One Month Old!

The kittens are four weeks old, believe it or not.  It seems like just yesterday they were little milk-parasites.  They really seem like mini-cats now.  

There are a lot of pictures of Skittles today.  She loves to sit in my lap and make cute faces, so, that's how that happened.  Plus, her siblings wouldn't hold still.  

I had to expand HMS Love Burrito, so now it's more of a compound than a boat, alas.  I also flipped the boxes over so the walls would be taller.  Leela (formally Oscar) crawled out about 4 days ago, fulfilling everyone's exceptions of her.

The black cat is now called Black Jack, or Jack (or Jax) for short.  Dad commented how he looks like a Halloween cat which made us think of Jack Skellington... then Black Jack, cuz it sounds cool.  He's kind of lazy, and always has a confused look on his face, so Vi and I want to call him Fry.

See the resemblance? ... No?

The kittens love this bridge. There have been many wars fought for control of the top.

Skittles hanging out in her favourite spot.

Peeka-boo!

Skittles, kitten model

Skittles is practicing her "cat that caught the canary" face for when she will be able to actually catch canaries.

Teaching Skittles how to take obnoxious profile pics

rwwwwr.

"Pssst! Leela! Jack is weird."

Hair cut!

Got my hurrr cut, which meant I had to do a Grace Kelly/Betty Draper style, then I had to put on earrings, etc...

On the Kitten front...  They can run in short little bursts and do these funny frog hop pounces.  They also have teeth.  I don't know when that happened, but it did.  I'm going to start the weaning process soon.  Coco is really sick of them, lol.  They keep playing with her her face and tail when she's trying to do stuff.

"I'm not fat, just fluffy"

In other news, the kittens were three-weeks old yesterday.  I decided today that we should start weighing them, to keep an eye on their progress.  Our food-weighing-thingy even has a convenient kitten shaped bowl!
FYI, Oscar isn't a he, as I suspected.  I'm thinking Ophelia will be her name, Leela for short (Shakespeare and Futurama reference in one name! Nerd-score!)  I would have put money on her being the heaviest, as big as she is.  Well, turns out she's just really, really fluffy.  Leela is the lightest at 19 ounces.  Skittles comes in second at 1 pound (1 lb and 1/2 an ounce with her tail actually in the bowl, lol).  Monkey is 1 pound, 1 ounce.  Which is interesting because their size is actually in birth-order.

I think Leela will find a way out to jump ship from the HMS Love-Burrito in the next couple days.  She's figured out how to stand up and look out of the box, but she can't yet figure out how to get her paws up on the edge to boost herself up and over yet, thank goodness.  They're walking much faster now, but they fall over more.  It's pretty funny to watch.  They also discovered stretching in the last day or so.  It's really cute when they wake up, yawn, and arch their little fluffy backs.  They've also started batting at each others' faces.  I foresee more eye injuries in their futures.

Time to find the sewing machine!

Exactly.

I've been looking for early-sixties-esq dresses (continuing with my fashions-of-Mad-Men obsession) for myself that aren't too expensive.  Banana Republic has a Mad Men collection that's really cool, but way too expensive for me.  80 bucks for a blouse isn't happening for me, even if it is purple and looks like something Joan would wear with a 2010s twist.

While I object to their advertising campaign ("Are you a Betty?"  No!  I am not a Betty thankyouverymuch! ) I still want it all!!

I got to thinking that there was no reason to spend $150 on one of those dresses, when I could make myself one for $50 tops.  On that note, I started looking at patterns.  Then I realized that both Simplicity and Butterick have re-released their patterns from the early sixties. SCORE!  They even have a pattern that would work for my favourite Joan dress, the green one below.

"Prints are so 1959."

The even better part?  Butterick is having a sale online through Wednesday; their patterns are on sale for $2.99.  Am I going to take advantage of this?  Is Joan way cooler than Betty?

The other thing I'm super happy about is What Katie Did is having their twice-a-year sale, and I snagged some great pieces.  For $27 I managed to get a '50s corset, which I never would have been able to afford otherwise.  Now I'll have something to wear over it!

