Memories

You mean to say you have never heard of April 8th Day? Don’t worry, very few people have. Once upon a time, my dad decided we needed more celebration days. I think we had just read All of a Kind Family, about a Jewish family in New York City. They had a number of celebration days, and Dad thought we needed some. Therefore, he declared April 8th to be a family holiday! I’m not sure if we ever really celebrated, but it was a fun family joke.

On a different topic, I’ve been pondering for a long time how to refer to my boys on this blog. I don’t want to use their first names, to give them just a little more privacy, but for family and friend’s sake, I want some way to identify them. In the last several posts, I’ve said “Boy #1” or whatever, but it occured to me sometime since I last posted that I could say “Mr. Handy Man” or “Mr. Inventor”. Which would you like better? Please comment with your opinion.

And now I need to take care of a crying baby girl. Whenever I have time, I plan to post about our trip to Timaru over the weekend, and a walk up a river looking for fossils today. Sometime!

We had a good laugh at the dinner table tonight. We were discussing the fact that Esther’s boss just got another donkey yesterday, hoping to have a baby donkey eventually. That led to a discussion about how long various animals are pregnant, and when I mentioned that horses are pregnant for about a year, someone wondered how long elephants carry their babies. I said about two years, and then Esther asked about whales—five years, maybe? And what about mice? a month? Well, of course we had to check it out, so I suggested that someone get the encyclopedia to figure it out. We suggested looking under Gestation, so one of the boys ran to the other end of the house to fetch the G volume. It said, “See Pregnancy.” So, he ran to the other end of the house again to get the P encylopedia. It said, for animal gestation periods, “See Animals.” Bother! He ran to the other end of the house for a third time, to get the A encyclopedia! Finally, we had the information we needed. Did you know that a mouse produces babies after only 21-24 days? Elephants, on the other hand, take 20-22 months. We found this investigation very interesting.

I was reminded, when we had to keep getting a different volume of the encyclopedia, of a story my Dad once told. He would occasionally get in the mood to make up a story, and we would periodically get another installment of “The Great White Hunter.” I don’t remember much of these stories; the Great White Hunter would go around the world having adventures. The one story I do remember involved something about shooting a Snow Leopard out of season in Africa. This was a crime, and the Great White Hunter found himself clapped into jail. Now, an African jail is not a place you want to be. It’s terribly boring. The poor man was only allowed to order in one book a year! He wanted to figure out some way to get himself freed, so he decided he had to find out, first, if he really had shot a Snow Leopard, or if it was some other creature. So, the first year, he ordered the S encyclopedia, so he could look up Snow Leopard. Imagine his feelings when he got it and it said, “See Leopard, Snow.” And he had to wait an entire year before he could order the L encyclopedia! That’s all I remember of the Great White Hunter stories. What a fun memory of Dad, though!

And by the way, a whale’s gestation period is 12-17 months—but we still don’t know about Blue Whales, which was the particular species in question!

Once upon a time, somewhere around 13 years ago, a certain little 2-year-old watched her mommy fix a book. After the book was fixed, her mommy went into another room to do some other job. The little girl saw where the glue bottle was put, and she decided that her mommy’s Bible needed fixing. So, she got the glue bottle, and she very carefully squirted glue between many of the pages of the Bible, until the bottle was nearly empty. After awhile, her mommy realized how quiet the little girl was and came to investigate. She was not happy at what she found! She quickly grabbed a roll of toilet paper and started wiping glue out of the Bible. She was able to get most of the pages wiped clean, but some had already stuck together too much and there were holes in them when she was done. She still uses the Bible today, but she will always remember the day she fixed a book while her little girl was watching.

Now the little girl is a big girl, and has a little brother. The big girl likes to drink tea with milk. She doesn’t always finish her cup of tea, and she leaves it sit till later. Her little brother loves to visit big sister’s room while big sister is not in it, and yesterday, little brother decided big sister’s Bible would look good with tea dumped over it! Big sister got to spend half an hour separating pages of her Bible and trying to dry them. Now, she will always remember the day her little brother found her tea and tried to help her (with what we aren’t sure!).

This is the little girl-turned-big girl, drying the pages of her Bible. And by the way, I did have her pre-read this post before I put it up, and she said it was fine to share.