunnies.  Hannah has already been hard at work, cleaning out the cage.  Bunnies poop, you know.  And pee. 

But they’re darn cute, so that makes up for all the hard work.  Right, Hannah?

Hannah agrees. 

I mean, really, who can resist?  Oh, yep, that’s poop in picture, too.  Hannah and Naomi cleaned it up later. 

We’re pleased with the new bunnies.  In fact, excitement is running very high.  In fact, so high that it’s difficult to be calm enough to actually interact with the bunnies without freaking them out.  But the rewards of getting to hold and pet them (they’re really, really soft) seem to be a good incentive to calming down.

School’s back!

We started second grade, pre-K, and preschool today.  Naomi began demanding to LEARN! at the breakfast table.  When I mentioned something about what we might do after quiet time, Naomi said we were going to LEARN LEARN LEARN all day.  This was somewhat daunting, since I certainly didn’t have that much material ready for them.  Naomi ended up being content with what I did have planned. 

Latin was one of the subjects that we started today.  Originally it was only scheduled for Hannah, but Naomi wanted in on the Latin, too.  So they’re running about saying things like, “Hit the via!” and, “The luna will be coming up once it gets dark.” 

Simeon was not as impressed with school, mainly because he wanted his sisters to do things that involved him far more often than they were available.  He’ll probably like the songs that we’ll start doing more often. 

I had gotten some books from the library for Hannah’s school.  One, called The Way We Work (about the human body), I had planned on using for science, having Hannah read a chapter at a time.  She got her mitts on it last week, though, and has read all but the last two chapters, the last one being on reproduction, which we’re not going to cover in that kind of depth at this point.  This means that we have only one chapter left of the book…so I’ll have to revise my science plans for the next week or two.  Not a bad problem to have, I suppose!

Fire. Ugh.

I know you’re all dying to hear more about camping.  So I’ll start at our second campsite.  Here it is:

I’ll post photos of moving the tent later.  It was amusing.

 

There were two stumps at the next (empty) campsite, which led to one of the favorite games of camping.

Get up on the stump…

 

…and jump off!

Then do it again.

And again!

 

We were at the home of friends the other day, a very lovely home that was welcoming and had very nice decor.

 

They also had a fireplace.

Simeon pointed at it and said,

 

“Fire. Ugh.”   Brought to you by Fr. Jerome.

 

Simeon was not impressed that we thwarted his efforts to put (6-inch) sticks in the fire, when Hannah and Naomi got to put sticks in the fire.

Of course, they were several feet long and had marshmallows on them, besides being operated by someone older than 1 year.

 

Fr. Jerome also got in on the marshmallow-roasting.

S’mores.  Mmm.

Sh

Simeon, for reasons that are not clear, has started pronouncing “s” at the end of words as “sh.”  For example:  I want to play with the trainsh.  Or animalsh.  Or sistersh.  It’s very amusing.

I’m reminded of The Far Side

We live in a house with one bathroom.  This is not terribly troublesome to us at this point.  There’s only occasionally a time when more than one of us wants to use the bathroom at the same time.  We’ve lived in this house since before Simeon was born, which means that it’s been over 2 years.  Of course, our local relatives have been frequent visitors.  So I was surprised when I heard this exchange, and it reminded me of The Far Side, when the title of the comic was “People Unclear on the Concept”:

Nephew:  [upon finding that the bathroom was occupied when he needed to go]  Hannah, will you please lead me to the upstairs bathroom?

Hannah:  We don’t have an upstairs bathroom.

Nephew:  ….?

I found it funny that he was convinced that we must have a bathroom SOMEWHERE that he hadn’t seen, even in all of his visits and rambles over our house.  People don’t have houses with only one bathroom, do they?!?  Do they?

Happily, the person in the bathroom was finished before our nephew’s situation became too urgent, and he can affirm the old adage that “you learn something new every day.”  Some people do have just one bathroom.