Well, my rugrats are back home and back in routine. Aside from being a little tired and very cuddly, they seemed to have fared very well at Gramma and Grandpa’s house!

But on a totally different note: a little insight into what makes Sugar and Spice tick.

If there is one thing my kids are crazy about… it’s animals. The are avid naturalists, and love nothing more than to draw, read, watch or play out animal behaviors. Now, this mostly comes from Jrock and I (the whole nature / nurture thing takes another layer of meaning here.) We both are nature nuts – he is interested in animal behaviors and groups, as well as zoology. I’m more into ecology and interactions, as well as connecting with nature. He really likes mammals – I really like birds and other small beasties. It’s obvious we have passed these passions onto the girls. Jrock’s family were cattle farmers; whereas my family is the outdoorsy side. My dad’s a biologist and we all grew up hunting, fishing and exploring the great outdoors.

The fascinating thing is how the girls’ have got involved in our family interest but made it their own. spice is very creative and dramatic. So she loves playing out big elaborate stories and animal family scenes with her stuffies or small animal figurines. Spice is quite the little artist, and loves drawing pictures of animals and nature. She’s also very happy going for walks to watch ducks, or putter about in nature and the garden. Currently, she is growing some of her own pea plants in my kitchen.

Spice likes to examine bugs and other twigs and things in her microscope, always careful not to harm them. She also likes to call Grandpa on the phone and ask a specific question about something she’s been pondering… like why bighorn sheep’s horns keep growing.

Sugar, our ball of energy, is quite different. She acts out scenes directed by her sister, but her real passion is reading and learning about animals. She memorizes infinite details about different species, their interactions and habitats. Definitely, she’s the academic amateur zoologist, along with the same kind of detachment of many researchers. It doesn’t trouble her much to swish a bug to look at it.

But forget bugs – Sugar is interested mainly in cute animals (puppies) and large flashy species like zebras. Just like her sister, she loves it when Daddy finds her a video online that shows an animal doing something (hunting, reproducing, whatever,) and enjoys not only understanding but being able to explain her findings to other people. If you want to know how climate change works, just ask Sugar. She’ll ‘splain it!

Anyway, here are some of our girl’s favorite animal / nature toys and resources:

Schleich figurines.. boy they LOVE these, especially when they have a family or group of them.  Favorites are horses, tigers/lions and the new zebra and giraffes they got for Christmas.

The girls are absolutely gaga for Calico critters – all those infinitely tiny parts and the super cute animals! It’s just so right for their age!

Their matching Falkmanis otter puppets (they also have a skunk and an owl)

Some of their favorite reading books:

And their favorite books overall:

 And their favorite tools:

Favorite Netflix movie:

Favorite Netflix TV show (Tales of the Riverbank):

Once Upon a Hamster!

Our poor baby Maggie. She was really sick on the May long weekend and the two months after (posts 1, 2, 3), but we thought we had beat it.

Two days ago she stopped eating her food again and sure enough – her platelets had dropped like crazy. This time we knew which protocols worked and go her on the right drugs etc. immediately – but it’s not seeming to work. Not her red cells are dropping like crazy. Jrock and I took turns at the clinic last night as she received a blood transfusion. But it’s not seeming to catch. Today, she is panting because she isn’t getting enough oxygen. Poor girl – it must feel scary too.

Please send your best wishes and prayers our way…

S and T, Sugar and Spice in the pool. My girls gave the younger twins the bathing suits for their birthday.

I was so lucky – my best friend came to visit me two weeks ago. I was so dispointed that I had to have surgery while she was here, since I only get to see her once or twice a year. But there couldn’t be anyone better to share the misery with!

The night before my surgery I made a yummy dinner (pork chops with cherry sauce and lavender potatoes) but the nights after that we rotaed on who brought takeout home. It was so nice to see her twin little girls, who Jrock and I are proud to be the (hopefully-never-happens) guardians for. They are just darling little kids and my twins had to much fun playing with them and (Spice) caring for them.

S snuggling her daughter T

My back to the camera so you don't see how cr*p I look

Luciana – see where your mats went?

Help from Spice.. the little caregiver.

S and T and their little girls after the pool. Maggie the ham,

Little S just LOVES Maggie!

