“Bye, Pumpkin. I hope I remember you when you die.” That’s what I overheard from Maya this morning as she was petting the cat before school. We’ve done a few special things for Pumpkin over the past couple of days, and our ever more perceptive four year old has taken notice. We took Pumpkin outside to let her play in the yard. We tried to let her have some chicken from Maya’s sandwich. We gave her a bowl of milk to lap from when she finally stopped eating entirely. So this morning, when Sean told the kids to pet the cat before they left for school, which is not part of their normal routine, Maya put two and two together and drew the obvious conclusion.

Pumpkin

About a month ago, Sean felt like Pumpkin was getting thinner and took her to the vet for some blood work. It turns out that she had only lost a few ounces, and her test results were good, as the vet described, for a twelve year old cat. Initially, we accepted that and moved on. But since then, we’ve noticed a slowly decreasing level of interest in eating, a pattern of hiding herself away and sleeping, an increased definition to the bones of her hips, shoulders and back.

Given our history with cats and intestinal cancer, we asked to have an ultrasound. Because the ultrasound was anomalous, they did an x-ray as well. There was a large, presumably cancerous mass in her chest. At her age and in her condition, there was no treatment plan. She’d dropped a full pound of her weight in the month since we had taken her for blood work, and as anyone who’s met her knows, she’s a pretty tiny cat to begin with. After a couple days of “good bye” time, we took her in this morning to be euthanized.

The Pumpkinator

Pumpkin came to us about 11 years ago. Friends of ours had been taking care of this feisty little stray cat. She had to live in their garage due to a “personality conflict” with their resident cat. When they moved to a house with no air conditioning in the garage, they sent her to come live with us. At that point, I think she was cat number five at our place, and surprising no one, the “personality conflict” continued. She would hunch up into a little orange and black ball and emit growls of astonishing volume, given her small stature. If any cat came near her, she’d swat at them, claws bared, and crank up the intensity of her growl. We jokingly referring to her as Pumpkinator.

Over the years she grew to tolerate the other cats in the house. She was never going to be one to seek them out for company, but she would put up with them curling up with her for warmth. Outside cats were another thing entirely. If neighborhood cats came up on the porch, she’d be right back to growling and hissing, smacking at the windows and posturing.

Maybe if I ignore him, he’ll go away.

She maintained her Pumpkinator status right up to the end. At the vet, when they were trying to place the IV this morning, Pumpkin fought them like a champ. Our four pounds of not-eating, cancer-riddled cat had to be sedated just so they could get her ready to be put to sleep. We were told that she hadn’t taken the ultrasound earlier in the week lying down either. Is it weird that I’m kind of proud?

As much as she hated cats, she loved people. She was a talkative cat, and she regularly greeted visitors with long strings of plaintive meows. To my ear, it was more like she was saying the word “meow” instead of making a cat noise. Any available lap was fair game, but of course, it had to be on her terms. She would arrange herself as she pleased on your lap and allow you to pet her. When she was through being petted (but wanting to remain on your comfortable, warm legs), she bit you. Usually not too hard; just enough to let you know that you were done.

For all her fierceness, she had some odd fears. She was utterly terrified of the car. The racket she made when we had to drive her to or from the vet was incredible. The meows almost became screams. It sounded like we were driving an angry baby instead of a cat. Also, the poor thing hated thunderstorms. At the first crack of thunder, you would see Pumpkin slinker away, creeping low to find cover, a furry little soldier army-crawling across the living room floor to avoid the raindrops.

No cameras!

Pumpkin’s strangest apprehension though was of the camera. All Sean had to do was hold the camera up and she bolted. The actual click of the shutter would inspire full on panic. He has a hundred blurry photos of that cat as she avoided his lens over the years.

While her roar was mighty, Pumpkin was actually an oddly dainty cat. She didn’t care for having dirty paws. We had hoped she’d be a fearsome bug hunter, but nope. If they accidentally crawled near her, she’d back away and shaker her paws off in case any had gotten on her. She used her litter box faultlessly unless suffering one of the urinary tract infections she was prone to. Her property damage bill ranks far lower than any other cat we’ve had, including Hank who hasn’t even been here a year. She was never a great snuggler, preferring instead to curl up in a prim little ball on your lap to be quietly petted.

Any prudish behavior was set aside for poultry though, especially turkey. Pumpkin was crazy for the stuff. She seemed to have an aversion to people food, except for birds and whipped cream. One thanksgiving, we let her have her way with the turkey carcass after we had carved away most of the good stuff. She loved it. I think she might actually have removed someone’s finger had they tried to stop her.

Pumpkin also had a massive shoe fetish, demonstrating a particular fondness for well-worn leather. Barely had we removed our shoes before she was half in them, rubbing her face all over them to make them her own.

We used to leave our doors open and let the cats sleep on the bed with us if they so chose. When we had kids and sleep became a precious commodity, we started closing our door to try to preserve whatever rest we were afforded. Knowing her time was short and wanting to provide her what pleasure we could, we left the door open the night before last to let Pumpkin sleep in the bed if she wanted to. Before I even got there, she was in the bed chirping at me. As I crawled in, she carefully laid her old body down, close enough to be touching, but not really laying on me. She purred, loud and vital, and you could almost believe she wasn’t sick at all. She stayed there with us all night.

Maya frowns on purpose because she thinks it’s hilarious

It was a hard thing taking Pumpkin into the vet this morning. She’s been a vocal and loving presence in our lives her whole time with us. The kids adore her. Despite me repeatedly explaining to Ian that Pumpkin is dead, all gone, and never coming back, he asks when we’re bringing her home again. Maya, at bedtime this evening told me that she was sad about Pumpkin. “But, I want her,” she said. I let her know that we all feel the same way.

