"Mankind has a free will; but it is free to milk cows and to build houses, nothing more." - Martin Luther

March 14, 2008

Every day we get a note from Sarah, E's care provider, telling us what he did that day. Normally, its just a list of activities (blocks, dolls, puzzles, craft, outside, books, etc.) with notes on what he ate, what time his nap was, and his ... diaper activities.

For the past couple of days, however, we've been hearing about cows.

Sarah's parents live on a working dairy farm next door to Sarah's house. (I suspect that Sarah and her husband built on land that her parents gave them, actually. Also, Sarah's cousin lives in the basement of their house, so its a real family compound.) For the past couple of days, since the weather has been improving, her notes have started including messages about cows.

"Went for a walk and saw cows."

"Outside. Saw Cows."

Then yesterday - "Went for a walk and saw cows. Evan patted a cow on the head. Cow ate some hay from Evan's hand, but it scared him." (Well, yeah. Cows eating out of my hand kind of scare me, too.)

When reading that last night I was such a bundle of conflict. It is, after all, grEvan and his Flockeat that he gets these kinds of experiences. I mean, how many kids in daycare get livestock experience? On the other hand, I so wish I could have seen him and the cow. I can picture it very clearly, based on his exciting duck adventure at the fair last fall (see photo). She does take photos of him sometimes and send them home ... I'm occasionally tempted to buy her a hand held digital like mine (with video capability) as a gift in the hopes that I might get to see adventures like this, at least a bit ... but then I think: I'd rather have her supervising my son (especially around large, dangerous cows) than taking pictures of him.

One other bit of excitement last night ... E and I played Ring around the Rosy for a long while, which he asked me to do by saying something that sounded a lot like "asses, asses" then grabbing my hand and falling to the floor. At the moment he realized that I had figured out what he was asking, and realized that I was going to play his favorite game with him, he gave himself over into a total toddler-dance spasm of glee. It was so great. We played for ages, and got some stuffed toys involved to make the circle bigger. He's a little quick on the trigger for the falling down part, but is doing great on the song ("asses" aside).

Of course, being a web-geek, I had to fnd that the game has a great Wikipedia page, including a debunking of the idea that the rhyme references the plague, and a passing reference to Eddie Izzard.

Saturday I think our plan revolves totally around getting E into his big boy bed. So, a trip to Marden's to buy a new mattress and then, I think, tools and swearing. Its a good thing the crib converts to a headboard/footboard for a twin bed, otherwise I would be feeling very guilty that we got such a small amount of use out of it.

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