Friday, February 26, 2010

Is Strawberry spelled T-E-A?


Doodlebug is learning to read, but I am NOT making it easy. I'm certainly not making it intentionally difficult. Quite the contrary. I try to help and encourage him as he learns and he's doing very well. But he noticed something odd the other day and was confused. First, some background: as most of you probably know, I like to bake. And therefore I have a canister set. A nice big canister for flour that holds a 5-lb bag and another nice big one for sugar that holds a 5-lb bag. And for whatever reason, canister sets often come with 4 canisters, one for flour, one for sugar, one for coffee and one for tea.

And you may not know this, but I am not a big coffee drinker. Neither is the hubby. We almost never make coffee at home and when we do it's when we have company over. And God help them if I make it! I know nothing about making coffee and when I attempt it I am sure it either comes out way way way too strong, or way way way too weak. Since I don't know how to make it and rarely drink it, I just follow the directions on the bag/can and hope for the best.  (So be careful if I ever offer you coffee!) Whenever possible I ask someone else to make it.

We are also not big tea drinkers. Occasionally we'll have a cup - some oolong or regular ol' Lipton or mint, but not very often. So, maybe you can see where this is going - we have two extra canisters, the coffee one and the tea one, but no need to put coffee or tea in them. But I can't split up the set! Or worse, leave two empty!  What's a Mom to do? Well, use if for something else of course! And with three ducklings in the house, two of whom like chocolate milk and one of whom likes strawberry milk, what better way to use the extra canisters than for chocolate milk powder and strawberry milk powder. So, the coffee canister has chocolate milk powder and the tea canister has strawberry milk powder.

So as I was making Doodlebug some strawberry milk the other day we had this conversation:

Doodlebug: "Mom, how do you spell strawberry?"
Me: "S-T-R-A-W-B-E-R-R-Y, why?"
Doodlebug: "They spelled it wrong! It says T-E-A!"



He looked very confused. So then I had to explain how normal people actually use the T-E-A one for tea and not for strawberry milk powder and the C-O-F-F-E-E one for coffee. Surely I can't be the only one, right? Right?

Quack!

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