“Christmas in July” would have been a great title for this post … if I had managed to write it last month. Couldn’t even get it together to do that. I’m currently operating under the delusion that I’m catching up in time for the fall craziness that happens in our household (Halloween, Maya’s birthday, Thanksgiving, Sean’s birthday, Ian’s birthday, Christmas).

Cookies!

Luckily, I remember it like it was yesterday (no, I don’t). Christmas 2016 included a few bouts of cookie baking and decorating. It’s one of my favorite things to do with the kids in the kitchen. They help me make the dough, cut the cookies, and then, once they’re baked, they help me ice them and top them with sprinkles. We have fun going to the bake shop to augment our supply of cookie toppings (and cutters) periodically. The kids’ faces and fingers take on interesting colors as they sneak tastes of sugar balls, rainbow sprinkles, and sanding sugar.

We tried out a gingerbread house building workshop at the Thinkery this past year. Our family of four built a single house, and it was all we could do to keep the kids from eating all the candy decorations! Lucky for us, structural gingerbread isn’t super delicious, and even if it was, the wise folks at the Thinkery left us scraps to nibble on. We managed to get our dessert-based domicile home in one piece, and I remember it more or less lasting through most of our holiday festivities.

Ian was more interested in eating candy than decorating the house.

We did make it down to see the light show at Mozart’s again. It was later in the year and more crowded than we’ve seen it in the past. We didn’t even manage to make it into the place this time, and just watched from the outside.

We got to host Christmas at our house for Sean’s family. There were stocking to dig into, gifts to open, lots of food to eat. Sean got to make a sherbet-based punch for the kids in a punch bowl that had been handed down to him from his maternal grandmother, Mamaw Sharp. I think that’s the first time we’ve ever gotten to use it. He also made a grownup punch for the rest of us that was as potent as it was drinkable. Happy holidays, indeed!

Lolli and Pop!

We traveled up to see my family after Christmas. Thanks to booking very early and being uncharacteristically lucky, we managed to book a direct flight! Also, no vomit!! Both our families are always generous to a fault, so the kids made out like bandits. They love visiting Grammy and Grandpa’s house anyway. So many toys, so much undivided attention, so much chocolate milk!

Grammy and Grandpa’s house!

One of Maya’s favorite gifts was a little polaroid-type camera. Sean loves photography, so it’s no surprise he wants to nurture Maya’s interest. She had been watching an Amazon show called Tumble Leaf, and in it one of the characters has a film camera. She kept telling us she wanted a “rip it off” camera. Welp, now she has one. The subjects she chooses are always … interesting. Sean shows her how, but she lines up her own shots and snaps her own photos. She has a little photo book that at this point is nearly full of some pretty random, often beautifully framed photos. (Maybe we’ll try and post some of those photos later.)

Ian still loves the fact that we put up a Christmas tree for his birthday.

Yes it’s July of 2017, and I’m writing about something that happened in December of 2016. Mostly I wanted to post a few photos for the sake of having them up here.

Ian, 2 years old

Ian’s birthday, which is on December 18th, got squished in before the Christmas holiday descended full force. We did what has become our normal thing; we ordered some taco fixings from a local restaurant (our go-to for this sort of thing is Torchy’s Tacos) and invited a bunch of people over to help celebrate.

I’m not sure it even occurred to me on that day that I lit four candles for him.

Ian has kind of a thing for Mickey Mouse, especially back at the time of his birthday. It’s amazing, almost overwhelming, the amount of themed birthday things available for purchase when your kid likes Mickey Mouse instead of, say, cephalopods. We made a big chocolate chip cookie cake for something to light and share. Then we made a cupcake tower using a Mickey Mouse stand. The cupcakes even had Mickey Mouse sprinkles (which Ian calls “frinkles”).

This kid!

We had a really nice turn-out considering that Ian’s party happened during the busy holiday season, and we’re thankful for all our friends who came out to help celebrate. Ever since Maya’s birthday celebration in November, Ian had been asking at regular intervals when his “happy birthday” was going to happen. With the party, cakes, and of course gifts, I think he felt like he got his “happy birthday” too.

(Yeah, I’m 6 months behind. Pretend it’s Thanksgiving 2016.) It started out as a good idea earlier in the year: instead of cooking this year, let’s drive to New Orleans and spend a few days over Thanksgiving. And our lives just erupted. Due to staffing issues at work, my job was chewing up a ton of time. The kids kept getting sick and missing school, so we kept taking time off to hang out with them. We never really managed to set aside time to actually plan our simple vacation. Instead we were going to wing it. FYI – we suck at winging it.

Maya age just-turned-4, Ian age not-quite-2, New Orleans 2016

In true Woods vacation fashion, we started our trip early with Maya vomiting the night before we were to leave. We took Ian to school the next morning (the day before Thanksgiving), but due to a communication mix-up, he wasn’t given his lunch so when Sean picked him up at midday, he was understandably cranky. Plus, we had to take time to feed him once we got home. Because we’d been up late the night before, we wound up packing in the morning, so between that and Ian’s lunch, we got on the road late. Because it was Thanksgiving, what should have been a roughly 7.5-8 hour trip took us closer to 11-12 hours. Because the kids slept in the car, they were kinda ready for action when they got to the apartment. It was a long day.

