Tuesday, June 3, 2008

A Day That Needed Kittens

It was a day that turned out to need kittens, yet it started out well enough. After breakfast and before our weekly playdate at the library, the girls played with modeling clay together for nearly an hour--they stuck the colors on fondue forks and made caterpillars, smashed them on the table and added birthday candles and Willow sang the tall tree song to Sydney, used them as props for a dinosaur puppet show--long enough for me to sew and turn and topstitch and quilt these babies:

They're hand towels for the downstairs bathroom, the one with a dinosaur theme. The backside is a recycled pool towel from a Marriott that somehow found its way into our luggage, but never made a home for itself in our linen closet, due to its pukey green color, until now. The fronts are remnants from the dino quilt I'm making the girls. The hand towels aren't standard size, of course, but they don't need to be, and I like that the dino fabric gives them a soft side to contrast with the rough terry side. Kiddos tend to have tender skin, don't you know.


The library was terrific, obviously, except for the tornado warning that had us all herded into the Program Room for half an hour, but while we were at the library all morning, two people in a red pickup truck (says an eyewitness) stole my girls' tricycle, ride-in car, and wheelbarrow right out of the middle of our yard. When the police came they tolerantly took our statements, but obviously objects that are precious only to their little girls are unlikely to be recovered. The ride-in car was a hand-me-down from a friend, the wheelbarrow was a yard sale purchase just from Saturday, but the tricycle...the tricycle was Willow's present for toilet-training, and it was beloved by all of us:


Willow is such a sweet and gentle kid that her first idea was that people had wandered into the wrong yard in the rain and would return her toys in a minute, but I couldn't stand to see her standing at the window, waiting, and so I explained that I thought the people had done it on purpose, even though it was very wrong, and that maybe they'd return the toys, but probably they wouldn't. So Willow looked at me, tears running down her face, and asked, "Will the people give my tricycle to their own little girl?"


Fortunately, when the mail came, Willow's world began to look up, because our package from the Craft for My Kids swap arrived! Our partner made a lot of really terrific things for the girls, including a crayon roll, a painted wooden dinosaur, charm necklaces, matching aprons, matching scarves, washcloths, and felt pastry, but my favorite is these matching rompers:


Cute!

An added bonus to the day--I declared myself too emotionally depleted to cook dinner, so Matt ordered our absolute favorite dinner: Pizza Express. Matt always gets pineapple (yuck!) on his half of our multi-grain crust, but I waver between sun-dried tomatoes or broccoli, both of which are delicious. However, when we opened our pizza box, we discovered the wrong pizza! Half cheese and half pepperoni, with nacho cheese dipping sauce! Do you know what that means? Free pizza! Score.

The girls still seemed down, though--I think you have to be a little older to appreciate a free pizza--so Matt and I put into action a plan we've had for a while, and we took a family trip to the Humane Society. We're a foster family, so we sometimes take an animal to come visit us for a few weeks--lots of animals benefit from fostering, including moms with babies, very young animals, animals undergong medical treatment, or animals who are depressed by the Humane Society environment. We had our choice there between two little one-pounder kittens who need to be 2.5 pounds each before they can be spayed and adopted out, or three puppies from a litter of nine border collie mixes. Willow was leaning towards the puppies, of course, but I told her that even though it's her choice, the kittens did need us more, because they were smaller and younger and don't really do well in a Humane Society environment. Willow said, "The kittens need us more?" I said yes. She said, "I want kittens." And so, a day that needed kittens turned into a day that got kittens:

And there will be pizza for breakfast in the morning.

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