Coloring Outside the Lines

Yesterday Sword had a dental appointment, so Lawrence came in even though it was not a Wednesday. The dentist's office is  closed on Wednesdays, so we had no choice but to accept the Monday appointment.

I have been desperately trying to de-clutter the house and I found an old workbook for practicing upper case letters which had been used by Sword when she was in  preschool. It was one of many items we were planning to get rid of. Since some of the pages were blank, I suggested to Lawrence that Bow might like to try his hand at tracing the letters. It is a colorful, attractive booklet with lots of pictures, and Bow likes that sort of thing.

Here is a video of what happened when Lawrence offered this activity to Bow.

In the past, Bow has been rather successful at writing letters freehand. But he does not like to take instruction, or to do as he is told. He has no interest in pirates, and he loves pictures of food. So on the page for writing and recognizing the P, he went straight for the picture of the hamburger instead. The instructions in the booklet were to trace the P, and then later write a P under the picture of something beginning with a P. If you'll notice, Bow does seem to have written an H under the picture of the hamburger. Well, at least there is something that looks rather like an H there.

In the Presence of Snakes

"What do you want Bow?" Bow interrupts me many, many times a day. Sometimes it's obvious what he wants, and at other times what he spells out is surprising.

אני רוצה להרוג נחש

"I want to kill a snake."

He didn't say "there's a snake out there." He just said that he wanted to kill a snake, as if this were a perfectly ordinary desire, and that if I were a good mother I would go and find a snake somewhere, so he could kill it. But Leo was barking outside, and it occurred to me that what he really meant was that there was a snake in the back yard. So I went outside to look. But there was no snake.

This was on Tuesday, August 21. I went back inside, telling Bow there was no snake. He examined my legs. It was a hot day, I was wearing bicycle shorts, and I had a thin scratch from where Leo, who is still quite young, though no longer a puppy, had jumped on me. Bow started to groom my scratch, but Leo began barking insistently. We went outside to the outer pen to see what was going on. Leo was barking next to the trampoline at a remnant of roofing on the ground. I went outside again, and Leo led me to the spot, but still there was no snake.

Here is a video where you can see much of this take place:

That was on Tuesday. Yesterday was Wednesday, and Lawrence spent the day with Bow. At the end of the day he reported seeing a black rat snake near the outer pen, almost within reach. Bow had tried to catch it. "I was surprised he wasn't afraid of it," Lawrence mused. "I wonder what he would have done with it if he had got it."

"I think he would have killed it," I said. "He told me yesterday he wanted to kill a snake."

"Yeah," Lawrence agreed. "Probably he would have killed it."

Registering a Complaint Against the Weather

Bow is not shy about sharing his feelings. If he does not like something, he will let you know. This afternoon it rained and hailed and thundered, and Bow was not pleased. He does not let this kind of opportunity to register a protest against nature pass him by. After protesting for a while, he usually calms down and becomes more philosophical.

Bow Behind the Camera

The disadvantage to using the webcam built into the computer to film Bow is that he likes to look at himself and makes funny faces and doesn't really behave naturally when being filmed. The disadvantage of putting a camera on a tripod and filming Bow, if the camera is in the same pen as Bow, is that Bow gets very interested in manipulating the camera. He would rather take the picture than be in it. Although, frankly, I think what he would really like is to do both.