“Scary Ladies”

We stayed in an AirBNB apartment in the Bywater area of New Orleans. It was convenient for the things we thought we might like to do, and with the bedroom layout, it suited our needs well enough with the kids. It really is nice to be able to wake up in the morning and make everyone a relatively stress-free breakfast before we head out for the day. There was some interesting artwork in the house as well, which I liked. On one wall of the living room area was a large adhesive of a woman and a girl, kind of abstract and ghostly. Maya was scared of it. She didn’t want to be around it at all. But the neat thing was that she kept having theories about why the little one was sad. And she decided that the bigger one was her mom. To this day, she continues to talk about “those scary ladies on the wall in New Orleans.” I kind of love it that it made such an impression. We haven’t braved taking the two of them to any art museums or exhibits yet (not counting the sculpture garden), but maybe we should consider it.

Ian, getting into the spirit

On Thanksgiving day, we wandered around a bit in the French Quarter around Jackson Square and along the Mississippi River. The kids were really needing to run their sillies out and we hadn’t found a great way for them to do that. Because it was a holiday, most of the restaurants were closed, so our figure-it-out-as-we-go approach wasn’t really netting good results. We wound up ducking into a fried chicken joint for some chicken strips and honey-buttered biscuits. It was solid, if not particularly adventurous.

We were fortunate to have been invited to our friends’ parents’ Thanksgiving dinner, so after kid naps, we headed across Lake Pontchartrain. Maya was still out of sorts from being sick and the long day of travel, so she was a little unruly (of course, she’s always a little unruly), but in general we all had a really nice time. The food was amazing, and I can’t say enough nice things about the hospitality. We were made to feel welcome, and it really was nice to spend the holiday with friends.

Ian inexplicably dislikes doughnuts

The next day, we decided to take the kids to District Donuts for a good start. We wound up with a chocolate milk doughnut (by far the best), a brownie doughnut, and something pink of Maya’s choosing whose name i do not remember. The only thing we could get Ian to eat was the chocolate chunks from the brownie doughnut. And the table. Maya had a fine time watching the folks in the back make the doughnuts by hand.

Not 100% sure this was meant to be climbed

After that, we were off to the Insectarium. There were lots of touristy activities we could have done with the kids, but we wanted to shake up the zoo-aquarium-children’s museum rut we felt we had fallen into, so we took them to a bug museum instead. It was really neat, and the kids seemed to have a good time. There were many species of bugs in enclosures that were low enough to the ground that both kids could wander up and easily see what was going on. There were plenty of places for them to climb around (whether they should have or not is debatable) and interact with the exhibits. We popped into the cafe and had some treats made with bugs. Maya took a stab at eating a cricket and Ian tested out a mealworm. Despite my open attitude toward food, I tend to balk at eating bugs. I did eat both the cricket pumpkin pie and the mealworm cornbread, thank you very much. Gotta set a good example for the kids, you know.

Celebration in the Oaks was a big hit

That night, we went to the Celebration in the Oaks. The already incredible New Orleans City Park is rendered ethereal by a thorough coating of holiday lights and decorations. We rode a train around the park, which Maya loved and Ian hated. We snacked on kettle corn, learned about Cajun Santa, saw the most amazing miniature train set-up, and played in Storyland. We even scored photos with Santa! It was probably my favorite thing we did while on this vacation.

The next day, we really did need to give the kids time to just run and play, so we kept it low key. We had beignets at Morning Call (because you kind of have to have beignets somewhere). After that, we just wandered over to the first playground we saw in City Park and let the kids play. They climbed on a giant oak tree and swung and slid until they both looked like they might like a nap.

We had lunch at Cochon Butcher that day. It was easily the best meal of our trip. The kids were again a little finicky about their food, but Sean and I dined on all manner of things I can no longer remember and had a wonderful time doing so.

Maya loved the street car

After a rest at the house and a dinner not really worth mentioning, we took Maya for a ride on the street cars. I don’t know what it is about mass transit, but she loves it. Busses, trains, airplanes – she’s always ready to go. Maya had been watching those street cars during our entire visit, and she loved the ride. Ian, surprise surprise, hated it.

The next day was our very long 12 hour journey home. Like many of our vacations with the kids, this one was hard, maybe one of the harder ones we’ve taken. Apparently we are nostalgic folks though, because looking back on the photos now, we seem to only focus on the fun we managed to have.

Maya started Montessori school this past summer. She’s in a class with kids ranging in age from 3 to 6 years old. I don’t really know how early children form friendships, but Maya has been indifferent to interacting with other children. She loves grown-ups and is excited when we have people over for dinner or whatever. But kids her own age, as far as we can tell, have been of little interest to her. Given this, we weren’t sure whether to try to have a kid-focused birthday party this year or default to our buy food and beer, bake a cake, and invite our friends to the house approach. We finally decided we’d try it out. If nothing else, it would give her a chance to interact with kids outside of school.

Birthday girl!

Lolli and Pop came over to Texas, and we had a little family dinner on the actual day of Maya’s birthday. Anna, Lolli and Pop, and all of us held down a big table at Louisiana Longhorn and let Maya have all the fried seafood she felt like eating (which was apparently very little, since she was so enamored with the fried pickles). She and Ian even left with a few strings of beads, much to their delight.

The next day, we had Maya’s actual party at Jump USA and invited her classmates and some of her friends to join us. It worked out well. Maya and the other kids got to run and jump and expend their energy. Then we all hung out in a little set-aside area and opened gifts and ate cake.

Party at Jump

Maya had two cakes this year. The first, per her specifications, was chocolate, icing-free, and had an octopus on it. The second, which we took to her party, was a yellow cake that I coated in blue icing. We bought some pre-made sugar decorations so that Maya could help me pretty up the cake, which she enjoyed. There were some Finding Dory candles on there as well because of course Maya loves Hank the octopus.

