Misconceptions

Things are rarely as they seem, and kids only complicate that old adage. Many and varied are the times that accurately seeing what's going on in our house has taken a double or triple take. Almost always the vision in question revolves around a "mess," which can be loosely defined as "everything children do with things," and how that mess catches my eye at first and then changes the tone of everything upon closer inspection.

Case in point, a few days ago, I approached our bathtub to start a bath for the kids. While standing over the tub, I looked down and saw a black spot. Like this:

At first blush, I had no idea what this was. Because I've had small children in my house for four years now, I automatically assumed that it was poop. Someone had left a floater in the tub the night before and we had missed it. I should note, this has NEVER happened, but that's still the first assumption I make. It's a sad place to be in, where I automatically assume a new, awful occurrence with poop has happened instead of something more innocuous, but there you have it. However, there was still a slim chance that I wouldn't need to get a kleenex to clean it up, so I bent in a little to get a better look.

Huh. That's not poop. That's . . . huh.

A head. Stuck to the bottom of our tub. Peter Parker's head, to be specific. From Gabe's Spiderman sticker book. Even he had no idea why it was there. Just one of those things.

Norah also came up with my favorite misnomer to date (well, of hers, anyway--Libby and I decided that our favorite one from either kid so far is still Gabe's "resternaut"). Wal-Mart had a bunch of summer toys on clearance last week and we bought her a pair of Dora walkie-talkies for $5. She has no concept of how to use them properly, but she loves the fact that they make ceaseless noise. And she calls them her "walkie tacos."

Yeah, I don't know. That one might be better than resternaut. I mean, sending a place to eat into outer space is funny and all, but whatever circumstance that would call for a walkie taco might trump it.