Growing up

As Greg mentioned in his post, Allie started learning about puberty in health class today. When she came home from school, Julia went outside to play and Allie and I talked through all of her questions for about 45 minutes. These discussions have been going on for awhile now, but now of course, she wanted more details on certain things.

Actually, I didn't answer ALL of her questions. She said, Mom, I understand that the sperm and the egg together make a baby but I don't know how they get together. I said, Allie, that's sex. She said, drawing out the word in realization, OOOOOHHHH.

I told her we'll talk about sex eventually, but that right now, we'll just concentrate on puberty. One conversation at a time, please.

We caved

We did. We bought the girls a hamster.

It wasn't much of an expenditure. We already had everything except fresh bedding and hamster food. And the hamster. The girls named her Ruby (my suggestion) after an intense 20 minutes or so of name-considering.

We can't remember when our last hamster, Fuzzy Sara, died but Allie doesn't remember her at all, so it must have been before she turned 5. One morning, I was in the bathroom with Allie and Greg came to tell me that Fuzzy Sara was dead. I remember I asked if he was sure and he said, Oh, yeah.

So now Ruby has taken up residence in the cage. She has all the hamster necessities, including her own penthouse (that she's presently too little to climb up the tube into). She's a Russian dwarf hamster and Allie and Julia are in love.

So are the cats.

They somehow tipped the cage off Allie's bookshelf and the whole thing shattered last night. It seems like the hamster somehow escaped harm despite being under some debris when we ran up the stairs. Greg made a late night trip to Wal-Mart for supplies and now the cage is bungie-corded in place to the bookshelf.



Every time we checked last evening, the cats were sitting on the floor beneath the bookshelf or at the end of Allie's bed. Watching. Always watching. We've brought more excitement into their lives in the last 18 hours than in the whole three years we've had them.

Happiness all around.

Familius vomitus

Julia had something on Friday night that made her vomit repeatedly. She started eating again late on Saturday, a little.

Last night, Greg made a wonderful new dinner that mostly just he and I ate. The girls ate peanut butter.

Julia went to bed as normal and slept through the night. Allie started vomiting at 9:30 and vomited throughout the entire night, sometimes in sessions only 10 minutes apart. Greg started vomiting at 9:32 and he's still nauseous too. They're both home today.

And I'm OK. Though when I eat something, I'm always thinking whether I want to see that food again. If I can just stay healthy until after my class tonight - - -