Mrs. Cole and the Gasropods.....

*Ok so my brother's girlfriend's name is Nicole. when Bug first met her she called her Sean for quite some time. Why? We have no idea. Nicole is a lovely Italian young lady with long-ish dark hair. Sean is an Asian-Canadian with short dark hair. Are there any similarities other than hair color? No. However, we've moved passed calling her Sean. (That truly only lasted for the first few times) Now when Nicole comes to visit she's referred to as Mrs. Cole. I'm thinking Bug mis-heard me when I called her Miss Nicole. I think her calling her Mrs. Cole though is funny, and thankfully so does Nicole. :)

* We finally have become the typical "American Family." (UGH! Just typing that made me shudder.... :oP) We will have 2 children and the dreaded minivan. (our license to drive slowly according to David) *sigh* I can't begin to tell you how much I miss the Accord!!! It was sporty and sleek looking and when David and I went out to Meijers for our date nights (we always end up there regardless of where we originally started out!!!! WTF?) we at least looked pretty stylin' in our Accord. Now we have a lt. blue Odyssey and while it's VERY nice; (has all the bells and whistles of course....and we got one heck of a deal on it. :) )It just doesn't have that stylin' feel to it. KWIM? (that is text talk for "know what I mean?") I mean, nothing says "young stylin' couple" like a lt. blue Honda Odyssey barreling down the highway at 80mph with a DVD of "Little Bear" showing in the back.....

(In all honesty the van is really nice and something that once we have two car seats; something we'll pretty much need. Bug LOVES it. It's her new van and if you ask her if she likes it she'll tell you it's "not too bad." OH! And for Pete's sakes DON'T call it a car!! It's a van!!)

*So as the child of an invertebrate paleontologist I expect Bug to know all her fossil classifications by the time she's 3. (Ok so I'm kidding.................sort of......) We've been working on the basics: ammonites, trilobites, gastropods, brachiopods, crinoids and bryozoans. These are all fossils i have readily available in my collection and can actually show her. I'm trying to find some decent pictures to make some flash cards. She loves flash cards. LOVES them. To the point of annoyance and we have to hide them sometimes to get a break. So here's a bit of a fossil primer:

• ammonites: MY personal favorite, completely extinct. They look like and are cousin to the modern day nautilus but are more closely related to the cuttlefish. Seeing as they are my favorites I could give you tons of info about them, but I highly doubt you are interested.
• trilobites: next to dinosaurs one of the most widely recognized classes of fossils. They too are completely extinct and cousins to the horseshoe crabs. (Some of them are so fancy in appearance they could easily be considered the "drag queens" of the Paleozoic seas)
• gastropods: a.k.a. snails......if I need to describe a snail to you; you really should consider getting out more often.
• brachiopods: 99% of these guys are either fossils or extinct. They look like bivalves (a.k.a. clams, oysters etc.) except the physiology is completely different.
• crinoids: most are extinct but there are still quite a few of them hanging around. They're also called "sea-lilies." They have arms that extend from a head on a long stalk and they look like flowers.
• bryozoans: the bane of any fossil-hunter's existence. (Just ask Heather; she'll back me up) You'll think you've found the coolest fossil only to uncover more of it and it turns out to be a @$% &%$# @&%$ing bryozoan!!! grrrrr They're colonial kinda like corals (and look like corals) but are more kinda like underwater "moss" hard to describe....but trust me once you've seen one....you'll see more than you ever wanted to.....grrrrr

So anyway....now you know the basics. Which is actually important to this little story. Bug is pretty good about identifying ammonites. They're all over the house so it's kinda hard to miss them. She's getting pretty good at recognizing pictures of trilobites too. when we would see pictures of snails she'd recognize that they were snails and I'd tell her its name is "Gastropod." And she'd repeat it, only it sounds more like "gasropod." The other night David was reading her "Ten Tiny Tadpoles." It's a counting story about how these tadpoles meet up with various other aquatic creatures and one by one go off on their own. When David got to the part where "and one little tadpole went off with the watersnails...." Bug interrupted him and said very seriously: "No Daddy! That's not a snail! That's a gasropod!" It was fantastic and I was beaming (and laughing) from ear to ear. (What invertebrate paleontologist mother wouldn't?)