Why is it a Mary Cat?

No Squeaker they are Meerkats. As you probably now have guessed, we made a return trip to the zoo this weekend. Her favorite animal this time was a shrew. I don't know if she liked their long opposable noses or the fact that they were hanging out in the front of their cages, but she really liked seeing them. Even with the heat, she had a good time. Also despite the heat she insisted taking her meals outside. There just happened to be a child sized deck chair at Momzie's house and once we let her sit in a 'flat' chair, there was no going back no matter how warm it was outside. A 'flat' chair, for those of you who are not familiar with the term, is one without molding or a seatbelt. In other words, like those where adults sit.

The Daddy person suggested last night that we were going to visit a zoo in our hometown, one with four cats. Squeaker got really excited at this suggestion, and ran with it all the way home. I spent most of the trip being asked to recall the other animals (stuffed) at the zoo and their names. The Daddy person was corrected many times for either forgetting animals or their names.

Have a good week.

ADDENDUM: I forgot completely (the danger of posting before I have had my coffee) about playing hide and seek with Squeaker this weekend. It has become one of her favorite games and she is getting better at it. She now picks decent hiding places (behind chairs instead of on them) and she waits a until the third or fourth time you have asked "Where is Squeaker?" to answer. She also has gotten good at looking for people too. Although when the Daddy person is hiding she cheats and only counts to two before she says "ready or not". Ok, that's really it for this week. We have some fun videos from the last few weeks, but I haven't had time to sit down and edit it for publication. Summer is coming...

About that Nap Brite....

Brite and I love Squeaker very much. We also love that she still takes a couple of hour nap almost every afternoon. That beloved tradition seems to be on the way out however. This weekend Squeaker and I headed east to hang out with her grandparents and her Aunt Bubbles. Squeaker did take a nap on either of the days we traveled and both days handled it pretty well. We are hoping that this no nap trend won't continue, but if it does, at least she will get to see her first baseball games this summer...

Have a good week.

Hopa says "Yeah, you get to wear my dress! Yeah!"

We here at Squeaker central hope everyone is having a good Easter. We have had a busy week.

Squeaker has been having lots of fun "reading", which we realize isn't news, but books have succeeded in getting her in trouble. This is a long family tradition, leading back at least to the days when the Granddaddy took all afternoon to burn the old news papers. They of course needed to be read first, and yes, this was long before global warming.

The books in question are part of the AlphaPets series. We don't actually have all of them and Brite and the Daddy person think we understand why....

Squeaker really likes the books because each of them features four or five of the twenty-six characters, making each one more to her than the sum of its parts. This week Brite had to put away "Delia the Demanding Duck" and "Sylvester the Stubborn Squirrel". Despite the fact that these animals repent by the end of their books, Squeaker was having far too much fun imitating the wrong behaviors. We are pretty sure this is why "Monty the Mimicking Mouse" and the others never made it to the used bookstore. Please do not try and find him for us. We don't want to meet him.


Tuesday night we were having Pooh pancakes for dinner (a little bit of honey makes all the difference). As dinner was winding to a close Aunt Brite and the Daddy person were discussing things and spelling words here and there so Squeaker wouldn't understand. It seems like as long as we don't spell too much, she doesn't get mad.

At least that was how we understood the game.

As Brite was cleaning up Squeaker’s plate, she pointed out the Daddy person that it was a “B-A-T-H” night.

Squeaker looked at her and asked “Will I have a bath tonight?”

A moment passes while Brite and the Daddy person digested what has just happened. Brite then tested the obvious hypothesis, “Why do you say that Squeaker?”

“Because you said it is B-A-T-H night.”

That's all the news that's fit to print. Enjoy the week. Incidentally, if the formatting on the blog is off for you, try loading it in a browser other than Firefox. For some reason it doesn't seem to like the snow video.

Little Painter

Squeaker has had a good week. She's still having some trouble with her ears. Neither her hearing nor her balance is completely back where it was before the flu. In a totally unrelated note I was going to post time elapse video of her playing in the sandbox today, but she fell backwards off her play gym and we stopped recording after that. I have video of her painting (to go with this picture) but I haven't gotten it cut down to short enough to post.

Check back midweek and see if i have gotten that video up online.

Back on the Job

Squeaker is feeling better, but it has been a long week. It turned out that she had both the flu and an ear infection. Unfortunately this means we could have kept posting photos of her sleeping on the couch until Wednesday or Thursday. Squeaker is feeling better now. She has been a little weepy all week. Being sick is no fun.

The real heartache for Squeaker this week was not being sick, but getting a playful scratch on the hand from one of our cats, her beloved Dolley. I say beloved, because of the four cats in the house, Dolley is the only who likes to be around her and the only one we don't chase away from her too. She goes into Squeaker's room with us in the morning and tries to slip in at night when we put her to bed. So getting scratched by Dolley was traumatic even if it was a light scratch.

Squeaker needed some comforting but eventually went down for her nap. She woke up and had Brite put a band-aid on her hand. After that Squeaker spend the afternoon trying to play with one hand. Worse than that actually, because she would hold her 'hurt' hand tightly with her good hand, so tightly that she couldn't pick up anything with her hand because of the other's grip. Eventually she begged Btite to take the band-aid off. She seemed to return to normal after that.

We here in Squeaker-ville are excited that spring his here. Have a good week.

Maybe Squeaker Doesn't Like Travel

Friday


Saturday


Squeaker and I are hanging out with her Grammy and Granddad this weekend. The travel bug caught up with her again this trip. She hasn't gotten sick (again) but she has not been herself this trip. We have had glimmers of light, especially when she thought she was going to get to watch the Backyardigans play basketball (No, they didn't get to go to the NIT either).

Well, that is all we have to report this week.

Growing!

The Daddy person got focused on school and basketball and forgot to put up the post again last night. Squeaker continues to be eating like she skipped her last meal. The first picture is a not too small kid sized portion of spaghetti that she ate on Thursday night. Unfortunately she also has the bruises to go with her misplacing those new extra long arms and legs. In the second picture she's helping the Daddy Person make blueberry pancakes, which also disappeared quickly and ended up divided almost equally between the two of us. Well maybe not almost equally, but she kept up pretty well.

Potty training is pretty well over now. Although we did have accidents two days in a row this week, right before dinner time in each case. Both because Squeaker has developed a knack for waiting until the last minute, Characteristically the first of the accidents would have been prevented had she not stopped to pick out a book on the way to the potty. Likewise, the worst wipeout of the week occurred on the way to the bathroom. Lets just say Squeaker misses the padding once afforded her by her diapers...

Have a good week. Also, for the record, those of us here at Squeakerpants.com are very disappointed in the NIT selection committee.