well, carter had a bloody nose this am. not an "i just picked my nose into oblivion and now it is bleeding" bloody nose (we have had those too), but one of those "mommy, my nose is running and i need a tissue" bloody noses. ava has never really had one, and i think i may have had 1 in my entire lifetime, so i was slightly taken aback. it stopped, but not before he took great pleasure in blowing all the blood he could into a tissue to look at (i did actually discourage this, but he found it irresistable).

os a slightly less graphic note, the other day he was looking at a lightswitch, and asked "mommy, what does zero-f-f spell?" and i said "well, that is an o and it spells 'off'." so he flipped the switch and then looked at the other word for a long time, then said "does this say 'NO?'" i was speechless for a minute, then said well, you read it one way, it says no, but we usually read from left to right, so it says "on" -- i was trying desperately to give him credit for figuring out that it was NO backwards, and at the same time let him know that it actually was "on". and yesterday he was looking at the clock and he said "mom. it is 1:30. i told you it was 1:30...it is no12:30..." and i just nodded and said "ok, honey..." assuming this was part of one of his games, and did not even glance at the clock. he got up to leave, dropping the clock on the floor, and when i bent down to put the clock back where it belonged, it actually did say 1:30. i know he has no concept of time itself, but i am starting to wonder if the numbers themselves acually make sense. obviously it could be a fluke...but an interesting one.

today in the deli, he asked "mommy...why are tomatoes red? what is that man eating? why did i get orange toothpicks? why does that man have blue eyes?" -- the man laughed and i lifted my hands in a "what can i do?" expression and said "well, that's the way his genes made his eyes..." and then i said to the man "i'm sorry, i am sure you did not expect to be so scrutinized at lunch..." and he was a really good sport and said "i love those questions."

but the most disconcerting series of questions came the other week at public skating. he was tired and i was tired, so we were resting on the bench, and out of the blue he asked me who my great great great grandmother was. i did my best to answer (i don't really know their names), and then he said "can i meet them?" and at this point the man sitting on the other side of carter started to suppres a smile, and i dodged a bit and said "well, they finished living a long time ago--even i never met them." and he said "are they dead?" and i said yes. and then the inevitable series of questions that i really wanted to answere at home, alone, without all of the holiday vacationers surrounding me, began. "why are they dead?" "am i/are you/is (insert name) going to die?" "when?" "why?" by this point, the man next to him was desperately trying not to laugh at this, so as to afford carter a degree of respect for what was obviously an important conversation, but i caught his eye at one point, and he just gave me a look that said "been there, done that..."

today we also went to the wild center for the first time in a long time, and on the way there, ava played her game of "what color will the admission tag be?" and since today was saturday she aske me what colors bagan with "S" -- and i said "scarlett" "scarlett? what is that?" "it is a bright deep red" "oh, i think it will be scarlett." lo and behold, the tags were bright red. thank you universe for a terrific vocabulary lesson!

both kids relentlessly ask me what different words mean, and this is great, because it certainly taxes my brain (try it--it is harder than you think to provide a definition for a word that accurately and succinctly provides the meaning without using a variation of the word itself). today we had "shuffle" (easy to define) and "scoffed" (not as easy to define). some others too though i cannot remember what they were.

when we got home, carter and dad read books and this allowed me to finally help ava open one of her christmas gifts, which was a microscope kit. it is a 'big person necessary' sort of activity, primarily because the kit came with a scalpel, but also because it just requires a lot of help to get everything lined up, in focus, etc. the lenses were not all that great--there was a weird prism effect, but they were good enough, and she was rapt. and she really took it all in--she wanted to know what the smallest things were that she could see, and when i went so far as to explain that a light microscope (not this one) could provide resolution for things that were larger than the waves of light -- the waves being a concept she grasped remarkably quickly -- "dad! light moves in waves just like water!" -- but anything smaller would have to be looked at with an electron microscope, she seemed to understand at least that there was a limit, and that it was defined by these waves. then of course carter asked if we could please get an electron microscope.

oh. sure. why not? one electron microscope coming up!