Ane Speaks – Guilty Conscience

The older two are on half-days right now for parent-teacher conferences.  I already had Ane’s conference on Thursday, which was the first of these half-days.  The kids are still eating lunch at school, but now it’s at an insanely early hour – I know Tad is eating lunch around 10:45, and I can’t imagine that they put Ane’s class off much longer than that, when they get out of school at 12:20 pm each day.

So, on Thursday I made sure they had a snack when they got home from school.  Rerun actually had his lunch once they got home, so everyone just ate at the same time.  Tad opted for a giant bowl of applesauce.  And as a special treat for Ane, I fried up a dozen potstickers – known in our home by their Japanese name of gyoza – for us to share.  It was my lunch and her snack.  I told her she could start with two.

Well, those two went down quite easily while I was cleaning up the living room and making sure Rerun ate his lunch.  Ane asked for a third.  I said that was fine.  I was snatching a bite here and there, but I really was trying to get cleaned up.  Handy Mom was bringing her three over to play, plus she had agreed to watch Ane, Tad and Rerun for me while I went to Ane’s parent-teacher conference.  We live two miles from her school, and the conference was going to be all of 20 minutes long.  And I had promised that Rerun would be down for his nap.  So Handy Mom agreed to make baby-sitting part of their play date.

Ane asked for a fourth gyoza.  I said fine, but NO MORE.

I finally got Rerun fed, cleaned up, and tucked into his crib just as Handy Mom was pulling up.  I finished off the last couple of gyoza on the plate – I had been taking a bite here and there while I got everything ready – and I got them inside and settled before I headed off to my conference.

The conference itself was just fine, no surprises – Ane is bright, a very good reader, has a little trouble with math concepts when they are first introduced, but eventually gets them, and needs to not socialize in class so much.  I was back in record time, keeping my promise to Handy Mom that this would be the easiest baby-sitting job she’d ever have.

Tad was busy with the iPad, and Ane was playing with Handy Boy and Handy Girl, while Handy Baby Girl made a valiant attempt to roll over on the floor.  Handy Mom and I were chatting about her growth, when she mentioned that our friend, CW Mom, who had a baby girl the day after my birthday, had just weighed her baby, Lottie, and found that she weighed 13 pounds.

“I think her seven week old is as big as my five month old!” Handy Mom exclaimed.

“Well, Lottie was bigger to begin with,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, Handy Baby Girl was only six five when she was born… How big was Lottie?”

I got up and looked at Lottie’s birth announcement on my refrigerator.  “Eight five,” I said.

Ane looked straight at me with a guilty expression on her face.  “How did you know that I ate five???” she said nervously.

Handy Mom and I both stared at her, dumbfounded.  Then I desperately had to fight off busting out laughing.

While Handy Mom and I had been talking about pounds and ounces, Ane had heard “eight five” and translated it to “ate five” – and her guilty conscience did the rest.

“You ate another gyoza?”  I managed to get out.

“I’m sorry, Mom, but they were soooo good and I was really hungry!” she cried.

Honestly, I’d had not a clue – I was so busy preparing for everything that I hadn’t kept count.  But someone else obviously had.

And that someone else has big ears that haven’t really picked up on what homophones are.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 21st, 2011 at 1:59 am and is filed under Children, Group o' Friends, School Days.
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