Showing posts with label ants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ants. Show all posts

Monday, August 25, 2008

Would you like ants with that?

Today my 4 year old wanted to know if people live at the bottom of the world in the arctic. The conversation went something like this:

4 year old: Mom, do people live at the bottom of the world in the arctic?

Me: Honey, the bottom of the world is called Antarctica. The top of the world is the Arctic.

4 year old: Nooooo. I'm talking about the bottom of the world with the ice.

Me: The bottom is Antarctica. The top is called the Arctic.

4 year old: (clearly getting frustrated now) Noooooo. Mom, I mean the plain one!

Me: The plain one? (I'm trying to think if there are any plains in the Arctic or Antarctica.)

4 year old: Yes, the plain one. Do people live in the plain one?

Me: Uhhhhhh (completely confused)

4 year old: (almost ready to throw a tantrum because I'm not able to answer his question about people living on the "plain one.") You know the one without the ants. Do people live on the plain Arctic?

Me: Ohhhh! You mean the Arctic is plain because "ant" is part of Antarctica?

4 year old: Duhhh (ok, he didn't actually say that, but the look he gave me said it loud and clear!)

Me: I think Santa Claus lives in the Arctic.

4 year old: OK (finally satisfied with an answer).

Some how Santa seemed like a perfectly logical answer to that logical conversation.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Birthday Smirthday

I'm too old for birthdays! Ok, so I'm still 22 (at least my kids believe that!) or close enough.

Yesterday I got a birthday card from my doctor reminding me to get a checkup for my birthday (great). It also had a checklist of things women over 50 need to care of. Ok, so I might not actually be 22, but I'm closer to 22 than I am to 50! That card really made me feel special on my birthday. Yeah, really.

I also received a small package from my mom. I could tell the address was written in my sister's handwriting, but I figured my mom probably just sent her to the post office. Inside was a book of poems, "For My Daughter." My mom even took the time to write a small paragraph on the first page of the book and wrote which poems in the book reminded her most of me. It was so sweet I almost cried. And this is not typical from my mom. Usually she sends a card and only writes my name at the top and "love mom and dad" at the bottom. And there may be a check in there too. This time she included a gift card. That was nice too.

My sister called today to say "happy birthday." Her birthday is 2 weeks before mine. I told her what our mom had sent me and we discovered that mom had sent her the same book for her birthday. Oh, and my mom picked out the same 4 poems for my sister too. (Good thing my mom doesn't read my blog ;) ) So now I'm not exactly feeling quite so special anymore.

I like to bake, so I made a cake for birthday. Someone had recommended a recipe for vanilla frosting that uses marshmallows. I have a lot of marshmallows right now so I thought would try it as a good way to use up some marshmallows. It was a disaster. It was very thin and more like vanilla marshmallow soup instead of cake frosting! So I thought if I put it in the fridge it might harden up a little. It did harden. It became one giant marshmallow! I tasted it. Sooooo sweet! But certainly not going to work for cake frosting.

I had another recipe that I used before for vanilla icing. This was a little thin but I was in a hurry to pick up my 4 year old from preschool, and thought since it was better than the giant marshmallow, it would have to do. I tasted it. It's good. But it's more the consistency you would expect on a coffee cake or cinnamon rolls. Well, I put it on the cake anyway.

One more thing I got for my birthday... My 4 year old made a drawing for me at preschool today. It has his name on it (although the letters aren't all in order. I think he started to write it and ran out of room, so he just put the rest of the letters on top). And he explained to me what the pictures were. One is a bucket of ants. You can see the ant eggs in the bucket and one huge ant on top of the bucket. The picture also includes the sand in the bucket and food for the ants. In case you missed the ant episode on the cookie jar, it's here.

I still need to make reservations for dinner tonight. At least I won't have to cook or clean! Am I the only who wishes that birthdays would just go away when you reach 29? Not that I would know, I'm only 22, remember?