conversations on calves and cowgirls

I have been keeping busy since my mom left on Monday. Painting the siding and trim. Luckily the weather has been gorgeous so I have been able to get most of the front done. Well, so far the ground floor anyway. I am not looking forward to climbing out the windows upstairs and painting while perched on the roof...

It was wonderful having my mother here. And the kids really miss her. The first day Blue was very moody and weepy and the Lion kept saying, "I miss Grandma." I sat down on the kitchen floor with them and held them both on my lap. "I miss her, too."

"You do?" Blue asked.

"I do," I told her. "Grandma is my mommy."

Blue is very interested in how everyone in our family is related. And most of the time I think she gets it. But then every now and then it is back to square one when she asks me a question like: "Is Daddy your daddy?"

She asked me that in the car the other day on the way to preschool. We have some great conversations in the car on the way to preschool. It is a good half-hour drive out into the country and we see lots of horses and sometimes a train and always some gorgeous views of the foothills and the huge Colorado sky. A few weeks ago we saw several foals along with all of the usual horses.

"Look, guys, look!" I pointed. "Baby horses!"

They looked and we all admired the baby horses. "A baby horse is called a foal," I told them.

Which prompted the usual questions and answers: What is a baby cow called? A baby cow is a calf. What is a baby dog called? A baby dog is a puppy. And so on until the Lion asked"What is a baby elk called?"

I had no idea. I never saw an elk before moving to Colorado. Not a lot of elk in Virginia. We had to ask the director of the preschool. FYI a baby elk is called a calf.

Blue only has one more week of preschool before she graduates. I'm sad about that because she has loved her school, with all of the farm animals and pony rides. And because (after the Blue/Blew incident was finally resolved) I really like her teachers. They are great ladies. And their love for the children really shows.

At the end of class, as parents arrive to pick up their children, each child stands up to give the teacher a hug and they answer an Interview Question. Pretending to speak into a microphone, the teacher will ask Blue something along the lines of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" First she wanted to be a doctor and Jonathan and I were all like "Awesome!" but now she has decided she wants to be a cowgirl. Yeah. Not a lot of cowgirls in Virginia, either.