Feeding time at the zoo

It is feeding time at the zoo again. My zoo that is. The bird is easy - empty seeds, pour in new food, clean water dish and fill with clean water, add a couple drops of vitamins. Occasionally I even get ambitious and chop up some fruit and add it in the bowl too. The rest of the pets are more complicated. Each cat has different food. One of my older cats, Smudge, is diabetic, so has prescription food for that, the other, Storm, has prescription food for crystals in his bladder. Don't ask me to explain that, just accept that it is needed. The youngest cat, Mercury, has non prescription food. The dog, Wolfka, eats dog food. Four pets, four bowls, four foods. Sounds fairly simple, but it isn't. See, Mercury likes the dog food, which isn't good for him. The dog hides if Mercury challenges her for the food bowl. Yes, I did say that the 60 pound dog hides from the 10 pound cat, it would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. As soon as Mercury has vacated his food bowl, Smudge comes running. She really likes his food, which incidentally is the highest in sugars and therefore the worst for her. That leaves her bowl free for Storm, who really needs to eat his food, but would prefer hers. What that means is that I am in for spending about 20 minutes shuffling cats from bowl to bowl, all the while trying to convince the dog that she actually can eat her own food. I guess they all enjoy this ritual, because they are currently sitting all around me and making pitiful noises. Guess I better get going.

Bedtime Battles

Tonight was a prime example of bedtime battles. The two year old was screaming hysterically that she was not tired, and wanted to stay up and play. It was immediatly apparent to any adult that she was exhausted, but she just wasn't going for it. I put her in bed and covered her up. Five minutes later she got up and started walking around. I went upstairs to put her back to bed, and she was standing at the top of the stairs. "Back to bed." I said, looking at her sternly. She hoisted her sippy cup up in the air like a javelin and threw it in my general direction, then collapsed in a sobbing heap, as if I had thrown something at her rather than the other way around. As I picked up the both limp and wiggling body of my youngest (Young children seem to turn thier bodies from noodle to rock at will, it really is an amazing phenomenon), I tried to remind myself that I had been through this before, and both I and my eldest survived. I went to lay her down in her bed and she somehow climbed up and over my head and ended up back on the floor behind me and announced that she had to go potty. We went in to go potty and she seemed fine, as if the last 20 minutes were all part of my imagination. She finished up and I handed her pullup to her and suddenly she was collapsed on the floor of the bathroom, wailing that she was not tired, and refusing outright to put them on. About this time her dad came up, she got up, ran to her dad, collapsed at his feet and said, "I tired, sleep in Daddy's bed!". He has now taken her to bed, and after about half an hour the wailing has now subsided to weak disputes and some sniffling, and hopefully she will be in bed soon. Most parents go through this at some point, so I have added a link to some ideas on how to circumvent this. Fortunatly for me I only get the meltdowns about once a month, unfortunatly I've never had the same idea work twice.