Astronomically Cute

Keira's got a ton of career options on her plate right now: she fluctuates between wanting to become a teacher, drive an ice cream truck, and play professional tag football, and she's certainly getting a lot of early practice at stripping (though obviously we're hoping that one won't pan out). A few weeks ago, she and Bear started a new hobby that may add another occupation to her list: astronomer!

Let's be clear on one thing here: any scientific aptitude either of our children inherit will be entirely from Bear's side of the family. I did pretty well in my high school science classes, but once I decided I was a future English major and preferred discussing themes to dissecting things (to this day, I can't eat lamb because it reminds me of the texture of the cat--yes, CAT--they made us dissect in A.P. Biology), I kind of blew off the hard sciences altogether and forgot everything I had learned. The girls, however, seem to have inherited Bear's and his mom's interest in all things celestial, and even as babies, both Keira and Ellie were always able to point out even the tiniest sliver of the moon in broad daylight. Every time Grandma Marmee and Pop-Pop come over at night, Grandma has to take them outside in the brrrr to check out the moon--it's a ritual. So when Bear busted out his telescope one night and took Keira outside to check out some thingamabobber that was supposed to be appearing in the sky, she was stoked beyond belief (even though she has trouble seeing through the telescope, so they've since switched to binoculars). Now this has become a nightly occurrence in our backyard:




I totally got in trouble for taking those pictures, by the way--my flash interfered with Keira's stargazing, and she scolded me for the interruption. Hmmmp!

After they come in, Keira usually wants to look up whatever Bear pointed out to her, and they cuddle up for some good old-fashioned father-daughter learnin':



How stinking cute is that?

Of course, this means that I end up fielding questions like, "Mom, what's a nebula again?" and "Do you think the Seven Sisters will be above the moon tonight?" during the day while Bear's at work, so I could really stand to study up and at least pretend to be somewhat knowledgeable about these things. In reality, though, I tend to stick with, "Let's ask Daddy when he gets home!" which is perfectly fair, since Bear defers all braiding and ponytail-ing of the girls' hair to me. Hey, at least we each know our strengths and our limitations!