Mouse Sitting Adventures

I am not sure how this happened but suddenly I am mouse sitting.

Melody the white mouse was replaced with Needles the little gray (feeder) mouse. 

Our household is again replete with critters. I am not scared or disgusted but I am a cat person…

My daughter is in Colorado for ten days at a ranch with her classmates. She attends Options for Youth which is a charter school with a minimal attendance requirement.  A hybrid between her unschooling homeschool past and traditional all day school.

Here is the blogspot for the ranch and one of the photos they snapped.

The trip did not cost us a thing besides a few new pair of jeans which was its own adventure…

I asked as trip planning and packing began. "What about your pet mouse?"

My daughter said she would see who among her friends that were not going might be interested and available to watch the little creature.

I was not worried. Time and days passed.

As my daughter was leaving on the trip and I asked what had become of her plans to find a sitter she mentioned a friend she had recently visited. 

Most of the time when she knows she is going somewhere over night my daughter will take her caged pet. When she last saw this friend the mouse was in tow and the friend loved Needles.

Said friend however has a house full of cats.

When my daughter mentioned the friend she said “she is going to try and find a way to get to our house and pick up the mouse”.

I should have known I was in trouble. A few days passed. I feed and water the little rodent but it was cage cleaning day. Ugh

There are worse things to be sure but this was so not my idea of fun. 

I thought I would be a gem and take the mouse to the friend.

I drove to her house. I forget other children go to school everyday. Her mother works from home and it was the middle of the day. Her mother looked strangely at me when I told her why I was there. 

“I have heard nothing of this idea the girls have hatched” was her line.

Now what was I supposed to do???

We talked and laughed. The friends mom said she would have her daughter call me. I told her not to worry about it.

Sweet Treats and Memories

Disclaimer (and blog post): I got free candy!

Old habits die hard. I do understand this. One of my mothers’ habits was to go to the See’s Candy shop.

What kid would turn this down? I certainly never did. I am not sure I had a favorite confection. I think I liked the adventure of trial and error.

When my daughter was born my mother became a doting Gramma. 

As my daughter got older she would go for weekends off to Gramma and Grampas house.

I had told my parents that I was not giving the child candy or sweets. They thought this was nuts for some reason. I do not know why.

Anyone who knows anything about toddlers and preschoolers knows they do not need caffeine or sugar to be peppy. So I am not sure what all my parents were thinking.

For her very first birthday I baked a cake with about 1/3^rd of the specified amount of sugar and substituted flavored cream cheese for frosting. It was tasty but not overly sweet and to my mind a splurge for the kiddo.

Time went on and I thought my parents had mellowed out worrying that I was depriving their grandchild. 

They did eventually come around to my way of thinking and acknowledge that my prohibition on desserts for the child had not hindered her and might actually have been a good idea.

It was some time later this little secret came out:

Gramma would take the child to See’s but get her only vanilla lollypops so that if she got messy with them the other darker colors would not stain her clothes and clue me in that she’d been having sweets.

Sneaky silly girls. 

My official ban lasted until my daughter was old enough to argue convincingly with me at around 4 or 5 with more of an understanding of the world around her and what she might be missing.

No telling what impact my parents had on this.

Grampa was rather open minded in his candy consumption. I am not sure he ever took me to See’s but I am sure we brought him home goodies from time to time.

Gramma likes a good pecan roll.