Rats! What a great idea!

For Christmas this year, we got two pet rats.  After much searching / exploring ideas for good pets for kids, rats kept coming up at the top of the list.  As G is quite allergic to cats, and I have a general disdain for them, cats were off the list.  Dogs require too much time, attention, and cost; though would be a good 2nd choice for us.  I was thinking "hamster" but they don't sell teddy-bear hamsters anymore, and the little hamsters they sell now are biters.  That would be a "no" for us - we want a pet to interact with, not just watch.  So reptiles and fish are out.  Mariia doesn't like birds in the house.  What's left?  Rats.  The hamster industry has convinced us that hamsters are cute, clean, trainable, non-biters that are fun to interact with.  They are not.  However, rats do have all of these qualities.  People get turned off by the tail (hence why hamsters are more popular - small tail).  Silly, huh?  The tail is used for balance and to regulate their body temperature.  It's what gives them such great agility.

After acquiring a large (3' x 2' x 5') multi-level cage, the requisite food bowls, chewy things, hammocks, and other cage toys, we were ready.  A quick trip to PetCo and we had two female rats (no babies here, please) - Bee-Doh (from Despicable Me movies) and Eva (from Wall-E).  M thought that she would not like them at first, but after 5 minutes she was hooked.  A true rat-whisperer.  They took to her immediately for petting.

Rats are meticulous about being clean, they love to interact with each other and their owners.  If you don't handle your rats daily, they get sad.  If they don't live with another rat, they die faster, as they get very lonely.  On day 1 we were handling the rats.  When you scratch them behind their ears, they purr.  They're soft, they don't smell, and will lick your fingers if you pet them.  You groom your friends, after all.  In essence, they are kind of like small kittens with a lot less maintenance.

We've had the rats for about a month now, and they have never even attempted to bite at us, even with my 5-year old's sometimes rougher-than-I-like handling.  They tolerate it because they want to be played with.  When we clean their cage, we let them out to roam the room freely.  This usually involves having rats climb on the closest person.  They want to be on you and play with you.  If they can get inside your shirt, they think it is great fun.  After a month we have them litter-box trained so they are not making as much of a mess in their cage.  They both come when called.  We are "clicker-training" them, so when they get a treat, you make a clicking sound.  They associate the sound with doing something good.  S has them started to teach them how to stand on their back legs.  They play tug-of-war with each other and you using a paper towel.  They're incredibly adept climbers and jumpers.  They are crazy-smart and very fast learners.

Hollywood gets a lot of things wrong (shock!).  Rats in movies / TV are typically represented as nasty critters.  They are anything but that.  They use them in movies / TV because they are so easy to train and won't even think of harming their people friends.  Urban legends hold more truth than reality here.

There are some great life-lessons kids get from owning pets.  Learning how to take care of another living thing is a wonderful lesson.  The kids understand that the rats are dependent on them for food, water, cleaning, and socialization.  They take to it every night when we have "rat time".  Some lessons are good for all of us, simply by observing our rat-friends.

Things owning a pet rat will teach you:

- The cage is your home and a safe place, but all the fun is outside the cage with your friends.

- Though you may squabble with your housemate, you still curl up with them at night.

- Trust needs to be earned, but once earned the rewards are endless.

- Be cautious of new things, but try them anyway.

- If you find a peanut, share it with your friend.

- You need to try jumping to what you want every now and again.  If you miss, you have claws to pull yourself up.
- The potty is a safe place to chew on toys and treats.

The Art of Negotiation

The scene:  our kitchen table at dinner.  S has a plate of food in front of him.  He's hungry, but being stubborn because there is so many better things to be doing than eating dinner right now.
Me:  S, eat your dinner.
S:  No!  (3-year-old's favorite word, whether they mean it or not)
Me:  Eat your peas and you can have a cookie.
S:  (thinking really hard about that deal and separating a pile of peas from the pile) I'll eat this many peas and get a cookie.
Me:  OK, eat all your peas and some noodles and you can have two cookies.
S:  Thinks really hard, then starts eating his peas.  Gets through the first 'approved' pile, announces he gets a cookie.
Me:  Here's a cookie, but eat the rest of your peas and some noodles and you can have another cookie.
S:  (eats the rest of his dinner)  All done, I get another cookie.

Later that night, as I'm working on the laptop, S comes upstairs to play with the nerf football.  At one point, the balls goes to the other end of the room, I get on my hands/knees to get it.
S:  OK!  You be the horse, I'll be.... me!


The lesson:  Negotiating with a 3-year-old can be challenging and oatmeal-raisin cookies are like money to a kid, but 'being the horse' is a job only a dad would take.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

There's something about fresh-fallen snow that wakes you up and makes you feel like a kid.  We had this weekend what usually turns out to be the only snowfall of the year.  We may have gotten 2 inches of snow, and it quickly froze to ice, but not before we were able to get out and make the requisite snowman.  G and S were both overly joyful at 6 AM when they saw the snowfall and wanted to immediately go outside to go sledding.

