Another Day, Another Distress Call

It’s been fun to see Clara’s imagination grow over the last year. More and more she’s content playing with her animals, dolls, or even crayons just making up some story and talking to them. But it seems like her favorite type of game is what we call “Distress” where some character in her fictional tale is in trouble and needs help (i.e. they’re trapped, they’re stuck, they fell down, etc). It was a little disconcerting at first – since we’d hear cries for help quite often – but now that we’ve deciphered the difference between a pretend shriek and a real need for assistance, it has become pretty amusing.

It’s usually nearly impossible to capture these moments, since she usually stops and smiles as soon as the camera is spotted, but I managed to get a few seconds of it recently when Olivia the pig’s family became trapped under her bathroom stool. Thank goodness the lion was there to check on their well being…

Bad Into Bone

Burger’s addicted to rawhide bones. So addicted that every night he literally waits for me to give him one (we store them in the Parsons desk).

Never have I seen this dog have such focus and determination about one single object.

It’s as if tearing each bone apart is his life’s work. And his legacy is on the line every night.

Perhaps my favorite part of his ritual is how his front paws are forced to be as hand-like as possible. Gripping that thing, doing their darndest to hold it in place.

But hey, as long as he’s happy.

That is, until I step barefoot on a half-eaten stick that he gave up on and it stabs me in the heel.

They’re Coming…

Here on the East Coast, we’re expecting cicadas this summer. A lot of them, apparently. They’re the locust-like insects that emerge from the ground once every 13- or 17-years (depending on their “brood”) to fill the air with buzzing and our trees with their shed skin. My mom used the occasion to break out the book she made with me back when I was 5, the first time I experienced a cicada summer.

My little book is mostly newspaper clippings like this…

…but there are a couple pics of young me proudly (bravely?) holding some cicadas.

Then – here comes the kind of gross part – it includes some “preserved” cicada shells. Yep, that’s them just squished in some saran wrap. An entomologist I am not.

Although my preserved wings came out a little bit nicer.

My mom even added a page to the book 17 years later (in 2004, when I was 22) when that brood of cicadas re-emerged. Still got that cicada bravery!

I’m hoping when this cycle comes to Richmond this summer that Clara share a similar fascination and bravery with them. Heck, maybe we’ll make a little book of our own…