FORTY-EIGHT

Family Photo outtake

2014 week forty-eight

Happy Thanksgiving week!

She is saying "Leaf!"

 Sadly, I did not get a photo of the girl cousins wearing matching pilgrim hats on Thanksgiving. It was too precious though, let me tell you.

It is so exciting to talk to Oma on the phone

As soon as we got home from church she flopped on the ground and squeezed the cat to her.

Here come the Christmas decorations!

I have a few stories this week.

I'll separate them into two categories: spiders and cats.

Spiders.

We have a tarantula. We've had it for almost 2 years now, but it is about 14 years old. I guess it is kind of neat. It never comes out of its terrarium and it eats crickets so it's not really that bad. After two years she finally molted. It was very gross (and kind of interesting I guess). But then I started to panic and begged Matthew to please, please, not hide the horrible carcass anywhere to scare me. He never did. But one day while I was finishing my dinner (shrimp. this is important to the story) he gets out the shell and starts cracking it open. It was the same sound shellfish shells make. It was horrible. I had a hard time finishing my last couple bites without throwing up. Because shrimp are arachnids just freaking like spiders. And that link was not lost on my gag reflex as I was imagining I was eating that tarantula.

One day Matt leaned over on the couch and said, "Hmm, thats a big spider." And then leaned back away. I, on the other side of the room, said, "Get it! Don't just leave it there!" So he begrudgingly got a napkin to get it and then DROPPED IT SOMEWHERE ON THE FLOOR! "Oops, I dropped it. Oh well. It's a good spider." ...


Cats.

Yzma is insane. She hates to be petted, but wants to sleep under the covers with you snuggled up to your face, so she has easy access to lick your face in the middle of the night. She shoots into V's room if you open the door while she's napping to go in there and wake her up. She hates going outside, but if you force her she'll run away as fast as you can as if you were holding her captive.

But the worst is her affection for baby breath. Not the lovely flower, the actual breath of a baby. The daycare baby's breath, to be more precise. To date, the cat has stolen 3 pacifiers out of his mouth, while he was asleep and quite literally eaten the nipple. The other day I was feeding him his bottle and when I took it out of his mouth to burp him, Yzma jumped on the bottle grabbing hold and tried to tug of war with me for it. (I poured boiling water on it after that, don't worry). And once when the baby was holding his own bottle, I left for a minute to grab Vera, and Yzma took the bottle away from him, shredded the nipple, and then proceeded to drink the milk. I told her vet about this and he just called her clever and opportunistic. Opportunistic indeed.

P.S. she threw up all over our floor thanksgiving night. 3 guesses as to what was in her vomit. You got it, a pacifier nipple...