Our friends, Samantha and Lance, celebrated their twin's two year old birthday with a Puppy Party. For those of you not familiar with a Puppy Party, a couple of people arrive with a palette of puppies, toss them into a pen, and then kids of all ages can play with them. It goes without saying that by the end of the day the Puppy Party morphs into a Poopy Party. Sounds similar, yet vastly different.
Lisa was adamant that Emma and Andrew not play with the puppies. For once, Lisa agreed with Crazy Grandma that a Puppy Party is just an open invitation for germs and disease. I suppose it is true that something as cute as puppies could be potentially dangerous. I analogized it to Nazi babies, but once again I was called a dumbass.
Thankfully for Lisa, there were plenty of activities to distract the kids from the cage of ravenous puppies:
Emma never saw a pinecone before, so she found them extremely interesting. She would pick the pinecones off the floor, place them on the blue plate, take them off the blue plate, return the cones to the floor, put the blue plate on the floor, and start all over again. Also, Emma never saw an overweight woman in a wheelchair before, but found her more difficult to lift.
Sidewalk chalk fascinated the kids. Emma and Andrew scribbled pastel colored designs all over the cement. They also tagged a couple of 7-11s and freeway signs.
In order to keep the kids away from the puppies, we allowed them to play with things that we ordinarily would prohibit. Like in the above picture: we let Andrew play with a white boy. The only bad habits he picked up from him were a fascination with Miracle Whip and Barry Manilow.
What's scarier than rabid puppies? Female Asian drivers. We hoped Emma wouldn't perpetuate any stereotypes, but she held up traffic, couldn't parallel park, refused to drive on the freeway, and did not make a left turn on a yellow light. 
It's refreshing to see that Andrew inherited my athletic skills. And by skills, I mean the inability to catch a ball, throw a ball, or hit a ball. I don't know if this counts, but many times during P.E. class I was kicked in the balls.
But inevitably, Emma did find the puppy cage and found herself smiling and laughing at the animals. She even uttered a couple of "woof woofs" hoping to communicate with them. Much in the same way that toddlers connect with babies and supermodels connect with ugly musicians, kids of all ages really seem to have a connection with puppies. I don't foresee us having a puppy in the Ichikawa family any time soon, but I think Crazy Grandma is an interesting enough pet for the kids right now.
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