Tag Archives: silly

Water Resistor

During dinner last night, we were discussing how messy babies are when they eat. In my customarily ridiculous fashion, I proposed that high chairs should be built inside large tubs. All the food detritus would fall into the tub. Then at the end of the meal, you pull a lever and a huge bucket of water dumps on baby, high chair, and tub, washing all the sticky, gooey, crumblies away. We laughed about this, agreeing that one of many problems with my proposal, was that the sudden deluge would be scary for the hapless filth monger in the midst of it.

I tried proposing heated dryers, but Griffin didn’t think that this would be enough. He suggested putting an umbrella over the baby. But this, I countered, would only clean the area around the high chair, without cleaning the baby himself (we were imagining Oliver as our first beneficiary). Griffin considered this, and responded, “What if we put some sort of water resistor over him?” I shook my head, misunderstanding, and pointed out that we need the baby to get wet. Griffin, in turn, shook his head, saying, “No, a water resistor.” I still didn’t get it, thinking he meant some sort of anti-water-force-field. He elaborated, “You know … an electrical resister doesn’t stop the electricity, it just kind of slows it down. So a water resistor would be like that, making it less strong.”

My jaw dropped. My nine-year-old just schooled me on electrical engineering, using the idea of a electrical resistance as a metaphor.

Patent pending.

Modern Fashion

We’re immersed in madcap packing for our holiday trip to visit Andrew’s family in Maryland. Kids are asleep. Adults are exhausted, going over checklists.

Sarah: “Did you check on Maggie’s clothes in her suitcase?”

Andrew: “Well, she seemed pretty organized about it…”

Sarah checks the suitcase and finds the following items, very neatly packed:

  • 7 pairs of pants
  • 2 skirts
  • 1 shirt
  • 4 pajama tops
  • 0 pajama bottoms