The raison d’etre for childhood is learning. Much of that learning is done by trial and error. Sometimes it feels like the raison d’etre for parents is to point out the error in childhood trials. Take yesterday evening (please?). Twenty minutes before bedtime our kids voiced unanimous desire for an apple. They spent the better part of that twenty minutes sitting in the hallway with their apples, quietly collaborating on a block tower of epic proportions. After their twenty minutes were up I took our son in for his final diaper change. When I returned I saw Beth in the kitchen from the rear, working on something intently on the counter. Based on extensive medical drama experience, this looked much like a surgeon working on his or her patient in the O.R.
On final approach I asked her what she was doing, but it was a rhetorical question. I could plainly see what she was doing… she was snipping at her apple with a pair of kitchen scissors. This paved the way for the non-rhetorical portion of my questioning… “Why are you cutting your apple with a pair of scissors Beth?”
“I’m trying to get the seeds out without cutting the rest of the apple.”
I must admit that on some levels I was impressed. I had no idea my kitchen scissors were such a precision instrument. I’d be hard pressed to do a better job without a drill and some kind of penetrating imaging equipment.