I also need some jewelry and QVC (don't laugh) has some pieces that look really similar to ones Joan wears.  I guess it's for all the old ladies that shop there. ;) The prices are okay.  My mom also has some things her mother gave her that she says she'll give me that I'm curious to see.

I can haz kittehs?

Brand new kittens!

Little kitten worms! 3ish days old.

The kittens are exactly two weeks old today.  One of our barn cats (Coco) had kittens on my brother's birthday on the 31st of July.  Which was funny because all day I'd been joking that it would be funny if Coco gave my brother kittens for his birthday... and she did.

Now that they're two weeks old, their eyes are open, so I picked them up in a kitten-love-burrito (aka, clean towel) for a little bit.  Mama behaved very well, and so did the kittens.  I have discovered, somewhat to my horror, that I am indeed a cat person.  <3

The oldest one is going by Monkey for now.  She*'s looks blackish, but I think she'll end up dark grey with some stripes.  "Why monkey?" you say.  Well, one of my favourite videos when I was younger was a day-in-the-life sort of thing about the San Diego Zoo.  In the video, there was a little black monkey who got her diaper changed and when sleeping on her side, Monkey looks like... well, that little black monkey. I'm sure she'll get a more dignified name at some point.

* I say "she"... I keep waffling about the kittens gender, it's really too early to tell, so I'm being somewhat arbitrary.  I am currently leaning toward Monkey actually being a boy and the other two female, but I'm not stressing too much about it at this point.

Monkey, shown here in the patented kitten-love-burrito is two weeks old exactly.

Two weeks. See how Monkey looks like a monkey?

Skittles is the middle kitten and is an adorable striped cat with a white tummy.  We were a little worried this evening because he was holding one eye closed, but I think he probably got smashed in the face by one of his siblings (see video below...).

Skittles, a little worse for wear.

Oscar (again, not sure if Oscar is really an he) was the littlest kitten, but is now the biggest.  He's also the fluffiest, leading to the name Sir Oscar Mormont (Song of Ice and Fire, House Mormont's sigil is a bear... yeah, we're nerds).  I saw him born, so I have a special place in my heart for this one.  He seems to be the one who is developing the fastest.  He was the first to open his eyes, the first to lift his head, then himself up on two front legs, and now he's the first to zoom about the nest as fast as his little wobbley legs will let him (which is to say, not very fast).  I have no doubt that he will be the first to figure out how to escape the nest.

Oscar wanted to leave the love-burrito as quickly as possible to continue zooming along.

*cute squishy noises*

Awwww! (one week)

One week.

Two weeks old. They've gotten so big!

Du schreibst Geschichte an jedem Tag

So, I was on YouTube looking for a song from a band I used to listen to (Panik) and had completely forgotten about until they came up on my iTunes shuffle.  On the side bar there was a link to a music video titled "Madsen- Panik" and I was like, huh, I don't remember that song.  Anyways, it turns out it was a song called Panik by another German band called Madsen.  Evidently I'm falling behind with my German music, since they're fairly popular right now.  They're not exactly my current cup of tea (I generally go more for metal and industrial, they're rock/punk-pop), but I let it play a video list to listen to, and this song "Du schreibst Geschichte" come up.  My German is decent enough to know that's "You write history" and I could make out that the chorus goes something like "You write history, with every step, with every word... on every day" and I was like, huh, that sounds interesting, I should look up the lyrics.  I don't normally go for "positive" rock, but the lyrics really spoke to me.  That, and the mention of Geschicte made me think of my favourite history major. :D

In English:

Because the world's turning so fast
Because time's going so fast
You're not keeping up.
Because the hecticness won't stop
You're drowning in the crowd
You're a drop in the ocean.

Yet you live longer than a lifetime
You're what started it all.

Because you write history
With every step,
With every word,
You let it continue.
You write history
On every day.
Because here and now
You're a part of it.


Because there's a monster standing in front of you
Looking threateningly into your eyes
You're rather still.
Because everyone's telling you
who you are and what you're missing,
You're forgetting what you want to say.

Yet you live longer than a lifetime
You're what started it all.

Because you write history...

Because you only live once
You want things to change
Before you go, before you go.

Yet you live longer than a lifetime
You're what started it all.

Because you write history...

http://lyricstranslate.com