Decorating her party cake

Speaking of our favorite cephalopod … I asked Maya what she wanted for dinner after her party and she immediately shouted “Octopus!” She’s eaten it really well in the past, so we figured we’d go for it. It would be fun to share some with Lolli and Pop too. The ones we’ve cooked in the past have all been small, less than a pound a piece. Sean bought a relative giant this time: one octopus who weighed about three pounds, even without innards or a couple of his tentacles. I prepped it the way I have in the past and it turns out, I think I like the larger ones even better. If cooked properly, octopus is firm, but not rubbery. There was more meaty flavor to enjoy with the larger tentacles. Sadly, Maya has turned a corner on culinary octopus love. She didn’t have more than a bite or two before she gave up on it.

The only rough spot was that Maya had been battling yet another illness for a few days leading up to her birthday. She wasn’t really sick enough to stay home, but wasn’t quite well either. I think her party kind of pushed her over the edge. She was hacking a blue streak by the end of the night and was clearly run-down.

Ian, for his part, enjoyed Maya’s birthday very much. He had so much fun that for the next month, we regularly fielded questions about when he would have his own “happy birthday.”

Maya – age 4, Hank – age ~12 weeks

Our house has suffered heavy feline losses this past year. We thought it might be time for Maya to have a pet of her own. We discussed a fish tank given her love of sea creatures, but figured she’d lose interest since they don’t interact. Ditto for hermit crabs. We considered gerbils but had read that Maya’s age group isn’t as gentle as they’d need to be with something that small. Guinea pigs would be better, but they really need to be bought in pairs, and they’d need to be in a large cage that would require daily cleaning. It all got to sound like too much of an ordeal. Ultimately, since we’re already set up for them, we decided a cat would be the way to go. It just so happened that someone had brought several abandoned kittens into our vet’s office. Sean found one that was particularly affectionate and after a bit of discussion, that’s who came home with us. Maya named her new kitty Hank, and the two of them are most definitely friends.

Hank is a putty-colored short-haired cat who has a giant purr and a very sweet disposition. He’s a little skittish if you come up on him in a hallway, but if you’re safely sitting down, he won’t hesitate to make himself comfortable in your lap. The kids both love how silly and playful he is. Maya erupts in peals of perfect giggles whenever Hank attacks our feet, her toys, or his own tail. The only one who’s met Hank and not fallen in love is Pumpkin. She was content to be the only feline member of our household and would frankly rather be snoozing than dealing with a kitten.

Since her birthday, Maya has found all sorts of things that her four-year-old self can do now. “I can reach this now, because I’m four.” It has mostly worked in our favor, but she of course still decides when her age is relevant and when it’s not.

Maya and Lolli

She’s a very tall girl, and true to her genetics, she’s thinning out as she lengthens. She wears size 5 and 6 clothes. Thinking I was clever, I bought some sale size 5 things for her last fall to save for our lengthy spring-summer-fall warm spell this year, but she’s stretching out at such a rapid clip, they may not even fit her when spring rolls around.

Maya’s current interests run the gamut from art projects, to collecting leaves, sticks, snail shells, and acorns in the front yard. We are also collecting bottle caps to turn into a fish craft later on. She likes Finding Dory and Shopkins and Paw Patrol. She watches Creative Galaxy, Tumble Leaf, and Stinky and Dirty on Amazon. She’s been learning how to use a scissors and also helps me out in the kitchen by cutting things with a butter knife. I have made her some sight-word cards because she knows all her letters and their sounds and expresses interest in learning to read. It ruins me a little the speed at which she is growing and maturing. I can feel myself shutting down when people make jokes about how soon she’ll be driving or going off to college. For now I’m content to revel in silly poop jokes and the fact that she thinks of a snail shell as “treasure.”

How many people with a three year old kid can say that their kid has already wanted to be an octopus twice for Halloween? Because we can. Maya was Hank, the octopus from “Finding Dory” this year. She had the costume picked out early on. We toyed with the notion of having all four of us dress up to coordinate with Maya, but we couldn’t quite pull it together. Instead, Ian was Mickey Mouse.

Maya as Hank, Halloween 2016

Unfortunately, a couple weeks before Halloween, Ian came down with some kind of miserable coughing, stuffy-headed, fever-inducing crud that kept him out of school for three days. Maya followed behind him that very next weekend, going one further and developing an ear infection on top of it.

Ian as Mickey Mouse, Halloween 2016

This is the first year she was going to go trick or treating. The past couple years, we’ve taken the kid or kids to the local block party instead. Last year, we tried to talk her into it, but she told us she wasn’t going to actually say “trick or treat,” so we decided against it. She was very excited about it this year. She and Ian had been practicing their delivery and had their cool candy buckets all ready to go.

But Maya was sick. Ian was over the worst of his illness, but he was still coughing a bit and was clearly a bit run down. We vacillated on whether or not to stay home, but in the end, we decided to let the kids try out a few houses and see how it went. We were careful to keep our germs to ourselves and kept our outing fairly short. The kids seemed to really love it, and our neighbors had gotten into the spirit of things, decorating yards and houses and wearing costumes themselves. Maya not too subtly suggested that we should decorate our house too next year.

Jack-o’-lanterns

We did carve pumpkins. Sean ran out and got a big pumpkin for each kid. During our date night, Anna helped the kids choose a design and draw it on their pumpkins. Then I gutted and carved them as time permitted during the week. Maya chose, you guessed it, an octopus. Ian has been pretty smitten with jack-o-lanterns, and so he and Anna went the more traditional route on his. I don’t know if it was the quality of our pumpkins or the warm, moist air, but those pumpkins rotted very quickly this year. I bet we didn’t have them out three or four days before they had to be thrown out.

