If you have a child, chances are you are familiar with the fresh water phenomenon. As it happens, we have a child, two of them in fact. Since our oldest child has had the ability to communicate – whether it be by speech or wild gestures with her extremities – she has wanted fresh water at her bedside at night. Yes, I fondly remember the day Beth learned to use “dehydrated” in a sentence,.

It turns out that Beth rarely actually drinks her water; but none the less, she seems to have a sixth sense as to whether it is “fresh” or not. Now that she is tall enough to service some of her own needs at the tap, we’ve encouraged her independence.

Oh, there’s no telling what mischief looms when a child first learns to play with the faucet.

The other night I was feeling weak in the will department, and I acquiesced to Beth’s watered down request. I was at the sink holding her bottle of stale water, and I unscrewed the top (similar to the top of a squeeze bottle – one that you drink from a nozzle at the top). As the top comes off water begins to pour out of the bottle. This may sound unsurprising, until you realize that I was holding the bottle upright. That’s right friends, it seems that Beth is not satisfied with the bottle being filled to the top. She’s been filling the bottle, screwing on the cap, and then holding the open nozzle under the running water to fill that extra bit of capacity under the cap.

That’s one determined little kid.