Updates All Around

Now an update on Sandy the guinea pig. I'm not sure that any readers will care, but I've decided that the toys I put in his cage really make a difference in his happiness. Either that or he got used to us at the same time that I bought him toys.

He has 1) a small stuffed animal meant for a dog, 2) a small mirror toy meant for a bird, 3) a wooden hut, 4) a hay rack stuffed with hay at almost all times, and 5) a fleecy cuddle cup. I picked up these items on the recommendation of people in the forums at guineapigcages.com. These are the true fanatics of guinea pigs and I take their advice with a grain of salt. If we had a cage that is big enough for one guinea pig according to their standards, we would need an extra bedroom just for the pig. We don't have a true guest room in this house; therefore, we will not have a guinea pig room.

Sandy hanging out near the hay rack, mirror, and stuffed animal, eyeing the camera suspiciously

Sandy says, "Leave me alone."

 Anyway, my point is that I bought these things feeling a little bit silly - and now I've decided that Sandy really loves them. I've come upon him resting with his chin on top of the stuffed animal. Other times he's been hiding out in the wooden hut or (usually) loudly chewing on it. I often take the mirror toy out of the cage at night because it has a bell on it which he likes to ring while Xander is trying to fall asleep. When I put it back in, he runs right to it, rings it once or twice, and looks in the mirror. It's hilarious. It's a given that he loves the hay rack. Whenever I rustle in his hay bin, he wheeks very loudly because he can't wait to start nibbling on it. I have to refill that hay rack at least two times a day. Now the cuddle cup I am not sure of. He loved when I hung a small towel from his ceiling so he had something to hide behind, but I don't catch him sitting in the cuddle cup on its own. It's a good place to have him when we're petting him in our laps, though.

Now, for Erik, an update on Xander's scholastics. Today was their student-led conference showing all their learning journals. Xander showed me his "I Can" Journal, Spring Writing Journal, Science Journal, and Rainforest Art/Writing. There is a marked improvement in his writing between the second nine weeks and the third nine weeks. Mrs. Griffin and her writing practice worked wonders on him. All of his illustrated stories involve knights or Lego knights or ninjas, but the sentences do fit into the guidelines of the assignment. For example, he glued a blue cloud blowing wind onto his paper, drew a bunch of knights with weapons floating in the air above them, and wrote: "The wind blew the wepins of The Laggo Dragin Nits."

Here are pictures of Nick posing. He was loving the Photo Booth camera mode. He gesticulated, sang, and talked to himself for a few minutes. We took a picture of his foot and he said, "Thas so silly (siwwy)!"

As for his update, I will keep it to two things. One is that we brought the little froggy potty with us to the playground yesterday afternoon and just barely managed to use it in time instead of going in underwear. Hurray! It's too bad there were two small accidents after that, but what was I expecting? It's the playground in the afternoon.

The second one is that he and Jill officially play wonderfully together. She's about a year younger than him, so it's a little surprising. They sat next to each other yesterday at the playground, collaborating on finding things in the bark and later, in the wood chips. Jill came over this morning for about an hour and they had the greatest time playing cars, trains, sing-along, pull-out-the-books-and-browse, and doctor kit together. Yes, basically together! They look forward to seeing each other and point at each other saying the other one's name. I hear a lot of enthusiastic renditions of, "Hi, Jell!" (His "l"s are pronounced like "w"s, but if I write it that way, it doesn't look like how he says it.)