The Friday before Halloween, the kids attended the carnival at their school. This was before Maya got sick, or we wouldn’t have gone. This basically means that Ian walked around with us and nibbled on candy. Maya alternated between the bouncy house and the big blow up slide the school had set up in their parking lot. We tried to take Ian into a slightly more sedate little blow up maze type thing. He crawled about two feet inside, sat down and played with plastic balls until I pulled him back out.

Pumpkin Patch – early October – 90 degrees

I’m really glad we eked out a bit of Halloween fun in all this. That illness was a soul-crusher. The kids could hardly sleep for coughing so horribly. Maya was actually to the point where her breathing was labored. Both of them wound up hitting the albuterol again. Sean and I, of course, both got sick too, but it was definitely less pronounced with us. We didn’t have any fever, and it didn’t seem to last quite so long. From Halloween on, our year is full of birthdays and holidays. All of us being well during that entire time simply isn’t very likely. We do our best to celebrate regardless.

Our plan had been to take the kids to visit their grandparents over the week of fourth of July. After some serious sticker shock over the price of flights, we scooted our trip to the week of Labor Day and did this crazy deal where we flew into Memphis, drove down to Birmingham, drove from Birmingham to Friedheim, drove from Friedheim to Memphis, and finally flew back home. All in the name of saving money on our four plane tickets.

Ian is slowly making his peace with air travel

In many ways, our travel luck on this trip was terrible. It took something like two hours for us to get our rental car in Memphis that first evening, which pushed our arrival in Homewood / Birmingham into very late territory. On our way home on the last day, they simply cancelled the Houston to Austin leg of our flight, and we wound up renting a car and driving home. This wouldn’t have been too bad except it took them FOREVER to get our bags off the first leg of our flight and into our hands. We could have gone on and they’d have sent our bags to us, but we had to have them because Maya’s car seat was checked. We got home very late, and then on top of that, Sean dropped me and the kids off so I could get them to bed, while he went and returned the rental and picked our car up from the airport.

On the other hand, Ian seems to now be capable enough of entertaining himself that he didn’t scream for the entire flight. It was amazing. The amount of relief I felt cannot be adequately described. Here’s hoping it’s not just a fluke! Even the sometimes long car drives were handled with relatively little distress.

We got to do many fun things with the grandparents. In Alabama, we again got to go to the very fun pool in Homewood. Maya and Ian showed off some of the jumping-in skills they were learning in their swim lessons, and everyone had a very good time playing in the water.

Pop on a bed of nails

The kids also got to visit the McWane Science Center again, which kept both of them busy and entertained for a period of time.

What was nice about the McWane Center visit in particular is that Sean and I did our best to melt away and let Lolli and Pop hang out with the kids. With Ian, if I’m too close, he’s probably going to stick with me, and during the Alabama leg of our visit, he was still getting over a bit of a cold and wasn’t feeling very sociable.

More McWane center fun

The kids both loved all the cats at Lolli and Pop’s house. Ian, hugger of all things furry, was especially enamored with Baa-baa, who would put up with Ian laying on him and giving him a full-body hug without complaint. We even caught him several times sitting comfortably in Baa-baa’s pretty pink cat-bed.

Ian loves Baa-baa. Baa-baa tolerates Ian.

Maya, like her cousin AP before her, has developed a complete infatuation with Pop. It feels like we hardly saw her while we were in Alabama because all she wanted to do was hang out with him. He taught her how to play hide and seek, which she has been playing with us at the house ever since. He played with her endlessly, whenever she wanted. It was very sweet.

Grandpa teaching Ian about money and credit

The two things Maya had latched onto about her past visits to her grandparents’ house in Missouri was their really spectacular room full of toys and their equally fun pond full of fish and turtles that Maya got to feed. Unfortunately, their pond had “turned over” earlier in the year and everything in it died. When we got there, the pond had dwindled to “large puddle” status and was devoid of most living things. Maya and I still walked down there and watched the dragonflies skim along the water though.

Discovery Play House

The kids’ fun outing in Missouri was to visit the Discovery Play House. There were so many things for both the kids to do there. Other than Ian falling and knocking the bejesus out of his poor forehead, it was a very fun visit.

Aunt Rachel, Maya, Grammy, and Nathan

We had a day where all the cousins were at Grammy and Grandpa’s house too, and that was a lot of fun. Maya and Ian joined Henry and Rosie and Lily and Nathan in making spin art paintings. Paper spins quickly in circles and the artist drips paint (or in Maya’s case, squirts a giant glob of paint) onto it, and the spinning motion flings the paint outward. The kids all seemed to really enjoy it, and they made some really neat paintings.

Toucan twins – Maya and Rosie

As many of our trips have been, this one was hard, but good. The kids really seemed to connect with their grandparents more quickly this time around and spent a lot more time playing with them. It was fun to see Maya beckon Sean’s dad with an extended “Po-o-o-o-o-p!” from whatever distant room she happened to be in. It was cute to watch Ian climb around on Grandpa and grin when he played with his beard. It was adorable to hear Ian talk about his “Wahwee” (Lolli) and to see Maya monopolize Grammy’s time to color stencil after stencil after stencil.

Believe it or not, it isn’t all about cats dying at our house. I haven’t written about the kids in a while, and here’s why: they’ve both started preschool now. We are now without our Anna. Her last day with us was July 1st, and the kids started their new school on July 5th.

Super-nanny Anna!

