Parenting: The good with the bad

The good: We’re on the road this morning when out of the blue, Reed pipes up with this beauty: “Two, to, and too are homophones!” I had to pause for a second to figure out what he was telling me before telling him, yes, he’s right. Then we started talking about the misty rain we were driving through. “It’s sprinkling,” I say. “No, Daddy! There’s no hose!”  “Buddy, clouds can sprinkle, too. You don’t always need a hose.” “Oh. So sprinkles are from…(pause)…rain, the hose, and muffins.”

I just loved the tie in with sprinkling rain to sprinkles on a cupcake.

The bad: At lunch, Rebekah was happily nibbling on some banana bread I’d made when I stride over with a container of baby yogurt. She smiles and greedily slurps down the first spoonful. She takes a second spoonful and then a look of abject horror crosses her little, cherubic face. Was it too cold? What’s going on. She shakes her head a little side to side, then starts flailing her hands. She looks up with a wide open screaming mouth, face red, and no sound coming out. Oh shit. She’s choking. I stand up to yank her from the high chair, fumble with the clasps, get her out, flip her over face down and pound on her back. The first slap knocks it all loose and there in the pool of yogurt is the little clump of hastily swallowed banana bread that was the problem.

She sucked in air and let out a fierce cry; it was the best sound I could have heard right then.