The Birds and the Bees according to C

Part of our bedtime routine with our daughter includes bedtime prayers. A time that has proven to be quite interesting (see this post and this post). Recently she has started adding to my prayers...either praying her own prayers quietly while I'm praying, or adding statements onto my prayers. The other night after we prayed for a baby brother or sister she piped up and said...

"And let the nut crack the egg."

Huh? Nut crack the egg? What was she talking about? Was it something at school or daycare? Unable to figure out what she was talking about, I asked her to explain. She said...

"Babies come from eggs. The egg needs to crack open so the baby can get out."

"C, what is the nut?"

"Your vitamin."

Ahh...the folic acid I take every morning.

Hubby and I had a good laugh after I relayed the conversation to him, and he was able to explain some of her reasoning. C has been asking lots of questions about babies...how they get in mommy's tummy and how do they get out. During one of these conversations my hubby had told her that there were eggs in mommy's tummy, and that a seed would hit the egg to make it a baby. He said..."She never asked me what the seed was". I'm ok with her thinking it's a vitamin for now.

Wordless Wednesday - No Fear of Water

Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit

"C, do you want some beans for supper?"

"Oh yeah! I want the toots!"

C's new bike

Tonight after supper we told C we had a surprise for her. After asking "What is it?" a number of times and not getting the answer, she started to guess.

"Is it a camera?"
"Is it a new pair of flip flops?"
"Is it a Webkinz? I hope it's a Webkinz. I want to play in Webkinz World on the computer."

Webkinz? I didn't even know what a Webkinz was until a couple of days ago when my hubby mentioned that C was asking for one. And even though I told her that no, it was not a Webkinz, she still kept talking about how she hoped it was one. I was starting to get nervous that she would be disappointed that the surprise was a bike. But I soon realized that I had no need to worry...she was excited when she saw the bike. It was bigger...it was pink...it had streamers, a hand brake and a bell. She rode the bicycle up and down the sidewalk, around the school and to the park with the biggest grin on her face...dinging the bell the entire time.

Wordless Wednesday

Teenagers 101

Is there such a course? I think my hubby and I might need to take it instead of the crash course.

Last night my hubby and I attended an out of town wedding and did not get home until close to 1am. When we opened the garage door, we could not believe our eyes. There sitting on the steps was our student...locked out of the house because she had forgotten her key. I felt SOOO bad as I could not imagine how awful it must have been to sit there and wait. She had spent a number of hours with a friend, but had returned home once it got dark to wait for us.

Lessons learned in the crash course...
1. Teenagers can be forgetful and often require reminders.
2. Host family should compile a list of emergency contact numbers.

Drip...drip...drip...

That's the sound of water dripping onto our kitchen ceiling. In the last 4 months we've had more issues with water than my hubby has had in his 20 years experience of being a home owner.

It started in January when my hubby noticed a water mark on the kitchen ceiling... right beneath the upstairs bathtub. We called a plumber and prepared ourselves for the worse. What if he had to cut a hole in the kitchen ceiling? Fortunately the plumber was able to access the necessary plumbing from my daughter's bedroom closet and fix the seal.

In April, we had the overflowing toilet which created a second water stain on our kitchen ceiling (see this post).

Then there was Tuesday.

A severe thunderstorm come through our area bringing torrential downpours, strong winds and even a tornado. We were out of the house at that time, but when we came home we discovered that a house guest (not our international student) had left her bedroom window open. In a four foot area of her room...everything was soaked. The carpet, the blinds, the walls, the table, the lamp, her clothes, plus lots of other things. Enough water came in through the window to soak through the carpet, the underpad, and flooring to create a third and fourth water mark on our kitchen ceiling...one of them spilling over to include the kitchen wall. My hubby went to the basement to check to see if the water had dripped down onto the basement ceiling. It didn't...but two repaired foundation cracks had leaked creating a big puddle. Fortunately the basement is not finished so nothing besides some cardboard boxes were damaged.

I guess it could be worse. My sister had a pipe burst in her upstairs bathroom toilet. The leaking water caused part of her kitchen ceiling to cave in...spilling toilet water onto her counters, stove and floor and into her cupboards.

Wordless Wednesday

Sometimes she's too smart

On Saturday morning I mentioned to my daughter that I needed her help with a few tasks around the house. When she started to protest I stood her up on the bed to be at my eye level and I said to her...

"C, are you not a member of this family?"

Her quick and confident response was...

"No, I'm God's child! I belong to him!"

Will it be a garden...or a jungle?

Two years ago this coming October we moved into our current home. One reason that we were attracted to this house was the landscaping. The previous owner was a gardener at heart and had transformed the backyard into a park by planting many different trees, rose bushes and flowers (even a cactus). She had carefully planned the garden so that something new was blooming all summer long. From the tulips and daffodils in the early spring, to the black-eyed susans in late August and lots of other plants in between. But along with this beauty comes work...lots of work...and we were unprepared for the amount of time and energy required to keep our park from looking like a jungle. Last summer, the over zealous plants and weeds were victorious in the back part of the yard, taking over parts of the lawn and walling in the compost so that we could no longer reach it.

I'm not much of a gardener for the sole reason that I don't like bugs. I can handle ants and the odd spider, but worms and other creepy crawlers that cling to the roots of weeds gross me out. Not to mention all the other interesting insects crawling on the dirt...like the lawn grub we found a few days ago. Yuck! Then there are the bees that come in droves when new flowers bloom. I'm convinced the reason they build nests on our deck is to be closer to the abundant availability of nectar in our yard.

A nice thing this year is that my daughter has taken a big interest in the outdoors. She can amuse herself for long periods of time with a bucket of water and her gardening set. A birthday gift from Aunt T last year, it even came with a pair of kid gardening gloves. When she's not watering the weeds, she's killing ants, picking dandelions or raking the dirt. She just loves to help and learn and I've enjoyed showing her new things...like a butterfly on a flower, or the ants working away...even rabbit dropping as it seems that we have a resident bunny.

If again this year I have to surrender to the jungle, I'll just fall back on the advice a landscaper friend of ours gave us..."Whatever you don't want is a weed".

Wordless Wednesday - Bouctouche Dunes, New Brunswick

The Amazing Race

The Amazing Race All-Star finished tonight and my daughter was devastated. She wanted the all-girl team, Dustin and Kandice, to win. Calling them "the Barbies", she cheered for them every week and got excited when they were the first team at the pit stop. Tonight she cried. Cried because they didn't win, and cried because the show was over, and they wouldn't be back next week. My hubby and I were baffled. Was all this crying real? Was she really this upset? I told her there would be other races and other girl teams she could root for, but that was no consolation, because Dustin and Kandice would not be there.

At bedtime, when I asked her to pray, between tears she said.
"Dear Lord, please let Dustin and Kandice come back to the race. Amen."

Wordless Wednesday - Starfish