It was a bit of a rough ride at first. We had actually tried to start Maya at a more traditional preschool back in June. I won’t use the word “disaster” but it didn’t go well. The potty training in particular took a huge step back. I think they just weren’t in a position to offer her the kind of attention she needed. The other thing that bothered us is that we couldn’t figure out if Maya was really eating lunch. They served food family style and we’d get reports from Maya like, “the other kids got all the food first” and “I didn’t like anything.” It already felt so strange having her away all day, not knowing how she spent her time and who she saw and what she learned. Then to pick her up every day to find her pants wet and to wonder whether she had eaten was just too much.

That’s our girl!

The kids now go to a montessori school. We discussed Maya’s transition at length with them before we agreed to attend. What I was impressed with was their kindness. They seem to have a good learning environment and a lot of structure, but they temper it with what seemed like a clear concern for their students. I can’t say it hasn’t been without a few bumps in the road, but Maya is doing very well now. She adores her teacher and the potty training is actually going exceedingly well. Plus, I have to pack the kids’ lunches, so I at least have some feedback on how they’re eating.

Seriously, this guy!

Ian is Ian and of course has settled right in. These days, I come in to pick the kids up and several of the teachers (including the school director) tell me how much Ian loves them. I don’t bother telling them that he loves everyone. When they first started going to the new school, he’d cry every time a teacher came to take him. He’s still a bit clingy from time to time, but now, Sean barely sets him down before he’s trucking it back to his classroom.

Maya, not quite four and Ian, not quite two

Before school started, we bit the bullet and got Ian his first haircut. It made me a little sad to cut off his curls, but his hair was so long in front it was causing him trouble. By now it’s so long, we really need to get it cut again.

Ian’s first haircut

Maya as well had been telling me she wanted her hair to be short. Initially she wanted it to be short enough that she’d be able to see the skin on her head. Sean and I discussed letting her do it, just so she could see, but we were worried about her getting sunburned. Instead we settled on a sensible bob, and she loved it. That haircut suits our ability to get her out the door in the morning (no need to install a ponytail) and it suits her inability to keep said ponytail in for more than a few minutes.

Maya had her first piano recital over the summer as well. Her music school makes a point of having them perform early and regularly so that it simply becomes part of what they do and hopefully takes away some of the associated anxiety. She did fine of course, even adding her own little hop at the end before the final bow.

Maya posing on the ball at Target after a successful recital

With the start of preschool, the kids wound up getting sick A LOT. I thought we had done a pretty good job of getting them out around other people and exposing them to a good barrage of microbial life. I guess nothing really compares to the disease stew that is a group of toddlers and preschoolers. We were lamenting how our summer had evaporated without us really noticing. I think it’s because we spent the better part of a month and a half fending off one kind of illness or another.

I’d love to say we’re past all that now, but as they say, winter is coming. I expect a fresh round of awful is heading our way. I keep reminding myself that we’re building good, sturdy immune systems in those kids. Here’s hoping.

Maya posing with Hank from “Finding Dory”

Earlier in the summer, Maya got to enjoy her first trip to the movies. We took her to see Finding Dory. We were sort of on the fence about whether she could sit through it (spoiler: she couldn’t), but then we noticed that one of the characters was an octopus, and we all know how Maya feels about those. Then we found out that the Alamo Drafthouse was doing a little carnival. It was on. We actually took an afternoon off work so we could take her while Anna watched Ian. Maya had a great deal of fun at the carnival, and did an acceptable job of sitting in the theater. We made many trips to the bathroom, almost certainly because she was bored, and she told me repeatedly that the movie was too long.

Ian and Mom in the pool at swim lessons

The kids are both enjoying their swim lessons. Maya, while obstinate, is doing a good job of propelling herself through the water. Ian, despite also being capable of propelling himself through the water and even controlling his breath, now steadfastly refuses to do so. He will jump in the water all day long, but if you hold him in the water and ask him to cover three feet between the swim instructor and you, he will no longer do so. There’s not much for it but to keep trying. He’s very comfortable in the water; he just hates forced swimming.

At any rate, what we have to share right now are their school photos for this year. Maya has an interesting way of smiling when she’s doing it intentionally that looks more like a grimace. But we’ve had her take selfies before too, and she’ll work her grin around till it’s just the sort of grimace she wants. It’s not like she’s unaware of it. My original plan had been to fill in some of the things described above with photos; I suppose there’s an outside chance we’ll come back and do that in the not-to-distant future.

I am now the last Missourian left at our house. The week before last, we lost Velvet, the only remaining member of the trio of kitties that moved from Missouri to Texas with us after we graduated college. Since she was a stray, we don’t really know exactly how old she was, but we’re guessing in the neighborhood of 19.

Velvet

Sean rescued her in 1999, while I was actually already in Texas, having graduated and become gainfully employed. He lived in a basement apartment and the people in the upstairs apartment appeared to have moved and left her there. He didn’t think too much of it until it got cold; then he started to worry. I received all this information during our nightly phone calls. My memory is inexact at the best of times and downright terrible after 17 years, several jobs, and two kids, so treat this as a dramatization. The timeframe, though, is accurate.
Night 1: Hey, I think the people upstairs may have left one of their cats. She’s really sweet.
Night 2: It’s supposed to snow tonight. I’m worried about that cat.
Night 3: So, I took our new cat to the vet today for shots. She’s really mean to the other cats. We need to come up with a name for her.

