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March 26, 2008
Happiness to a 3-year-old
Happiness comes very easily to a 3-year-old! Derek received a free toy fireman hat last year at the local fire station open house. This has fueled his imagination, as he pretends to be "Fireman Sam."
Derek plays for hours with this hat, which he wears backwards for some reason. He uses a flashlight to represent the fireman's hose. He runs through the house putting out pretend fires.
He likes to have assistance in these matters. "Okay, Momma-turn the water on!" he will call from the next room. I obligingly pantomime turning the spigot.
The hat has been surprisingly durable for being stamped out of very flimsy plastic. It only has a few tears in the brim, Derek is very careful with it.
Derek still loves Thomas the Tank Engine. He now refuses to watch the TV show, as he hates the accidents that the trains are always getting into. He does love the toy trains, the stories and especially the music. He loves the music so much that I sought for two years to buy a Thomas CD for him. Unfortunately, it was out of print. If it could be found on Ebay, it was priced at $100. Ouch! I found a couple of Thomas cassette tapes at a garage sale last year, but they have only four songs on them (two on each side.) THAT was getting old, especially since two of the four songs were the same on each tape.
I scoured the internet for the full-length CD, to no avail. No Thomas CDs (other than the $100 ones.) Every few weeks, I'd check ebay again. For two years I was unsuccessful. Finally, I found a whole auction full of Thomas books, videos and toys, and oh, yeah-the Thomas CD. Well, bust my buffers, as Thomas would say! I bid a small amount on the auction, not thinking I'd ever win it. But I did.
Fortunately, the box arrived when Derek was visiting his grandparents, as I would not have wanted to disappoint him if anything wasn't as ordered. I opened the box and immediately went gleefully for the CD. Which turned out to be, most distressingly, an EMPTY CASE!
I emailed the seller, asking her if she might have the CD still, or if I should send the whole lot back to her for a refund.
Fortunately, the CD was located and sent out priority mail, and Derek is now dancing happily around to Thomas the Tank Engine music, and it isn't all the same two songs. Hooray!
Posted by Jessica at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2008
Digby 1995-2008
Our little terrier is barking away happily in doggie heaven.
Digby was quite a character. He had a forceful and, at times, overpowering personality. He barked at anything and everything, constantly. A friend of mine once called him the bark-o-matic dog.
He was very loyal, and would have unhesitatingly flung himself in the path of an aggressor in order to protect me, despite weighing only 26 lbs. (Fortunately, he never had to.)
We never found out exactly what caused Digby's long, drawn-out medical malfunctions. After several tests, it was determined not to be kidney failure, cushing's disease, or the most common type of canine diabetes. However, over his last year of life Digby developed an ever-increasing need to urinate vast quantities at ever-shorter intervals. Towards the end, there was no way we could keep up with his need to pee gallons every twenty minutes. And we had no resources to finance any more costly medical tests for a 13-year-old dog who had a trying personality at the best of times. So with much sadness, and some procrastination (we tried one last medical test that the vet thought might be the answer - it wasn't) we reluctantly had Digby put to sleep.
Posted by Jessica at 03:04 PM | Comments (1)