Duchess is doing a lot of ultimate frisbee and gymnastics, and has rounded out her fall wardrobe to further advance her persona as Unthreateningly-Modest-and-Pretty-and-Athletic-and-Smart-and-Nice-Girl-Whom-Everybody-Likes. (Because this is the box into which almost all middle-class white 12-year-old girls feel they must compress themselves, as far as I can tell.) Skipper is taking tap dance classes and is ornery and growing into herself, and feeling a bit more academically challenged in a way that makes her feel anxious that she might not achieve perfection at all times. Girls. Boxes.
Also, we're getting guinea pigs, in the culmination of about five years of advocacy from the girls. (Not that they were advocating for guinea pigs, but they've accepted that this is the closest to a horse or a dog that they're going to get.) Feelings in the household are mixed, with some members grumpily opining that this is basically just a choice to set up a small poop production system. Amusingly, when we went to visit an astonishingly large number of guinea pigs at the home of a local guinea pig foster care provider, the grumpy member of the household was the one whom all the guinea pigs adored. They all crawled off everybody else's laps and went straight over to lie in his lap, gazing yearningly into his eyes. We'll see how this goes.