Food, glorious food

When Sean took Velvet in, she weighed about 6 pounds and was a full-grown cat. They estimated her age at 1-3 years. As I heard it, she’d hunker down in one spot in the apartment and hiss and growl if any other cat got near her. And wow did she eat. She ate like there might never be food in front of her again. In other words, she ate like she had been abandoned. Neither of us were used to cats that didn’t regulate their diets fairly well, so she achieved a fair “bowling ball with legs” body shape before the vet kindly pointed out that we may switch her to lower calorie cat food. It changed nothing. There was even a point many years back when Velvet had a dental issue and had to have all but her tiny grooming teeth removed. Even then she didn’t lose weight. At her peak, she weighed 16 pounds. When she died, there was less than four pounds of her left.

We often called her Velvet Elvis, or Velvis for short, because her lip would get stuck on her gum and it would kind of look like she had the Elvis snarl going on. It also didn’t hurt that her physique would have looked at home in a sequined jumpsuit with some rhinestone sunglasses shading her eyes. Maya even regularly referred to her as Velvis, though she certainly didn’t understand the reference (we’ll work on that).

Velvet in the snow, probably unwillingly

Another facet of Velvet’s abandonment manifested in her unwillingness to be outdoors. We’d take the three cats outside to let them roam a bit. Applet and Verbo would happily sniff and poke around (or run up a tree). Not Velvet. She would immediately run back to the door and wait there till someone would let her in. We figure she thought the other cats were insane. C’mon guys, what if they don’t ever let you back in??!!

She was the sweetest lap kitty that ever lived. That’s all Velvet really wanted: to sit in your lap and be petted. We used to call her Hooks after the cop from the Police Academy movies who had the quiet little voice. She’d sit at your feet and whisper meow at you till you sat down and then she’d happily hop up and and settle into your lap. As rotund as she was, she made a great monorail cat, tucking her feet up beneath her girth, but her preferred way of sitting was more interesting. What she liked to do was have her butt in your lap and her face toward yours. Then she’d stre-e-e-e-etch out her front legs as far as they’d extend so that she looked like a giant furry raindrop. She sometimes would even knead your face a little with those extended paws.

Velvet snuggled up with my pregnant (with Maya) belly

Velvet also really loved string. She would wake from a dead sleep half-way across the house if she heard the whisper of string unspooling. I’ve never (and I mean never) seen that cat move fast except when she had string to chase.

Travel was a little difficult with Velvet. She was terrified of the car. The poor thing would pant when she was scared. In the car, she would pant to the point that she’d have giant shoestrings of drool dangling from either side of her mouth to the floor. Needless to say, after a point, we tried to let her stay home more often than not.

Velvet loved it when we had a baby; she could lay on all the baby stuff!

At the beginning of this year, Velvet began to have a lot of what I’ll delicately refer to as litter box trouble. We had been dealing with her kidney insufficiency for a number of years by then and had just been told she was likely to have intestinal lymphoma as well. Since she was on her last legs at this point, we decided that we’d put her in a cage and let her live out her days there. Sean found the giant-est dog enclosure he could at the pet store. It was large enough to have a litter box, a bed, and water with decent separation between them. After the first couple days, she decided she loved it, even getting a little pissed at us if we didn’t put her back in her cage quickly enough after meal times.

But cats are astonishingly resilient creatures. She puttered on like that for months and months. She spent nearly all of her time curled up in her bed sleeping. But she’d wake up for petting. She’d wander out of her cage to eat her meals. She’d even get pretty vocal if she thought we weren’t conforming to her preferred timeline for dinner.

Velvet curled up on the turtle Lolli had crocheted for Maya

She put up with Ian’s abuse like a champ, seeming to welcome it even. When she was caged, he’d stick his pudgy little arm through the bars and she’d rub her face on him, Ian giggling all the while. He still stands up on the couch looking over the back of it and pointing to where the cage used to be while yelling, “Belbet! Belbet!” And I sadly explain to him every time that Velvet died. She’s all gone. We don’t have her any more.

At the end, Velvet was carrying around a pretty heavy burden of diagnoses: hyperthyroidism, kidney insufficiency, intestinal lymphoma, and pancreatitis. Sean had taken her in for some fluids (for her kidneys) and an injection of Procrit (to help with her anemia) and was told that she was severely dehydrated. A day later, she wouldn’t move to eat or drink or use the litter box. We had her euthanized that same day. We’ve struggled since the beginning of the year with the question: was this the right time to put her down or was there still some quality to her life? The vet had advised us back then that if she stopped seeming like herself, it was probably time. That day it was obvious. Velvet had left the building.

Verbo died this past week. She was over eighteen years old, a good long lifespan for a cat. It still felt too soon.

Pretty Verbo

She was one of the three Missouri kitties that had moved with us to Texas in 1999. Applet died in 2012, and with him and Verbo gone, Velvet is the last Missouri cat standing at our house, and even she’s on her way out.

We adopted Verbo from a shelter in Rolla in 1998, largely because Applet, our first cat, seemed lonely when we were away at our college classes. We went to the shelter and were amazed to find a cage full of bouncing, long-haired kittens. Nearly all the little cats came running up to us, meowing their most forthcoming meows. One little gray and tan kitty scuttled to the back of the cage, trying her best to be invisible. We worried no one would pick the one who ran away from attention, so we took her home with us.

Little ball of fluff

Applet hated her. For three days, he postured and hissed. Finally one day we came in to find him giving her a bath, and from then on, he was known as “mommy Applet,” and she was in the club. Even early on, she was a destructive force. Little ball of fluff that she was, there was no place that she couldn’t wedge herself into, no height she couldn’t achieve, no scrap of food she wasn’t willing to scavenge for. We found her atop 6-foot tall shelves, rooting around in the trash, demolishing rolls of toilet paper, chewing up strings, tags, photos, and books. Her cumulative property damage bill would be substantial.

