Everyone back

Wednesday evening Sonja and I walked to get mail and en route home met Sandy, who was just coming back from her trip and dropping off the dogs. Sonja was very happy to see them. In the five minutes we took to walk to the house, the dogs managed to disappear again - apparently they took off running the moment Sandy opened the car door. Spring fever. With Sonja, we went looking for them, or rather yelling for them, but to no avail. But since the dog team down below us was sounding off, I thought that perhaps I should load Sonja up into the car and drive around the neighborhood before we hit her bedtime. And sure enough, after a few stops an yells (just to be sure we are not driving past them somewhere), there they were at the end of the ditch road. They happily jumped into the car, and off we drove back home.

Friday I took Sonja to Sarka's playgroup. Sarka works in the same building, but that is about the extent of our acquaintance currently, except for the language. She has two daughters, slightly older and slightly younger than Sonja. I picked Sonja up from the daycare and we drove out to where Sarka lives, more than half hour away. Sarka and her husband have 20 dogs, of which one is sort of a pet (her name is Ice), and Sonja was fascinated by all those doggies. After a while, I managed to persuade her that only Ice was ok to pet, that she should stay away from the rest of the dogs. Since Ice thought she could have some of the people food, Sonja got really good at saying "no, no, ice" when she had food in her hand and the dog approached. We also watched the chickens. Overall, Sonja seemed to warm up overtime to the other kids, which was nice to see.

Today, Saturday, was a rather busy day. We took a bath first thing in the morning because we didn't end up doing it last night. Unfortunately, when I was adding some hot water, Sonja stuck her hand out to touch it, and got burned. End of bath. I stuck it into the bathwater (since that was cooler than what I was pouring), and then got a pitcher of cold water and stuck her hand into that. We got dressed, and I tried to put some of my grandfather's "propolys" onto it, but that did not go over well with Sonja. So, since it seemed like it was hurting her but not too much, I decided to cotninue with the morning program, which was a walk by Smith Lake at the university, with the dogs, and Sonja in the Chariot.

I loaded up the car and off we went. In the car, Sonja had fun time watching Saphira being incapable of sitting down, so she did not even complain about her "ouwie". Once at the university, we got out onto trails, proceeded to the "Potato field", where I left the chariot and we started our walk. At the bottom of the potato field, which was completely snow-free except for a few shadow areas, Smith Lake was still completely frozen. We walked along the shore, on the ice, to where the other trail comes out. There, I managed to persuade Sonja to turn around, and walk back on the ice (she wanted to continue forward). I also let go of the other dog, and now the dogs had a grand old time exploring bushes. Periodically, Spahira would try to hunt Mica: she would hunch down a bit, eyes staring at Mica, getting ready for a pounce, and then at some point the pounce would come. Mica seemed to be mainly intersted in doing her own business though. Just as we got back to the chariot, though, it seemed like she accepted the play, and started a game of chase with Saphira chasing her in an extremely fast game of circles around us. I was just glad that both of them had good footing - at one point Saphira ran within a foot of Sonja, very very fast.

After dropping off the dogs at the car, we watered my seedlings in Martin's office, and headed back home. Sonja was complaining about the ouwie for the first time in couple hours. Within a couple minutes she was out. I thought she would still eat lunch when we got home, but that got nixed when she didn't even wake up when I carried her from the car to the futon in her room.

In the afternoon, we did errands. Stop by the mailbox. Stop by the bank. Do laundry. At the laundromat, in the parking space next to ours was one of those old motorcycles that has a companion box attached to it (don't know what they are called). There sat a big brown dog. Funny sight. But Sonja seemed to be most taken by the ability to sit in the drivers seat of our car and twirling the steering wheel and all the knobs and buttons and levers within her arm reach. Who cared that she couldn't see over the steering wheel, it moved when she moved it!

We also stopped by the Constitution park where Sweating Honey was playing, and danced to a few of their songs, and by the caribout to see the three baby caribou.

After a dinner and some play, Sonja is asleep after a bsy day, and Martin came back a few hours later. House is full again!