Olivia insisted on wearing snow boots to school today. Claus bought them for her when he took them skiing last December. They look like Uggs - fleece lined, and way too hot for May in Hawaii.

She loves them. As soon as they got back from Utah last December, she wore them a handful of times to school, each time coming home telling me they were too hot by day's end. I had warned of such, but she always ignored.

I do not know why she can't remember this experience, or care when I remind her of it, but she's been trying all week to wear them again. Finally, I gave in.

"Have it your way. When I see you after school, don't complain how hot they were," I warned. "You should really just listen to me. I'm smart."

To test me, she actually quizzed me! Her exact response to me was, "What's 100 + 100?"

"Two hundred," I said.

"What's one million + one million?"

"Two million," I answered.

"What's one million + 200?" she continued.

"One million two hundred," I responded.

"Wrong! Twenty hundred one million!" she exclaimed gleefully.

I suppose I can't argue with that.

Kids crack me up. Olivia's way of seeing the world or knowing about it is just funny.

At school, they had a year-end celebration in which a shave ice truck came out one day after classes. "It was so awesome! I wanted to bring some of my shave ice home for you to try but I couldn't because it would melt! Can you come next year so you can order yourself a shave ice? I want you to see how great it is!" she bubbled. That is very caring and sweet.

"Thanks for thinking about me, Dear," I said. "Tell me about your shave ice. What flavor did you have?"

"I had half banana, half strawberry, half vanilla, and a drop of tiger blood on top!" she described.

Every time she uses the word "half" it cracks me up because she doesn't get the concept of "half." We've tried to teach her all year but it's not sticking yet. So she uses it to mean "part."

The tiger blood threw me off. So she's Charlie Sheen now?

"What does tiger blood taste like," I asked.

"It's dark red like strawberry but better!" she told me.

Well. That sounds like WINNING! to me.

Be very wary when a little kid wants to give you a gift. On the way to school, we pass a small patch of land that is a little neglected, thus grows wild with whatever seeds the birds drop.

It looks like it's kind of city property but I have learned it actually belongs to a house above it on the hill, whose owners don't seem to come tend it much. It's a sliver of land that abuts the sidewalk.

Don't get me wrong. It grows nice plants, just a little untended.

Wild cherry tomatoes are pretty popular in my neck of the woods. This plot of land lately has many square feet of thriving tomato plants, which have developed fruits.

Olivia stooped down to pick a nice red one this morning. "Want this, Mommy?" she offered.

I am not a huge tomato fan so I declined kindly. "Well, I'm going to give it to my teacher because I like her, then," she re-gifted. "Plus, I didn't even lick it!"

Awesome requisite for gift giving. The next time I give someone a gift, I'm going to have to let them know this present is made better by the fact that I did not even lick it.

We've hit critical mass in the shrimp tank. Yay! I looked in there this week and there are roughly four dozen babies floating vertically. It looks like red rain.

For a couple months, whenever I look in there, there are at least five or six pregnant shrimp with huge clutches - like 15 or 20 eggs. There will be at least a few more that have smaller (half hatched?) clutches.

These numbers are up from early March, the first time I noticed the hatchlings. At that time there were only eight or ten babies and maybe three or four pregnant shrimp at a time.

From what I understand on the limited research, the larvae float vertically using a yolk sac for nutrition for their first ten days of life, then they swim horizontally after that and look like a very miniature version of the adults. I read that they hide in the rocks for a while.

In April I hadn't seen many babies or juveniles and I was wondering if they died, but in early May two things happened. The juveniles came out of hiding so now I see a few crawling on the rocks, and there has been an explosion of larvae.

Every other day this week I've looked in the tank and it seems that a new clutch has hatched - growing the population about a dozen at a time. It's hard to count because they're so small it plays trick on my eyes, but it is a lot.

I could be a lot more detailed about this with notes and exact dates, but I just don't have the time to maintain my hobby that way, so I'll have to go with rough estimates.

Meanwhile, I've started a breeding tank. It's actually a large ceramic pot I got for $8 from Ross and it has no hole in the bottom.

I specifically thought about this vessel because I wanted something that would give the shrimp more darkness in which to mate. The success of my shrimp hatching seems to correlate with me adding more coral rocks to the tank.

I added more rocks in December 2012 and within a couple months the eggs finally started hatching. I had seen berried females for much of 2012 but no eggs hatched.

In this new tank, I've used a different substrate: abalone shells. I had easy access to shells, and I felt that their rough exterior texture would sufficiently mimic the coral rock, plus they would fall into positions that also create many small hiding spaces.

I used about 75 shells and organized the top layer so the iridescent nacre faced up. It's pretty to look at.

Five shrimp are now swimming endless laps in their new home. For now, they're my testers to see if I created the correct conditions for life.

More to come on the breeding program...

Poor Olivia. She's so attuned to shifts in our schedule. Is this because we're very close since I was home all or most of the time for her first three years of life?

I've been working a lot for the past few months. Early mornings, late nights, weekends. I'm not sure why it's so busy. Maybe the economy is picking up so more people can travel or book events.

Claus is a super dedicated dad, but she is a Mommy's Girl.

Apparently, she tells the teacher every day "I want my mommy." She revealed this to me yesterday.

"Every day?" I asked in amazement? She used to do this in preschool, too.

"Yes. Or sometimes I want to say it to her but I can't," she said.

Aww. So young and tender and attached. I felt bad.

I clarified with the teacher that it's only cropped up lately. I pieced together that it's coincided with my very busy work period.

That's the working mother's guilt. There will be periods of work like this. There will be guilt trips like this.

Should I address this with Olivia or should I do something extra-nice for her this weekend?