Lately, every animal that Nan sees is named "Angel". No matter the species, animate or inanimate, if you ask her, "What is the name of that doggy/kitty/horsie?", the answer is inevitably, "Angel". We have no idea where she got the name-- we don't know anyone with a pet named Angel, I can't think of anything she's seen on TV that might prompt it, and we've never called HER that. It's just something weird that popped out of the tangled yarn of her brain. It's kind of hilarious. She pretends to put great thought into deciding on the animal's name, and then comes up with Angel EVERY TIME. And if there's more than one animal? They're Angel and Other Angel. And if there are three? The third is... you guessed it... Other Other Angel. I think I will die of shock the day she comes up with something new.
We met Jay for an early dinner last night-- he had Open House at school, and wasn't able to make it home for dinner. She got to experience the wonder of chocolate chip pancakes at Perkins. Sigh. Stupid kid's menus with stupid color pictures of all the stupid food I don't particularly want her to ever, ever know about. Ah, well. The chocolate chips were mostly contained to the ear portion of the bear-- sort of coloring in his ears-- so she really didn't get much chocolate with the pancake. And she doesn't like syrup, so that was ok. And, she ate her entire fruit cup. (Listen to mommy justify her kid's crappy dinner...oh, and there was milk! Tasty, healthful, white milk. Good ol' 2%.) After we left the restaurant, we went to play at grandma's. It was a win-win-win. Nan got some undivided attention, Grandma got her Natalie fix, and I got to read the paper and eat oreos. Score. Even better, Nan actually got a bath even though Jay wasn't getting home until after her bedtime. One of the many lovely features of rheumatoid arthritis is an inability to get up off the floor unassisted, so I'm unable to bathe the girl. This generally isn't an issue-- it's nice for Jay and Nan to have that time together every day, and they have fun splashing around. But, when school starts and Jay gets busy with the extracurriculars, it can get kind of dicey. We're at an age when a bath is pretty necessary every day, to scrape all the yogurt off the filthy child. But. Sometimes a quick swipe with a baby wipe is all the kid is gonna get. We persevere.