Verbo and Applet

In Verbo’s mind, she was a cheetah. Not long after we had gotten her, we took the cats outside to play in the yard. Applet was always a stop-and-sniff-everything cat, so we weren’t too worried. Verbo, we came to find out, was a runner. We had barely set the cat down before she covered 30 yards, bounced sideways a bit, and then looked at us to see if we were going to chase her.

Sean loves to tell the story of how Verbo had gotten out of the house he lived in toward the end of his college career (the 808 house in Rolla was a renowned residence of the college DJ set, and has since been torn down). She waited on the sidewalk till Sean walked out and then sprinted around to the back of the house. He was barefoot, so he had to go back in to put shoes on. When he came back out, she was waiting for him on the sidewalk again, as serene as a spring breeze. As he moved toward her, she again bolted around the house. Sean thought he had her then since she was heading for a dead end. She waited till he got to her and then tore past him to get back to the front of the house, where she proceeded to run straight up a tree, seeming to maintain speed even as she went from horizontal to vertical. The shoes Sean had chosen were flip-flops, so he went inside yet again to change into real shoes so he could climb up and get her. When he returned, she had come down the tree and was yet again waiting for him on the sidewalk, clearly enjoying their game of chase. Sean, by this point, was through playing and lured her in with a can of wet cat food.

This cat could relax like no other

We were poor in college and couldn’t do anything so regal as board the cats, so we drug them home to visit our parents in Missouri and Alabama. Applet and Verbo were great road-tripping cats. Applet would often lay across Sean’s shoulders or sleep in my lap, and Verbo would sprawl out in a console or row of cup-holders. Once Velvet came along, traveling with the cats became harder. She would pant in fear till long shoestrings of drool would dangle out either side of her mouth.

Their lives in Texas were pretty ordinary, but Verbo, being the curious cat she was, still managed to get herself into trouble from time to time. For example, there was the time she got sealed into the wall. Thanks to some questionable new home construction practices, leaky plumbing destroyed some of the drywall in our first house. A hole had to be cut into the wall to allow for things to dry out, and apparently while the workers were away, Verbo nosed her way into that hole. When the workers returned, we’re assuming she panicked and ran further in. Not noticing the cat, the workers sealed up the drywall and went home for the day. Later that evening, we were searching high and low for the cat and were starting to worry that someone might have let her outside when we heard a quiet meow coming from the ceiling. Sean sawed out an opening and gently pulled Verbo out. While she beat a hasty path to her litter box, Sean left a very colorful message on the construction supervisor’s voicemail.

Verbo was a fairly vocal cat

Questionable construction aside, things were pretty great for those cats till we had kids. Once Maya and Ian came to town, they became second-class citizens in our house. Velvet and Pumpkin (our only Texas kitty) have learned to tolerate and even love the small and unintentionally rough hands that pat and rub them. Verbo, on the other hand, was always an avoider, and it was tough because she was easily Maya’s favorite. In the past few months, Maya had taken to trying to pick Verbo up and move her around and hug her. The cat was not impressed.

Sean wanted photos of Verbo going after sunflowers. It took zero coaxing on our part.

Verbo was the great food thief in our house. Everyone knew they couldn’t leave anything out, even for a minute. She has tried to steal frozen fish from a baking pan, she’s chewed through countless plastic bags to get to food, and she has made it to every conceivable surface in our kitchen in search of some tasty morsel. And she wasn’t just a great food thief, she was an amazing eater. Especially when she was younger, there was very little she wouldn’t happily consume. Sean was once sitting in a chair eating a doughnut, and Verbo was right there in his lap, biting into the doughnut from the other side, yanking for all she was worth. All meats were in her repertoire, of course, but also odd things like tomatoes, broccoli, and even jalapeños. The absolute strangest though were corn husks. If we brought fresh corn home, she’d be dancing at our feet fairly frothing in excitement. I’d shuck it straight into the trash can, and there she’d be, ready to get it back out and chew it up. She had a real fondness for greenery.

Verbo’s death caught us entirely off guard. She had been rock solid forever. We were pretty sure that she would outlive us. Velvet has been struggling with kidney insufficiency and intestinal lymphoma (among other things), and so most of our non-child-consumed energy had been focused on her. Cats are great masters at hiding their infirmities, and Verbo was probably more masterful than most.

Probably begging for food

To us, it seemed like Verbo’s illness came out of nowhere. A week before she died, she was still jumping up on furniture and stealing food from the kids’ plates. A day before, she was still dancing around under the table begging Sean for table scraps and nearly removing his finger when he offered her a few small cubes of steak. And then we noticed her stumble. Verbo, as a rule, did not stumble. She was the embodiment of feline grace and agility. We thought she had been losing weight, but picking her up, we were alarmed at just how light she had become, how all her lithe and wiry muscle seemed to have melted away. Sean took her to the emergency vet where she was found to be intensely anemic. She was given a blood transfusion over night. We knew it was over when we got her back home the next morning and watched her for a bit. We should have seen immediate improvement after the procedure, and instead, she was so much worse. After some examination from the vet, it was determined the likely culprit was intestinal disease of some kind. She was euthanized that same morning, but in the state she was in, she wouldn’t have gone on much longer.

Maya has taken it pretty well, thankfully. It’s hard to explain death to a three year old, and while we kept it simple, I’m certain she doesn’t quite understand. She tells us she’s sad and that she misses Verbo and asks often to see photos of her. Sean and I are still working through it. We still put things with tags or strings up high so she won’t chew them, we still keep a watchful eye on our food so she won’t steal it, and our eyes still fill with tears when we don’t see her tucked away somewhere, calmly watching us from a distance. She was the cat-est cat we’ve ever had, and we will miss her.