My son meets Senator Merkley

Oregon's Senator Jeff Merkley visited the nearby town of Monroe today for a town-hall meeting.  We decided it would be a neat idea to take G, our 9-year-old to this event.  He's been doing a lot in his Social Studies class on how to get involved in his community.  Here was a direct way to do it.  We got to the American Legion hall, got a raffle ticket to be able to ask a question, and sat down.  G came with a question in hand about picking up trash left in parks and forests by hunters.  It was a good question from a 9-year old.  In the crowd of about 100 people (standing room only by the time it started) were all the Benton County Commissioners, the mayors of Monroe, Corvallis, and Philomath, the head of the Corvallis School Board, the county fire chief and a police chief.  It was a decent group to ask questions of, since many of the questions were both locally impacting and nationally impacting.  Of the crowd, G was the youngest one by far (a high-school senior was there, as were about 3 college age kids).  Most of the crowd was in the 50+ age.
The Senator gave a nice non-stump 5 minute opening talk and then opened it up to questions.  The questions ran the gamut from Christmas tree burning and supporting that industry, to the gas pipeline they want to build from Canada to Texas, as well as a potential new gold mine in Alaska.  A student from OSU (VP of their student Democrat group) asked how OSU could get away with not following the ADA with their new buildings.  We didn't get called on via the raffle system, but at the end, he wanted to open it up to 'any other students'.  An OSU student went first, then it was G's turn to end the event.  He got up and did a nice job asking his question about how to get hunters to pick up their trash in the forest.  The Senator gave a good response about being good custodians of the land. He then asked where he got this idea from.  G answered that he takes a lot of hikes, he's talked to a lot of people, and "I talked to my mom about it".  That last bit got a good deal of applause from the audience.  My wife beamed at that response.  Senator Merkley asked G how old he was and where he went to school.  After learning he was 9, he said in the 109 town-halls he's held since he took office, my son was the youngest person he's had ask a question.  Cool!  G also liked saying he went to 'virtual school', though the Corvallis School Superintendant wasn't too thrilled.
So, we got some pictures with the Senator (some taken by his staff), got his business card and headed out.  A good event, G was impressed with the wide variety of questions that got asked by people in the crowd, and got a good appreciation for how some things work in the country / local area.  Hopefully we'll be able to tend more of these events in the future.

Sometimes, it pays to be spontaneous

Cabin fever.
It was a typical foggy, grey winters day in Corvallis.  G and I were both getting a bit of cabin fever around 3 PM, so I said to him "Get your shoes on, we're going for a walk".  It wasn't a request, it was a "we need to do this".  As we're walking out, M asks where we are going, and I tell her "to downtown to walk along the river."  She says that she thought we were going to Marys Peak.
Marys Peak is the highest point in the Coastal Range of Oregon, at about 4000 feet.  The view from the top is extraordinary.  On a clear day, you can see the Cascade Mountain Range from Mt. Rainier near Seattle to as far south as southern Oregon.  It's rare, but it happens.  The problem with Marys Peak is that the road to the top in winter can be tricky to get up, it's not maintained during the winter at all.  Also, a cloud at the top can mean that you are seeing nothing but cloud.  It's always a risk, but when it pays off, it is always worth it.
As we're driving out of the neighborhood, I noted that we could see the Cascades, and mentioned that if Marys Peak is clear, we're going there.  From our far-away view, you could see lots of clouds, and Marys Peak poking out from the top of them, clear as day.  Off we went!
Marys Peak is often extraordinary.  Tonight was phenomenal.  The sun was setting, giving a gorgeous sunset over the Pacific (which is also visible from the top).  It was turning all the Cascade mountains a nice shade of pink and orange.  On top of all that, there was a gorgeous full moon.  We took the path to the top of the hill, and at every turn, it would take your breath away.  This was one magical trip.  We were almost alone at the top, except for a couple of photo-buffs that knew better than to stay down in the valley on a night like this.  There was enough snow at the top for some excellent sledding, and one family was taking full advantage of their good fortune.  We would be doing the same the next day, I was sure of it.
We came off the mountain a little lighter on our feet.  It was difficult to describe the beauty at the top.  Words could not do it justice.  Cabin fever was wiped out.  I took as many pictures as I could, fully knowing that they would not match up to what we could see, feel, and experience.  We got home, I thanked M for her 'suggestion' and said we're going back the next day to go sledding.

Sledding Day
It was another foggy day in town, but I knew better.  Once we got over 1500 - 2000 feet, the sky would clear up and we were in for a real treat.  We took G and S, wore better winter clothing, and brought the sleds with us. Unfortunately, it had been sunny on Marys Peak as well, and a majority of the snow had melted.  But, we found a good shady location that still had plenty of snow and had a blast sledding down the hill.  Another family with 2 boys from Newcastle, England were on the hill with us, and fun was had by all.  We are definitely going to keep Marys Peak in mind when we want to go sledding in the future.  It's a lot closer than going up to the Cascades!  The view today was extraordinary.  You could see Mt. Rainier and all the major mountains in the Cascade Range today.  Another phenomenal day on the hill, definitely not to be missed!

My duty, as a dad

I believe it is my duty as a dad to make my kids laugh out loud, often excessively, every day.  Sometimes this is done via some joke that they can repeat ad nauseum, sometimes it's a funny story I tell, or some funny voice I can make up.  This morning we had a 'super-slow-motion-pillow-fight'.