The Things Kids Expose You To

Shortly after I had Daisy, my brother Chris, his wife Priscilla, and my recently returned from a mission nephew Adam came to see me. What with labor having finished only an hour previously, the conversation naturally turned (at least naturally to me and Priscilla) to the details of my labor. After awhile of hearing this discussion, Chris turned to Adam and giving him a congratulatory pat on the back, informed him, "You are no longer a child. You are a man now."

So, maybe that is where it starts -- with the details of labor, its onset and full conclusion, but it certainly doesn't stop there. Oh noooo. That is far from the last of the unsettling images that will be placed in your mind. It is just that later it will come directly from your offspring.

Here were two conversations yesterday that were MILD -- very mild, but that made me slightly shudder all the same.

Abe: Daisy, did you know that people in China eat dogs with the hair and stuff still on.

Goldie (interrupting their conversation): I don't like to eat animals!

Daisy: Goldie, every time you eat meat you are eating animals.

Goldie: Well! I don't mean that. I mean I don't like to eat them when they're like alive.

Abe: Goldie, pretty much no one eats animals alive.

Goldie: I know, I don't!

Abe: Goldie! We mean that . . .

Me: Abe, maybe its best if we just sort of stop this conversation for now before anyone gets too upset.

Then, a few moments later Daisy calls in a tattle-tale sort of way, "Mom! Goldie thinks number two is alive!" (Yes, number two is what you think it is).

I looked at Goldie with eyebrows raised. She looked back, neither denying nor defending herself, just looking nervous. I smiled and shook my head and she just smiled too as if to say, "Mom, I know you would prefer we just drop this, and I would prefer it too because I may truly think what I think, and I don't know that I can properly defend my position or that you want me to have to."

As I said, those were two fairly mild things. There are oh so many questions and interesting bits of unasked for information regarding bathroom occurrences and on and on. Funny kids.

Also, I mentioned Abe explaining co-managers to Daisy the other day. It is also sadly funny to hear them discuss the harsh realities of life with one another. Here is what I heard coming from the front porch the other day (presumably they had discovered a bug caught in a spider's web):

Daisy: Abey! Let it go!

Abe (exasperated): I can't, Daisy! If spiders can't eat anything, bugs will take over the world!

Daisy: But that's only one single bug!

Abe (with loud frustration and annoyance): Daisy! (and then in a more quiet but sadly final tone)It's already dead.

I can't really explain this, but it is quite fascinating to me, when I look at my kids, and compare them to my baby Jesse, that they not only develop speech, but their minds actually grow to have their own thoughts and crazy unique ideas and ways of explaining the world -- things I never even put in their heads . . . and, of course, that is especially amazing when it is about more than just eating dogs with hair, and "number two," and the food chain, but even that stuff just reminds me all the more what a miracle these little people are. Somehow it almost seems impossible to me that the tiny little things I once carried inside of me are here making jokes and telling stories and creating their own assumptions and opinions.