and it's still happening
19 Jun 2022 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneWax's cousin once removed is about two, and like every other small child who has been to our house, he's enchanted with the cats and bunnies. As usual:
Wax's younger brother and 13-year-old goddaughter who has become a pastel goth and apparently isn't speaking out loud right now (the other goddaughter is 18, you may remember) were in town for Wax's paternal grandmother's family reunion, which took place on the family farm where her grandmother and her 13 siblings grew up. There were 142 attendees even though it was pouring rain most of the time and we were stuck in a bunch of tents on the lawn. Because of pandemic concerns, this was the first in three years, so Wax's mom and one other (one of her grandmother's brothers) died in the interim, but 18 children were born. The youngest attendee was 2 weeks old, apparently. After the reunion, BIL & goddaughter(13) and the aunt/cousin family hung out at our house all evening, and the 13-yo goddaughter spent at least an hour or two patiently standing upstairs petting Tristana, which is the only way to bond with Tristana right now since she won't come downstairs, and probably represents a big and exciting breakthrough for a girl who, in her own time, followed Snookums around slavishly and stared mournfully through the bunny cages. (They went back to Turku to sleep though, unlike the cousin and aunt's family.)
I think they're leaving tomorrow? They're going to visit some other parts of Finland. I've become somewhat peopled out already, but none of the other adults on site apparently can be trusted to intervene if the bunnies need to be protected unless I lock them both in and cover their cages with dropcloths first.
The child was excited to draw with me though, and that was really cute. I have a box of 240-something Crayola crayons that my mom sent me some years ago pursuant to my complaints that there was no equivalent product here. (Wax crayons exist but are rare and tend to come in boxes of max 6-8 colors. Preschools' standard coloring materials are cheap colored pencils, which, as you know if you know art supplies, are crap - the colors are too pale and a bit gray, the leads break easily, and they're thinner than the ideal shape for little toddlers to hold and learn to manipulate, plus you have to apply a great deal more force to get good color intensity, comparatively (compared to crayons or to expensive colored pencils with softer leads). And even when you press hard, the colors you get aren't as good because cheap colored pencils use less and cheaper pigments.) Crayola stuff isn't marketed here at all and there are no imitators, and I saw some portraits and caricatures in crayon a few years ago that made me really want some to play with, and here we are. I DO draw with them occasionally, but not that often, so almost every crayon still had most of its original point - none had ever been sharpened.
The toddler was shy at first, but when I handed him a crayon and participated by drawing with them myself he quickly got enthusiastic and we made friends. He then discovered that he was perhaps even more interested in dumping out the interior sub-boxes to leave the crayons all lying in a big heap in the bin and then putting them back in the boxes only to dump them out again. (I put them away and then got them out again three times yesterday, but I didn't mind that. It was nice to draw with a kid.) He's at the multi-colored scribbles which he will point to and tell you what they represent stage. He's talking a lot, too, in both Vietnamese and Swedish (albeit not always understandably), in two-word sentences - subject-verb or verb-object, at least in Swedish, which is standard at his age for monolingual children.
- Snookums was cautious at first, but is a super chill cat, so he quickly allowed himself to be touched, petted, hugged, his tail held (not pulled), and he has been followed around a fair bit. I had to protect his eyes from possible poking because the kid is learning the words "eye" and "ear" in Swedish and was pointing enthusiastically. Every now and then he shrieks piercingly with delight/laughter and Snookums runs away and hides, but he comes back.
- Tristana has spent almost the entire time upstairs, hiding, and part of that time she was under our bed just to make sure, after Wax's favorite aunt's husband walked up to her and petted her. She was alarmed by his deep voice, even though he was gentle and courteous and correct by cat introduction standards. The toddler has only caught sight of her a few times and she quickly ran back upstairs every time, but when he was absent or asleep everyone else has been able to see her slinking around cautiously a bit.