Oh, and if you were wondering, Jrock and I actually CAN tell them apart. Something abut being th parents of identical twins gives you the super-powerful powers of differentiation!

Thank goodness – that cancer drug that I drove all over town for seems to have worked. Maggie’s platelets are up again – not normal - but out of the critical zone. So I can stop worrying about her getting a bruise (and bledding to death internally.) She should be ok.

Whewf…..

Maggie’s still going to have to pee ever 1/2 hour for the next 6 weeks, but the worst is past. I just have a few more wrinkles to show for it. Oh, and about $1000 in bills. But I guess it just makes you grateful for public human healthcare, right? And she’s going to be ok, so that’s the most important thing.

We’ve just been though hell and back again with Maggie. Her platelets dropped down to 2000 (they’re supposed to be 100,000…) We’re protecting her like crazy. If she gets a bump and bruises ,or gets a scrape, she could bleed to death, since her
clotting is so terrible. If you are a fmily member and are finding out this way – sorry!! I just didn’t have time to blink in the last few days.

Maggie’s SUPPOSED to be on bedrest, which is going over like a lead balloon. That dear dog does NOT like being in a crate.

We have to give her meds 5 times a day – I drove back and forth and back and forth getting some specialized chemo drugs for her today from a clinc 90kms away (the nearest place we could find them) in the hopes that this miracle nasty stuff administered via IV will boost her platelet production.

But the big deal on my selfish side, is that she is incessantly drinking and peeing. I was up 6-7 times with her the first night and there was still a pool on the floor. (Maggie was embarrassed.) Yesterday we trained her to use the cat door, but I still was up all night listening to her tromp around the house, drink, tromp outside, etc. Tonight we’re trying a cat door / crate in the sealed off kitchen technique. I’m completely bagged!!!!! from being up and being worried, and her meds won’t necessarily kick in for another day or few.

Her prognosis is good, but I’m not going to sleep well until she’s out of the rough, let me tell you.

Poor Maggie – she wasn’t eating Sunday and then she starting panting and stretching every few minutes. Her abdomen was obviously in a lot of pain.

I took her into emergency, leaving Huey to put the kids to bed. She’s not really supposed to do that, but no harm done, and she didn’t mind. Anyway, I made the vet give her ever blood test, urine test etc under the sun. When her bloodwork came back he thought the machine was wrong, because her platelets were so low. But it turns out the machine was right, and her clotting was terrible.

Our poor baby has a severely enlarged spleen at the moment. She’s terribly uncomfortable. We started her on meds yesterday after an ultrasound discovered the size of her spleen. But the meds make her drink and pee endlessly. She woke me up to let her out 6 times last night, and there was still a big pool of pee on the floor by the backdoor in the morning.

So I taught her to use the cat door in the screen door today.. a little smoked salmon can teach a dog to do anything. Maggie’s been running in and out of the door to pee every half hour. We’re going to let her go in and out of the door tonight, as well as take her water away just before bed. So hopefully that will minimize my sleeplessness.

But keep her in your thoughts – she’s still very sick and only her appetite has shown signs of recovery. Let’s hope those meds kick in, and in a few more days, she’s feeling better. She’s very fragile right now, since her blood doesn’t clot. We are supposed to be camping next weekend and she was going to be in the kennel. IF she’s not feeling substantively better, we’ll have to figure something else out. Oh well – she’s family, and family is always top priority.

I am so far behind on the blogging… guess you can tell we’ve been visiting with family and out of town. More pictures and stories later, but in the meanwhile – look at these 4 characters in my kitchen tonight!

Maggie Spice Sugar Laughlin

I sure do love December and all the prep leading up to Christmas… but boy o boy, does time seem to fly!
Enjoy some pictures from our jam-packed days the last week or so, as well as some caroling from the girls:

Thank goodness the dogs put up with it! Actually, Maggie and Laughlin seem to enjoy being mauled by the girls. Er, I mean, groomed. Sugar (left) and Spice (right) brush and pick out burrs and decorate them with scarfs and bows. It is a hard life for the dogs… lol

Grandpa blew in on a cold wind this past week. Funny to say that the weather in Vancouver chased him North, but I think that’s exactly what happened!

It was during our cold snap too. -18 degrees, which I know isn’t that terribly cold for much of the country… but in Kelowna, we aren’t set up for it. So we had to break open the space heaters and slippers, just to keep warm.

