Learning about puffins

I learned some interesting things about puffins this morning. Lil Miss A informed me that her class read about puffins, and that puffins are very cute, and that puffins cannot take off in flight from the ground, they have to fall off something high to get started flying. She said that sometimes young puffins ("pufflings") get confused by city lights at nighttime and land in the middle of the city, then can't get airborn again, so school children get to go out at night ("their parents say it's okay") and gather up puffins, then take them back to the sea and free them. She said the children have to throw the pufflings into the air to get them to fly.

I was not surprised that my tender-hearted, animal-loving girl remembered all this and shared it; however, I was less impressed that this conversation took place in our kitchen at about 8:27 a.m. when she was supposed to have been at school for about 12 minutes already and still had no boots, snowpants, coat, gloves or hat on. *sigh*

It was Dawdling Day at our house. I do notice a pattern: When we are incredibly busy and I am preoccupied, she dawdles a lot more. I think it's a matter of her needing more attention from me and simply not doing much of anything until she gets it. I don't mean she does this on purpose. I just think it's the natural result of me not paying my usual close attention to her. This week has been slightly more chaotic than usual, with Barry ramping up his efforts to get into nursing school, Miss B trying to make decisions about which college to go to and working out interviews and physicals, et cetera, for Army ROTC, with tax season upon us and with me trying to turn over the treasurer's job. Plus last night Barry had fire school, Master K had youth Bible class, Miss A had Bible class at the Evangelical Free church and I had to get to her school conference, all pretty much simultaneously. It was a zoo. I know none of the kids got much eye contact from their mom yesterday.