Peanut

We are encouraging my daughter to open her eye.   She doesn’t like it.  She says it stings.  She says it’s bright.  She tells us she can only see yellow, or nothing, or black spots.   The black spots one makes sense because she has a steroid injected into her eye that might present as black blobs for a bit.      Whatever the reason, she’s not jumping back into the sighted world yet.

We wanted to get her out of the house today and decided to take her to lunch and then the pet store.  Lunch went well with her ordering “just meatballs” and my husband and me questioning the judgement of, “yucky!” once the food arrived, but she liked her meal.   The pet store next was a questionable adventure, one my husband thought I was a little misguided for suggesting.

I knew there would be fish (which she couldn’t see).  I didn’t think there would be dogs, because that’s usually on adoption days on the weekend.   I wasn’t sure what else they’d have but I was guessing some members of the rodent and avian families.   There were gerbils, mice and hamsters but they were all asleep.   There were birds, which flew around the cages quickly.  My daughter asked me to take a picture of them so she could see up close.  I did, only to have her barely glance at the phone, realizing she couldn’t see anything discernible with the changed vision in the bright light and her over-sensitive eyes.   So we moved on.

Then we found the cats against the wall in the glass cages.   She likes cats.  Her brother is allergic, but she was interested in seeing them.   There was one cat who wasn’t lounging.   This cat was so interested in seeing her, he would follow her hand back and forth in front of the cage and wanted her to pet her something fierce.  

My husband looked and the cat’s name was, Peanut, another thing my son is allergic to.  My daughter thought this was the perfect name and wanted to meet Peanut.  She wanted to play with Peanut and take Peanut home (of course).    We read the documentation beside the cages which said, “interested in meeting one of our cats?  Volunteers are here on Sunday, just go online, fill out this form and we’ll schedule a time for you to meet your potential new family member.  

So we didn’t get to play with Peanut, but my daughter is still talking about her.   She says we’re going to go back on Sunday so we can play with Peanut.  We’ll see about that…

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Play Doh Update:  We pulled down the play doh this afternoon when my son was home from school because it was something they could both be successful with.   My husband and I tried not to worry too much about the mess and left the room as they were dumping the entire bin out.   My son announced, “watch how I can make a mess!” which only furthered my prediction on the percentage of play doh on the floor versus table when they were done.   They did indeed make a glorious mess, but they had a great time, bringing food item after food item for my husband and me to pretend eat for the next hour.  On the whole, the mess was worth it.