absentee parenting and cat puke

I have been an absent parent lately, thanks to the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners. Because of this, I haven't had many interesting or funny Elisabeth stories. However, a mere one hour lunch with her generated a few funnies.

First, my daughter is a bit obsessed with cat and dog puke. Lucky for her (and definitely unlucky for me), one of our cats is a prolific puker. Doug made the mistake of saying "oh, look, I think there's cat puke over here..." This is like a bell going off in a firehouse for Elisabeth. "Elisabeth to the rescue!" (which is incidentally her response whenever she says that we have a 'fredicament' as she calls it...). She went and carefully examined the puke, then complained that she can't use the spray to clean it up, making herself feel better with the knowledge that when she's a daddy she can.

Five minutes later, she saw a spot on the carpet. "Uh oh, Daddy, more cat puke." Doug went to examine and said, "I don't think its cat puke..." To which she responded, "oh, maybe it is chicken." Indeed, the offensive spot was chicken. Before we had kids, finding chicken in the middle of the living room floor would have been remarkable. Now - not so much. She followed it up with "I know how it got there, daddy. It been in my bib." Mystery solved. The outstanding mystery, though, is why Maggie hadn't eaten it - maybe the dog's off her game.

And finally, a puke related story demonstrating Elisabeth's reasoning abilities. In an attempt to determine whose puke it actually was, I said that it must be Maggie's because it wasn't there when I put the cat on the porch. Elisabeth went over and confirmed that it was, in fact, Maggie's. "How do you know?" Doug asked. She replied, "It's yellow. Maggie pukes yellow." What color is cat puke, you might ask? "Brown."

The milestone charts say that three year olds should be able to identify something like 5 colors, which is just absurdly low I think. I don't know a single 3 year old that only knows 5 colors. Elisabeth can not only identify many more colors than that, she can do it in Spanish, and use her knowledge of colors to identify bodily fluids from our pets.

10 more days until the studying is over, then two more days and the exam will be over. I can't wait. We have many fun things planned for after the bar, including a metro train ride and a trip to the Reston Zoo where with any luck a baby goat will not fall on Elisabeth's head again.