The Guinea Pig Handbook

As many of you know we were lucky enough to have Annabelle the kitty for the last couple years of her life. The boys really adored her and she actually liked them too, I think, even if she found Connor to be a little too unpredictable at times. She had these very specific ways of joining the family unit. We read books on the couch in the living room every night before bed and wherever she was in the house she would come running up and sit with all of us purring and squinting, which appears to be cat for "you please me at the moment." They took her departure hard, and still remember her very clearly and fondly. We were looking at the kitties for adoption while we were at the pet store recently and Jamie had to walk away. He said it made him think of Annabelle and that made him sad.

But of course, it wasn't too long after she died that the boys were clamouring for another pet. Some months of negotiation and thought followed. Connor at one point wanted a talking bird, mainly because of the one in the Judy Blume Fudge series, which says obnoxious things in French with impeccable comedic timing. I worried that any bird we got would have lacked either the obnoxiousness, the French, or worse, the timing, and so been a disappointment.

So we settled on guinea pigs for a few reasons (good combination of small size, ease of cleaning up, pleasant temperament, willingness to snuggle and cuteness). But being academics, we wanted to study them first, so we went to the store, looked at some, watched their behavior and then bought The Guinea Pig Handbook, a comprehensive and reliable guide. Jamie really dug into the task. He went to bed reading it and sat at breakfast with it open all the next week. He became quite knowledgeable about guinea pigs. (I pictured two guinea pigs somewhere that week munching parsley and reading The Little Boy Handbook.) This meant that not only was he well-prepared for their arrival the next weekend but he was prepared to ignore misinformation. One of their friends has a pet gerbil and insisted that if you tried to hold the guinea pig it would run away, because that's what the gerbil does. Jamie maintained steadfastedly that it was otherwise and when the friend continued to insist he just walked away and said, with a very very slight touch of pity in his voice, "You don't have The Guinea Pig Handbook."

Just before we got them we settled on Roma and Kouklia for the names, after the two places we stayed this summer. Sarah suggested this and after a week of constant fluctuation on names they settled on it very quickly. So the boys do indeed love the guinea pigs. The pigs tend to try to get away when we got to pick them up (I think instinctually for them a hand coming from above reads as "hawk"), but, as The Guinea Pig Handbook suggested, are very happy to snuggle once they've been caught, and they realize we are not hawks.

Dude, cello!

So we have two cellists in the house now. Their teacher was pretty openly laughing at us, pointing out that if they kept playing we would a) need at least one new car into which fit two full size cellos and b) tens of thousands of dollars to buy said cellos. Ha ha!

But it's been lots of fun watching Jamie bring Connor along. The first time Connor brought his cello home, Jamie was very eager to help and actually did in a rather light-handed helpful way. Instead of berating Connor for doing things wrong, he prefaced everything with "Dude!":

"Dude! You have to lay the case down with this side down."

"Dude! Hold the cello here! Dude!! Here!!"

(Laughing): "Dude!!! You can't let it hit things!"

I think they've both enjoyed it more having each other involved.

There was a bit of a difficulty lately, though. Jamie has accelerated a bit and so has moved from teh beginner class which Connor joined this year, to the intermediate group. We were pleased to hear about this from his teacher, but she said that when she told Jamie he could move if he wanted, he said he would have to ask Connor. Connor was indeed very upset at the prospect, because cello happens after school and without Jamie to tell him where to go, he gets very stressed. Jamie was eventually convinced that it had to happen sooner or later, but now when the class is over he goes running to get Connor because he knows the little guy will get scared without him. Cello seems to bring out the best of Jamie's big brother instincts,

Twinkle--twinkle...

Another good pre-blog moment was when he was about 2, he started singing Twinkle-twinkle, which was really cute to begin with. Then we realized he was saying, "Like a diaper in the sky."

We just told the boys this the other day it was about the funniest thing they had ever heard. Almost as funny as when one of the guinea pigs peed on me while I was holding it. That's pretty much the gold standard for funny these days.

Pre-blog days

As the semester ends I'll have some time for more blogging, but in the meanwhile, here's something from the days before the blog, when Jamie was about 1 1/2. This was an email Sarah sent in May 2005:

There have been many cute Jamie moments lately; he's
started "pretending" and the results are pretty
adorable, as he feeds his little stuffed mouse, etc.
But here are just a couple...

Jamie plays "bye-bye"--a version of Leo's toddler
"goin' now" game, I think. He waves bye-bye and walks
out of the room, around the corner, then comes back
laughing a second later, and plays again.

We got him the "finding Nemo" movie, and it was love
at first sight. Now he picks up the t.v. remote and
looks at us, asking, "Neh-mo?"

Finally, the sweetest thing of all... I was walking
outside with him today, and he was running on the
grass. He totally face-planted and I was waiting for
the tears, but instead he started laughing, because
the grass tickled his face. So he started falling down
on purpose and laughing each time as the grass tickled
him. It was the most perfect, innocent, childish game.
So sweet. 

Milestones

So Sarah is in the kitchen right now making cookies to bring to school for Jamie's birthday tomorrow. Jamie was feeling pleased because he is tall enough to not need a chair to stand at the counter like he used to. Connor, upon hearing this said, "I know I'm bigger than when I was in kindergarten. You know how? Because now I don't have to stand on tippy-toes to use the kindergarten bathroom!" Yahoo!