Penguins

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Penguin Update:

My children were penguins tonight.   This post is about the two of them and their evening as flightless waterfowl.

We took the children to scientist camp (or mad scientist camp as I’ve been calling it) this morning.   I’m not sure what experiment they did today and when or how penguins got on their minds, but around dinner time that was the only game in the house.

I couldn’t figure out if it was something they talked about with their sitter at the pool in the afternoon or if there was experimentation with ice at school (camp) but penguins they insisted they were, regardless.

They both were walking like penguins—and here is where I had to do some chasing down of them both, because much as they thought they were walking like penguins, they weren’t even remotely close.     When I finally got their attention (the naked, giggly one and the loud, yelling other one) I gave them a demonstration on what a penguin walk was meant to look like when attempted by a middle-aged adult.   This brought on intense laughter and immediate attempts to copy my motions.

And they did fairly well for three- and four-year-olds.   I didn’t have the heart to tell them that under no circumstances (outside of a body of water) did penguins move that quickly.   I also didn’t want to tell them they were going to need a good lesson in how to speak penguin, because no self-respecting penguin would make sounds like that, even in the middle of the most exuberant of mating rituals.

Then (and this was after the third reminder I might add) and only then did they make their way towards the bathroom for the bath I had been telling them it was time to have.   But wait, about face, penguins liked ice.  Yes, they did, if they remembered correctly, like ice and what penguins most needed in their end of day bath was a lot of ice to keep them cold.  

Fortunately, “a lot of ice” amounted to three or four cubes.   It was at the moment of entering the bath tub that the spell of penguin must have been broken because at that point, they were just interested in the new bath gel pens I’d found at the dollar store.

I wonder what their penguin names were?

Fitness Update:  I have a sudden shin splint on my left shin that is murder for the first three miles.  It was so bad this morning I had to walk three times.    I’m on vacation next week and have all ideas I won’t do a darn thing exercise-wise so maybe whatever it is will right itself.