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Two anecdotes that demonstrate, perhaps, the cognitive phenomenon known as "mommy brain"...or maybe it's just the ethereal nature of memory and intuition...or maybe I'm just a dork.

#1: "The existence of forgetting has never been proved" - Nietzsche
Last night Isaac was watching me open Gmail, and he suddenly asked whether he could have a gmail account of his own. I was ambivalent (and have not really resolved this yet), but the question jogged my memory and I suddenly remembered that I created a gmail account for Isaac, way back in '04 when Google first released gmail.

A moment or two of digging in my own gmail archives produced the username that I used for him, along with the first email message that I sent to test that his account was working -- in which I said something like "Hi baby, aww your first email!" which both kids found very funny. :)

Then I logged out of gmail and put in Isaac's username and, since I figured there was no chance of me remembering what password I would have used, I clicked the "forgot my password" button. It gave me the security question, which I made up when I created the account. The question was: "[what is] your ugly animal toy."

Well!! I suppose that nearly eight years ago, when I was creating this account, I probably thought I would never forget that ugly animal toy. Oh the arrogance (or perhaps naïvete)! In Sept of '04 this probably seemed the obvious choice, but in May of '12 I was stumped. I racked my brain and could not remember a toy that Isaac played with that I would have described as an "ugly animal toy." The only animal toy I really remember is this awful plastic caterpillar that sang annoying songs -- but I wouldn't have described that toy as ugly; annoying yes, ugly no.

So I spent some time looking through photos of Isaac from that time period, hoping to see something in a picture that would jog my memory again. The kids greatly enjoyed looking at those pictures (and dang, Isaac was such a cute baby! :) ) but no dice. Eventually I just started putting in some guesses, and one of them actually worked, to my great surprise. I won't tell you what it was, in the interest of security (although we've since changed the security question), but I'll just say that even after having guessed it, I still don't actually remember that toy. Mysterious. Shall have to ask my mom whether she remembers it.

#2: "There is no truth. There is only perception." - Flaubert
The kids and I (and my mom, and sandykidd and Baz, and pekmez and her family) recently participated in the Science Festival Chorus of the North Cambridge Family Opera -- which is a mouthful, but what it means is that this community group (the NCFO), which puts on a modern opera every year, also performs every year at the Cambridge Science Festival. They sing songs about various science topics; this year the topic was biology and earth science. We performed our concert three times, singing about 20 songs by British composer David Haines on topics like evolution, mutation, DNA, and so forth. Several of the songs talk about various creatures on earth and the various ways in which they are adapted to their environments. We had a TON of fun with this, by the way; it was the kids' first real choral-singing and performing experience, and it was so fun to do it with them. We will definitely do it again next year.

One of the songs is about a funny little creature called an axolotl, which is a type of salamander that is native to just one lake in Mexico. It is a great song, really peppy and catchy -- we will find ourselves singing it weeks or months or years from now, I'm sure. :)

Over April vacation, my kids went to vacation "camp" at the local YMCA, and on one occasion they took a field trip to the Roger Williams Zoo in Providence. When they got back, Isaac told me that they had seen an axolotl at the zoo. Something in his expression made me think that he was pulling my leg, so I was skeptical. Ruthie was all, "no really, we did!" but she also had her expression that often tells me she's joking or trying to fool me. Later, I managed to get her alone and asked her whether they really saw an axolotl or whether they made that up to fool me. She said that they had made it up and it wasn't true.

But it got me curious as to whether there might be a zoo that does have an axolotl that we could visit some time. So I googled, and to my great surprise, up pops the Roger Williams Zoo!!

So I went and asked Isaac again, and he confirmed that he did indeed see it, although it was sleeping and pressed up against the side of its cage so he didn't really get a good look at it. Ruthie says she didn't see it at all. I speculate that she walked right past it without realizing, since she can't read well enough to have seen the label.

In conclusion, the moral of this story is that I am absolutely terrible at judging when one of my kids is telling me the truth or pulling my leg. ;)