The girls (and J and I) are always glad to see Grandpa. The next morning he left, but not before he showed the pictures of his cabin and latest hunting expeditions to Spice and Sugar. They really love seeing pictures of deer and elk wandering around the northern country - and since wildlife is half of his pictures, Dad has a rapt audience.

Sugar finds it all interesting; she has the stomache of a vet or a doctor. But Spice says she likes the “animals still alive, not dead ones.” Fair enough.

It seems in winter that we hunker down and spend more time inside.

Even the animals seems to want to spend more time playing with the girls. Laughlin and Maggie had several grooming sessions last week. Pretty amazing to think that this time last yeat the girls were still nervous around Laughlin. And the cats are downstairs visiting more.

The girls also get these more elaborate scenes going with their animals that can last for days until we make them clean them up – Maggie and Haatim decided to join in a picnic (or something) last week. I think they sort of crashed the stuffies party!

Before we became parents, Jrock and I talked about what values and experiences we wanted our children to be exposed to. One of the things that is very important to me is that the girls have chances, every day, to interact with the natural world around them, and value nature. In other words, I want my girls to cultivate their naturalist intelligence.

Of course, we live in the city, and you can’t take your kids alpine hiking every weekend! So we find urban ways to incorporate animals, plants, wind and worms into our daily life.

One important experience is our garden, and the girls have actively been a part of planting, tending, harvesting and preparing our home grown food.

Another way we get our nature fix is by walking to school every day, along the creek near our house. There are ducks, that the girls have seen grow since ducklings, and turtles… and of course, our friends Minny and Mickey the muskrats.

And then we do quite a few nature crafts to cultivate an appreciation for the beauty of nature… such as the leaf mobiles curently hanging above their beds. The girls have creative journals that they often paste things into, or draw in, or collage.

The last way that we approach appreciating nature is by cultivating empathy and compassion, which are some values that Jrock and I have purposefully focused on. From the beginning, we’ve taught the girls to relate to and empathize with the animals in our house, as well as the humans. They take care of the dogs and have learned to read their expressions and body posture as well. And there is no play activity they like better, than to play “animals…” including giving their stuffies (and the real dogs) their shots! as seen in the picture above.

If you are interested in cultivating the natural intelligence in your kids, I highly recommend “Last Child in the Woods” as an amazing books, and a lovely website with a bunch of family nature activities is Outdoor Nature Child.

Naturalist Intelligence is one of the eight multiple intelligences that we all have, more or less of. For example, I like to joke that I’m a kinesthetic idiot, but I’m pretty darn linguistically and spacially adept. You can learn more about Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences here, and even do a little questionnaire to see which multiple intelligences might be your strengths.

It sounds funny, but we were upstairs last night when Spice said “who’s blood is this?” She found some blood on the floor. I searched all the human and animal paws in the house until I found a horribly broken claw on Haatim. It was all twisted off to one side and I was worried he had broken a toe. So off to the vet clinic – anesthetic and a nail removal later, we had him back home. Poor Haatim. I hope it grows back ok.

Sincce we had the trainer come and work with Laughlin, the girls have decided that they sometimes need to “work” with Laughlin or Maggie too.  I personally think its good for them to learn to politely haul the dogs around… and good for the dogs too!

Spice

Sugar

Our dear little Laughlin hasn’t been such a dear lately. In fact, when I left for Ethiopia, he started peeing in the house… and hadn’t really stopped until about a month ago. We got to the point where we had him in diapers every day (a “male wrap”, they call it!) which was a temporary solution, as obviously I wasn’t cool with doing diapers for the next 15 years. Especally when I had avoided doing it with my kids.

So after a whole lot of effort (it wasn’t for lack of trying) and a LOT of frustration, we hired a dog trainer.  She came to house, and we devised a few schemes to stop Laughlin chasing the cat, which was a new thing due to an incident with an old feline scrapper down the block, and for him to finally stop peeing in the house.

Part of the solution is that he’s in this pen when he’s in the kitchen. We’ve gradually made it bigger over the last couple of weeks. The funny thing is that the girls miss messing around with him, so they’ve taken to visiting him in there and playing “dogs” too. Laughlin likes the company. And I’m liking Laughlin a lot more now too, minus the peeing.