On tigers and tickles...

This morning was a typical morning for me and my girlies...which is to say, there was really nothing typical about it at all. After all, who needs to get dressed and have breakfast, anyway? It is so much more fun to chase each other around the livingroom and then collapse to the floor in fits of tickles and giggles! Even better if the giggles subside into cuddling on the floor while discussing the relative merits of airplanes vs. helicopters. Naturally, such a conversation will evolve into "flying" on Mummy's feet while I lie on my back with my legs up in the air, which ends up mimicking a possibly drunk seagull more than either an airplane or a helicopter, but that's ok. Incidentally, flying a 2 year old, followed by a 3 year old, followed by a 4 year old...and then doing it again, and again, and again...well, it is fantastic exercise!

Eventually we made it to the breakfast table, where we sat and did very little eating and quite a bit of spirited conversation about tigers. Why not? Tigers and Thursdays go very well together. It was actually a spinoff conversation from the one we had a few days ago about bears...and the one a few days before that about alligators.... The girls are on a predatory animal kick. Mainly these conversations focus on what one should do in the unlikely event that one should face a raging bear, alligator, or tiger. (No, I don't bring up these topics to my very young children! They are quite focused on this right now for some reason, so I just try to keep the conversation light.) It was decided, for instance, that if one is faced with an angry bear, it would be a great idea for one to pull a fish out of one's back pocket (where one handily happens to be keeping a fish at that moment) and throw it to the bear. This would of course be seen as a peace offering, and one would be sent on one's merry way by a grateful bear. In the case of an angry alligator, on the other hand, it was suggested that one would be wise to point out to the alligator that one is not, in fact, a fish oneself, and therefore would not make a good meal for the alligator. This apparently would prompt the alligator to change its mood and slink back into the water, allowing one to continue to play without further alligator harrassment.

Anyway, we did not reach the point of determining a strategy for handling an angry tiger, because the girls got stuck on the fact that a tiger is a big cat. They had trouble believing that, so Google images came to the rescue! Our breakfasts continued cooling while we ooh-ed and aah-ed over pictures of beautiful tigers like this one:



Hannah especially loved every picture I could find of tigers in the water. Her "favorite" changed with every new water picture she saw. Ashley and Bethany were partial to baby tiger pictures, and this one was their favorite:



So cute! I think this was the picture that finally convinced Ashley that tigers really are cats. She was a little perturbed because, as she said, "Kitties are nice and gentle, but tigers are usually a little bit mean, so I don't think they should be kitties."

It took us way longer than usual to get through our morning tasks and breakfast today, but you know what? Breakfast can be reheated -- tickles and tigers must be enjoyed whenever they come along!