Science at the dinner table

Last night we were having dinner and we each had ice in our drink. Halfway through the meal Venus looked into her cup and said "My ice is gone". Not wanting to miss an opportunity for a science lesson we asked her where she thought it had gone. The conversation went like this:

Venus: "It turned into water." 

Supernerd: "What would you do if you wanted it to turn back into ice?"

Venus: "Put it in the fridge."

Supernerd: "Would it turn to ice there?

Venus: "No, it would just be really cold. It would have to go in the freezer."

Supernerd: "Why would it have to go in the freezer?

Venus: "Because it's all freezy and cold in there."

Supernerd: "That's right. Because the freezer is colder than the fridge."

Mars: "I know where else you could put it... in your anus."

In the moment between moments I was thinking just how unhappy I was that some obnoxious kid at school had taught him to be so rude, but the next thing he said was:

"Because uranus is a long way from the sun and it's really cold there."

So now I'm trying to teach him to pronounce it uRANus, which is the way I was taught as a child. It's not going well, but it's probably easier than trying to explain to him why I was choking on my dinner. 

Octonauts

Captain Barnacles, Peso and Kwazii have a lot to answer for. 

Aimed at preschoolers and early primary school children, the Octonauts is a beautifully animated TV series (originally from books) about a small band of ocean dwellers whose mission is "Explore. Rescue. Protect", and it's hard to know whether their hip and catchy theme song is totally awesome, or the most annoying tune to ever get stuck in my head.

Having said that, it is very cute to watch X-Man and Venus sit on the couch together and sing along to it.

What has been driving me crazy lately is that Mars and Venus know that there's going to be a new episode recorded on our Tivo every day (the show has only recently come to Australia),  and so every day when we get home from the school run I get hit with "Mum, can we watch the new Octonauts now?" every few seconds. Sometimes when we've just walked in the door. Sometimes before I can even get the front door open. Sometimes when we're still in the car with our seatbelts on. 

One day Venus made the mistake of asking me before we had even reached the driveway, and that's when we began to explain that hassling the parents makes us cranky and a lot less likely to say yes to requests for television.

Now what tends to happen is that we get home, Mars and Venus look at one another conspiratorially across the back seat, and they wait. We get in the house and put all our bags down, and then Venus will ask. Mars reminds her "Venus, you can't ask now. Mummy won't say yes if you ask now. You have to wait", and she knows he is right, so she waits. 

When Mars thinks I might be ready they ask again, and I put the television on and we watch the new Octonauts. Then they fight about which one they're going to watch next, and that's when I start to regret ever turning the television on.

But some good has come from the Octonauts, quite apart from anything the children may learn about narwhals, hydrothermal vents or comb jellies. 

Some nights when it's time to go upstairs to bed, nobody wants to go. So the other day when they were being a bit stubborn I called out "the last one upstairs is a barnacle on Captain Barnacles' butt". I've never seen them move so fast.

That night Supernerd was the last one up the stairs, and as we were waiting for Mars to finish brushing his teeth and for Venus to get off the toilet, she called out to him "Daddy, you're Captain Barnacles' butt."

We're giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she didn't hear me properly.

Oh, and by the way the remedy for having the Octonauts theme song stuck in your head is to belt out the theme song from Hawaii Five-O as loudly as possible. Trust me, it works.

Camping

The first rule of camping should be:

Pay close attention when you put up your tent.

We were pretty excited when we bought our first tent recently, and within 36 hours of the purchase we had erected the tent in the spacious back yard of some friends, and they were kind enough to let us stay the night as well. 

I thought Supernerd was being a bit nuts but he was right, it was a good idea to practise getting a tent up with two children helping, so that when we actually went camping the following week we would know what we were doing. And we did. Right up until the point where I put the fly on backwards.

I'm still not sure how I did it, and it doesn't really matter, but I must have fluked it on the practice run, because by the time I realised what I'd done it was mostly pegged down and too much of a hassle to fix. 

All it really meant was that we couldn't put our verandah thingy up because it was technically on someone else's campsite. On our second day that site was vacant so we did put it up and sit under it for a couple of hours, until someone backed their caravan in. So we hastily took it down while Supernerd explained to the nice woman from the caravan park what a twit I am.

The second rule of camping should be:

Don't let all the things that go wrong ruin your holiday.

I threw out my brand new picnic plates with the rubbish on our first night away, and I didn't realise until the rubbish had been moved along to the gigantic bin full of big black bags of rubbish, any one of which could have contained my plates along with goodness knows what else.

Supernerd wouldn't let me search the bin. Instead he did it for me and told me afterwards, but he couldn't find them.

I got really angry with myself for being so stupid. I had even made a mental note earlier that day to not do exactly what I did. 

The worst part though is that we were only away for two nights, so I really struggled to let it go and get on with the holiday. When I realised what I'd done we were only 24 hours from coming home and it wasn't quite enough time to recover, relax and enjoy myself properly.

Also the man in the next tent snored worse than Supernerd.

The third rule of camping, as Edmund Blackadder would have it, should be:

Make sure you buy a tent big enough for your family, with plenty of room for Mr Cockup to stay the night.