At some point, some day, your child will say or do something to really embarrass you in public. Every parent knows it.

Well, my day has come.

Veronica now refers to all adults she sees, and whose names she doesn't know, as either "old man" or "old woman." Let's give a prime example on our way back from West Virginia yesterday: We stop at a rest area. We're alone in the vending machine building, getting a snack and a bottled water. A man walks in, about in his mid to late 20's, and stands before a vending machine overlooking their selections.

And Veronica says, loud enough that I think people on the highway could hear her:

"Mommy? What's that OLD MAN doing?"

So naturally, for the seemingly millionth time recently, I tell her he's NOT old, you don't call people "old," it's mean. Which is when I get the ever-present "WHY?" but that's a beef for another day.

I'm hoping people can laugh this off until I can get her language (or at the very least, her volume) under control. Sometimes you can't tell who she's referring to, like in crowded places, and that's a good thing. But yesterday at the rest area...criminy, I wanted to crawl under a rock. No question who she was talking about, no question he heard her...good grief. Can't wait for her to get over this phase.

Veronica loves taking baths right now, not for the actual bathing so much as the playing with toys in the water that follows. Here's the exchange that took place tonight about 20 minutes after the actual washing was done:

Me: You're cold, honey. Time to get out.

Veronica: No! I not cold!

Me: Yes you are, you're shivering. Shivering means you're cold.

Veronica: I not shiv'ring.

Me: Yes you are! I can see you.

Veronica: I not shiv'ring. I just wiggling 'round a bit.

And then she stars wiggling around and giggling.

Good lord. How do you combat THAT?

Bad news, good news.

Bad news: Poor little Veronica is having bowel issues. She's constipated to the point I had to take her to the doctor yesterday. She has a prescription laxative now but she's still not in great shape, still crying about her butt and her tummy hurting. I feel awful for her and just want to give her a hug right now.

Good news: Her imagination is quite...odd.

Pretend play is common for kids her age, so for her to take her favorite teddy bear and pretend it's a crying baby, who she then rocks to sleep, it's sweet but fairly normal. It's imitative play.

Then you get her ideas about bunny rabbits flying on Buzz Lightyear ("Bunny rabbits don't have wings," she explained, silly me...) and that Woody from "Toy Story" is sitting next to her in the car with his seat belt on. And how she wants Daddy to pretend to open the windows so the elephants and other wild animals can get in the house. And then she pretends to make her favorite foods and feed them to me, which doesn't sound that ununusal until you realize that her "cooking" involves stirring soapy water around in a plasticware container in her bathtub. She makes kitty cat ears by opening a hinged plastic Easter egg and sticking it atop her head. You get the idea.

So I'm encouraging it. She likes pointing out vehicles on the road when we're taking a drive, mostly the trucks and the motorcycles, so I ask "where to you think they're going?" And she answers, to a friend's house. To the store. To the grocery store. To a farm. And so on, and so forth.

It's all cute and wonderful, but I still can't get over that mental picture of a bunny flying on Buzz Lightyear's wings....

Janus the cat has been running around and tripping us now for over a year. You go to pet him, and he bites you. He scratches every surface of the house except, of course, for his scratching post. He chews on Veronica's toys. And starting last week, he's been pooping in the master bedroom. And no, that's not where the litter box is located.

So yesterday, after some discussion, we took him to live with Jason's family outside of Marietta. His grandfather and his aunt, who live next door to one another and adjacent to their family business, both love cats and have a lot of land for him to run about and catch things with those claws. He'll be an outdoor cat; we never had him declawed but he was neutered last year, so he won't be adding to the unwanted cat population in the area.

Was this my first choice? Do I like this choice? No on both, but there was really no other good solution. What really gets me, though, is that this is the first time really, in 12 years, that I've been without a cat in the house. Veronica has never had the experience and last night was still closing the bathroom and bedroom doors "so Janus doesn't get in here" until she was reminded he wasn't there anymore. She doesn't seem too bothered by it, as he attacked her about as much as anybody. But I worry about yet another change on top of all the others.

More later, as my lunch break comes to a close.