"Oh!" he said, "I thought she was just a fan!"

1 washable, non-toxic glue stick +

Four bored kids =

summer afternoon fun so hilarious I can hardly hold the camera straight.

~MB~

When you have a little boy who loves to pick flowers, even if those flowers were in the garden or flowerbeds, how can you say to him, "Stop picking flowers"? 

Someday this little boy will grow up to be a man.  Will he remember being a little boy who loved to pick flowers?

It's what happens when you're leaning on your elbows on the kitchen counter, reading a recipe for the dinner you're about to make, and you feel little fingers begin to slip into your back pocket looking for your phone...

And you do a little step over to the right.

And the fingers slip in there again.

And you do a little shimmy over to the left.

And the fingers come again.

So you go back to the right.

Fingers still there.

And you stand up on your toes as high as you can go.

At this point your dance partner will either a) laugh hysterically or b) start to scream.  It's all part of the dance.

At this point you can either a) pick up your partner and dance with him or b) continue dancing around the kitchen as you begin to prepare dinner.  The point is to make your partner forget what he wanted in the first place.  Make him think he just came and asked you to dance.

After a few whirls around the kitchen with your now-squealing partner, you're going to have to put him down and attend to that dinner.  So you go back to the counter, lean back over the cookbook...

And start all over again.

I'm at a total loss as to what to name this photo.  Or really, what to say about this at all.  This is my sewing machine cover.  But it's not, at present, covering my sewing machine, is it?

Help?  Tell me what to name this photo?

It's a matter of perspective, we figured, as have generations of parents before us.  If they don't know that there are starving children in Africa, how can they be grateful that they have food every day? (I know it didn't work when I was their age, but it makes perfect sense now.)  So we took advantage of a quiet moment, (thanks for babysitting the little guys, goats!) and had a little discussion on the matter.

At first we talked about what they're thankful for.  (Lego Star Wars, goats, friends.)  Then we talked about all the many things we have.  The idea still wasn't sinking in.  Their lists still had a "so?" at the end.  So we dug in and started talking about all the things that we have that other people don't. 

"Did you know that lots of people don't have enough to eat every day?"

"That's bad.  They should go to the store."  Nothing.

"Some kids' daddies don't have jobs, and the kids don't have anything they want, and sometimes, not everything they need."

They considered this blankly.

"Did you know that there are kids who don't have parents who love them and take care of them?"

Mischievous looks.  This sounded pretty good.

"Some people don't have enough clothes to wear when it's cold and they shiver all the time."

Have these kids ever been cold?  None of this seemed to get their attention.  I forged onward.  Surely they'd understand how sad homelessness is.

"And did you know that some people don't have a house and a bed to sleep in at night, and they have to sleep on a hard bench out in the park?"

Finally.  There it was, in my son's face, a look of total concern.  He was horrified.  Bingo. The beginnings of compassion, of gratitude.  We are good parents.  These kids will grow up to be decent folks.

"But..." he sputtered, "but..."  I knew it was coming, I waited for it...

"But what about MOSQUITOES???"

But it's difficult to map English precisely. It has funny sharp corners and dead-end passages that throw the best of us off. So it's no surprise when kids try to make one language rule fit all situations. "Man" is singular, so "mans" must be plural, right? "Mouse"--"mouses" and so on.

Usually it's easy to correct the kids. Sometimes, though, they come up with rules that make such perfect sense, that I hate to tell them the truth and ruin their belief in the precision of the world's workings.

My children use the word "cheese", as we all do, to describe a cheese, some cheese, and a bag of shredded cheese. It's rare that you would ask for one shred of shredded cheese, but if you do need to, what do you call it? Why, a "chee" of course. Same goes for rice. "Rice" is clearly plural, so singular must be a "ri". I'll be in the kitchen, making dinner as fast as I can go, and the children will come, begging to eat the ingredients of the meal I'm making. "No," I say, "you can eat dinner in a minute." "Pleeeeease," they wheedle, "could I just have one chee?"

Blink. Blink. The moment when you realize that they've simply done what you taught them to do, and now it's up to you to shatter their faith in you and their native language is always hard to take. So I don't. I hand them a chee, tell them to run along, and hope that someone else can handle the task of disillusionment.  After all, it did make sense.

Ri and chee, anyone?

Happy children running across the pasture, as the late afternoon sun gilds the background.  How idyllic...wait, is that child...?? No, he's only half-naked. Whew.