Dear Reader

Dear Reader,

Don't give me a hard time about not blogging . . . I've been very VERY busy! I have a life, you know. A life that recently included the creation of four (FOUR!) dolls and two plush chickens--that lay eggs. But here's a story that must be told, all about M.

M started reading The Pepins and their Problems a couple of nights ago. I was lying down reading with both girls. M starts huffing and puffing.

M: "This author keeps saying 'Dear Reader' like she's talking to me."

Me: "You don't like that?"

M: "No."

A few pages later, she flings the book down.

Me: "You're not going to read any more?"

M: "No! The author just kept talking to me and wouldn't get on with her story!"

The nerve.

Culture Clash

E, talking to neighbor child: We were hoping to see some avocets on our family bird walk this week.

Neighbor child (clearly a Philistine): Huh? Did you say Avatar?

Fly Away Home

Imagine if you will:

You look out the back door of your house to check on your four lovely children. You see, to your amusement/dismay, four crawling forms, bottoms to you, two of those bottoms stark naked, crawling away from you into the neighbors' yard, stalking the elusive Mallard Ducks that have taken (contrary to their own best interests) to visiting our neighborhood in the morning and evening. This is what Marmot Dad saw tonight while I was busy putting sheets on our bed. I'm devastated that I didn't get to see it myself.

But it points to a larger trend/mania in our home: BIRDS. The kids are smitten with birds and birdwatching. I bring to wit two birdwatching notebooks, produced by M and E, entirely on their own and without any parental prodding or suggestion.

Here's E's Bird Notebook:

peacocks:

swallows:

black wing (she means red-winged blackbird):

Canada geese:

woodpecker:
yellow head (blackbird):

ducks:

kestral:

ospray [sic]:
killdeer:

ducks redux:

And M's notebook:

titled "A nonficten Book about ducks"

Where Have All the Mompers Gone?

M has been at it again. She's launched full-tilt into a new publishing project (drum roll please):

Ta-dah! May I present The End of the Dinosaurs

(Note the open spaces on the dead dinosaur where you can see flesh [decaying] and bones.)

How did the dinosaurs die?

(I love how this dinosaur [inside a thought bubble, no less] is innocently eating a plant, completely unaware of the asteroid [clearly labeled for your convenience] hurtling toward him.)

I do not no. Maybe all the pla . . .

nts died because a asteroid or meteor fell and steam filled the sky for a long time. and . . .

(Note that now our greedy dinosaur looks around, aware at last that something is not right. If you don't know where the meteor might fall, follow the dotted line.)

all the plant-eating dinosaurs died because the plants died and if the plant-eating . . .

(Once again, a fabulous cut-away of what a dead and decaying dinosaur's insides look like.)

dinosaurs died the meat-eating dinosaurs would not have any food and then they would die. And then there would be no dinosaurs!

See our other great titles in this series!

M thought all of this up herself, and as I recall she only asked me to spell "asteroid," "meteor," and "because." She kills me.

Now E is clever in a somewhat different way. Marmot Dad took the girls to school a few days ago. On the way there, E was telling M that a sticker or book or something that M had was stupid. In one of those desperate parenting moments, Marmot Dad said, "E, tell me something that you really like so I can tell you that it's stupid."

Quick as a wink, E answered, "Well, the only thing I really really like is M, and you can't call her stupid!"

E - 1

Marmot Dad - 0

Mompers

It's open! Oh at last! It's open! Let's go!

"Where to?" you might well ask. Let's go to . . .

Yep, the girls have been at it again. We had two opening celebrations this week (complete with refreshments) for the two newly opened Dinosaur Museums, one in each non-parental bedroom (we have a fairly fluid assignment of sleeping spaces, so no one really has an assigned room). When they found out I had purchased 5000 sheets of paper at Costco, they lost no time in trying to burn through the supply.

Which bring us to this: the Wooly Mammoth Wall (these are known as "mompers" [monsters] by this little guy)
Here's a sample of the artwork:

Everything's carefully labeled in case you aren't sure what's what:
(Those little triangular things are the plates of a stegasaurus)

We have a few (ahem) non-traditional dinosaurs:

Another wall:

I'd call this the main gallery:
One of my personal favorites, the singing dinosaurs:

The toothpicks are prizes awarded for excellence in drawing. (Note the fish-catching going on, and the little waves splashing up.)

A colorful fellow:

Momper of the Deep:

Wet Momper:

Flying Momper:

T-Rex and child:

And of course no museum is complete without a museum shop. This one sells bracelets fashioned out of pipe cleaners in various sizes:

Pennies go here:

Come visit soon!

His Eye is on the Sparrow (or Junco)

E came to me in a dither yesterday after playing outside for a little while to report that she thought she had found a dead bird. She had indeed. It was most certainly dead. Thoroughly dead. A little Junco from the back yard. Her mind immediately went to the Cedar Waxwing we found on campus last year that apparently was part of a mass kill-off, probably from ingesting ice-melt. So she posited that it had eaten "poison" from a neighbor's yard (neighbors who are notorious for spraying and sprinkling noxious substances on their lawns, sometimes with a down-wind effect on our yard/family/flowers).

Here's the (late) bird:

We wondered briefly what to do with it. They knew not to play with it, since I had told them the story of my bringing home a dead bird as a child and being scolded for bringing a yucky, dead, stiff, no doubt pestilential bird into the house. We decided to bury it in the garden (the circle of life and all that). They wanted to use a push broom. I opted for a spade.

Then the girls wanted to memorialize the poor bird:

Then M's sign got more specific:
The final product:
Tooie decided today he wanted to dig the bird up and "just take a look at it." Fortunately, I distracted him.

Oops.

The phone rang this morning. M brought it to me, and the voice on the other end said, "Is this Dr. So-and-so?"

"Why yes it is," I answered, not without some pleasure in finally, finally, getting my due.

Let's back up just a moment. I am not actually a Dr., but I am only about four chapters of a dissertation shy of being one. (OK, so that's pretty far shy of it, but I could have finished, barring a husband and some children, right? Oh yeah, and some serious writer's block and perhaps a dearth of original ideas.) Anyway, I am at least a bona fide professor, and really, that should count for something.

When I first started my university career, being (a) female and (b) someone who looks young for her age (sometimes by as much as ten years), my students felt they were justified in calling me by my first name . . . which they most assuredly were not (perhaps I don't deserve any respect, considering that dangling modifier I just bunged in there). But even though 32 was old enough to teach, it was not old enough to call them to repentance. There were other problems as well, but let's not dwell on the negative, shall we? Suffice it to say that I've been waiting for years (almost ten, to be exact) to get some respect, in and out of the classroom.

So is it not excusable to react with a blush of pleasure when someone calls me "Dr." of her own accord?

But my joy was short-lived. The woman on the line started talking hospital this and on-call that. I should have known that on New Year's Day, no one would have a literary emergency. I told her that unfortunately I was not that kind of doctor. "Oh," she asked, "are you a nurse practitioner?" I hated to disappoint her, but no, I am not. "I am a professor," I said.

I didn't tell her I'm not even a real doctor of anything. Sic transit gloria big-head.