- I held Japp in my lap and let the toddler pet him (also protecting the eyes) for a while, and later while I was grooming Rowan (actually checking Rowan for bites because he and Japp had a fight) the child got to pet him too (again, protecting the eyes with my hands). Apart from this, the bunnies have both hidden the entire time - usually visible as poofs of floof. They've endured a lot of pointing and yelling up close though, because the cages aren't really large enough for them to get more than a meter away from someone who is next to the front of the cage. They have emerged from behind the curtains in their cubbies though, and let loose so far as to eat their treats and salads and even to go to work (nibbling on cardboard boxes, I mean). They both took some opportunities to binky/run around when the child was napping or absent though, so they have got to stretch their legs. Although Wax's aunt and uncle are old and the uncle stayed up later than us last night and then he and the aunt were both already up at 8:30 when I went to let Japp out of his cage, so he didn't even get to enjoy his solitary morning binks because they were stationed in the armchairs with newspapers. Not paying any attention to Japp, obviously, but that didn't make a difference; their mere presence was enough to prevent him from playing. He just snuck over to the plant table, under which there's a couple of bathmats and some cardboard box bunny forts with doors cut out of them. (He's not bold enough to be there when the child is around, because there's no fencing between it and the rest of the room.)
Wax's younger brother and 13-year-old goddaughter who has become a pastel goth and apparently isn't speaking out loud right now (the other goddaughter is 18, you may remember) were in town for Wax's paternal grandmother's family reunion, which took place on the family farm where her grandmother and her 13 siblings grew up. There were 142 attendees even though it was pouring rain most of the time and we were stuck in a bunch of tents on the lawn. Because of pandemic concerns, this was the first in three years, so Wax's mom and one other (one of her grandmother's brothers) died in the interim, but 18 children were born. The youngest attendee was 2 weeks old, apparently. After the reunion, BIL & goddaughter(13) and the aunt/cousin family hung out at our house all evening, and the 13-yo goddaughter spent at least an hour or two patiently standing upstairs petting Tristana, which is the only way to bond with Tristana right now since she won't come downstairs, and probably represents a big and exciting breakthrough for a girl who, in her own time, followed Snookums around slavishly and stared mournfully through the bunny cages. (They went back to Turku to sleep though, unlike the cousin and aunt's family.)
I think they're leaving tomorrow? They're going to visit some other parts of Finland. I've become somewhat peopled out already, but none of the other adults on site apparently can be trusted to intervene if the bunnies need to be protected unless I lock them both in and cover their cages with dropcloths first.
The child was excited to draw with me though, and that was really cute. I have a box of 240-something Crayola crayons that my mom sent me some years ago pursuant to my complaints that there was no equivalent product here. (Wax crayons exist but are rare and tend to come in boxes of max 6-8 colors. Preschools' standard coloring materials are cheap colored pencils, which, as you know if you know art supplies, are crap - the colors are too pale and a bit gray, the leads break easily, and they're thinner than the ideal shape for little toddlers to hold and learn to manipulate, plus you have to apply a great deal more force to get good color intensity, comparatively (compared to crayons or to expensive colored pencils with softer leads). And even when you press hard, the colors you get aren't as good because cheap colored pencils use less and cheaper pigments.) Crayola stuff isn't marketed here at all and there are no imitators, and I saw some portraits and caricatures in crayon a few years ago that made me really want some to play with, and here we are. I DO draw with them occasionally, but not that often, so almost every crayon still had most of its original point - none had ever been sharpened.
The toddler was shy at first, but when I handed him a crayon and participated by drawing with them myself he quickly got enthusiastic and we made friends. He then discovered that he was perhaps even more interested in dumping out the interior sub-boxes to leave the crayons all lying in a big heap in the bin and then putting them back in the boxes only to dump them out again. (I put them away and then got them out again three times yesterday, but I didn't mind that. It was nice to draw with a kid.) He's at the multi-colored scribbles which he will point to and tell you what they represent stage. He's talking a lot, too, in both Vietnamese and Swedish (albeit not always understandably), in two-word sentences - subject-verb or verb-object, at least in Swedish, which is standard at his age for monolingual children.
(no subject)
Date: 19 Jun 2022 11:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20 Jun 2022 09:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20 Jun 2022 12:10 pm (UTC)