Inventions

This morning Turtle asked me, "What is the sky made of?" Before I finished stumbling through my tortured explanation of atmospheric gases, she asked, "Who invented the sky?"

I groaned to myself - I hadn't even had a cup of coffee yet and I had been called on to literally explain the universe. But I decided to go for it: "Well, some people think God invented the sky and the earth and everything on it. And some people think the sky and the earth formed by themselves through, ummmm, natural processes."

I held my breath, hoping she would not ask me what I thought, because I really was not ready for that conversation as I am still working out the details myself. But, thankfully, she asked, "What are processes?" I said, "Nature, I should have just said Nature, you know, how things grow and change over time?" She seemed satisfied with this. So the moral of the story is, if your kid asks you complicated questions that you're not ready to answer, fill your answer with big words to distract them from the main question!

Speaking of inventions, Monkey has developed some good ideas for inventions lately. A few weeks ago she told Twin Daddy that when she grew up she wanted to invent a car where, when you got in, someone popped out of the front seat and drove the car so that she could sit in the back with her babies. "Like a robot?" I asked. "No, a real person," she said. While she may have some details to work out, I still thought this was genius, and figured that she must wish we could sit in the back seat with her now. Twin Daddy had a different take, commenting to me that Monkey was truly her mother's daughter, always looking for a way to get someone else to do her chores. I think he may have a point, as I regularly fantasize about not only a full time housekeeper but also a driver.

She thought of another invention yesterday, a mask you wear so that you speak English into it but Spanish comes out the other side. She showed me with her hands how it would work. Again, genius. Or a way to get out of the hard work of having to actually learn Spanish. Either way, it works for me. I suspect, given all the translation devices in existence, this sort of thing may be in the works somewhere, but how can she know that? She's just brilliant is all I'm saying.

Another thing she did yesterday was build an x-ray machine. She got some first-hand experience with x-rays last week, after she swallowed a nickel. Yes, a nickel. The pediatrician has us go in for x-rays the next morning so we could make sure it was actually in her stomach and on its way out, which it was. I was instructed to look for the nickel every time she had a bowel movement, which was a lovely way to spend the weekend. Of course, no one was watching when she went at school, and I never found it. The doctor said it must have passed by now given her prolific production over the last several days, and that we could assume it was gone and not worry about it any more.

So anyway, back to Monkey's x-ray machine. She took a big box and put Turtle's baby doll inside it, then taped the box up and then taped paper over the box. I helped her find a toy that blinked to use as the camera, which she put on top of the papered-over box. She would come in and turn on the blinking light, then walk out of the room and peek around the corner. I would say, "beeeep, beeeep" and then she would come back in and turn it off. We did this for about half an hour. Finally, she unwrapped the box and took the baby out, and then proceeded to show me all the x-rays, which involved holding up a bunch of different pieces of paper and then holding a toy in front of the paper to show me what was in there. Apparently the baby had swallowed: yarn, a toy elephant, a toy cat, a lovey, and I don't remember what else but it was a lot. So then Monkey had to do surgery on the baby, both on her throat and on her belly, to get all these things out. She cut on the baby for some time using the cake cutter that came with her wooden birthday cake set, then covered the baby with silver stickers - these were the stitches.

Then, because the baby had been such a good patient, Monkey brought her a basket of "stickers" for her to pick something to take home. Turtle picked something for the baby, as she had been playing the patient mother/voice of the baby through all of this, allowing her doll to be closed up in a box for half an hour and then cut up for another half hour, while she occasionally made crying noises to indicate the baby was unhappy about something.

All in all, a good day's work for Dr. Monkey and Mommy Turtle.