The iBoo’s class had a field trip to the Chihuly Garden and Glass last week.  She’d been looking forward to it, sucking up every bit of information she could on Dale Chihuly and the art they were going to see there.  *I’d* been looking forward to it, and I’d signed up as a chaperone for the field trip as soon as the option was available.  The day before the field trip, though, I got The Call:  the iBoo was barfing at school.  I told her that if she was too sick for the field trip, I’d take her at another time.  That time was yesterday.

I picked her up from school, secured advance tickets, and we made our way over there.  Slowly.  As we sat there on I-90, the DJ on the radio said something about banging someone, with apologies to anyone who had kids in the car.  “Eww, disgusting,” I heard from the backseat.  I mentally braced myself to finally finish the discussion that started with the kindergarten iBoo saying, “I remember you telling me that babies are made by a mommy and a daddy, and that they start out very small, and that they grow in a mommy’s tummy, but I don’t remember you telling me how the baby *gets* into the mommy’s tummy.”  I know she REMEMBERS things like that.

With all this running through my head, what came out (very smoothly) was, “Oh, what?”

“I just saw a man with his shirt off!”

This discussion had just gone in a direction I had not expected.  I rallied with, “Oh, really?”

“Yeah!  Girls can’t do that, right?”

Okay, this had just become an opportunity for a more feminist type discussion.  “That’s right.  It’s not really fair, is it?”

“No!” she agreed, “because men are so much more disgusting than women, right?  They’re all sweaty and hairy, and they have those floppy bellies.  A lady would never do that, right?”

“No, a lady wouldn’t,” I allowed, prepared to talk about etiquette or something.

“Because ladies put their floppy parts in that thing that you strap behind your back each morning, right?”

At this point, I gave up.  “You’re right,” I said, “and it’s called a bra.”

The iBoo, my battered feminine mystique, and I continued on to the museum in relative quietude.  The museum was, incidentally, amazing.  It seems that in our absence, one of the cats had taken it upon himself to bathe the IchiRow, a move that was soundly condemned by said toddler, who declared a new house rule, “No cat eating Rowan’s arm!”  I think the cat’s intentions were significantly less nefarious than that, but I can’t say I don’t think it’s a good rule.

Sometimes the kids make me crazy, but there’s so much good crazy I’d miss out on if they weren’t around.