Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

No, this post isn’t going to be about some newly discovered venereal disease that I contracted during a recent trip to Tijuana.   I haven’t been to Tijuana in years, so that would be old news (I kid).  Instead, this post is about turning even the smallest event into an educational opportunity that can be used to teach kids something new and exciting.  These chances pop up every so often and if you’re not careful you can definitely miss them.  So keep your creativity hats on at all times; because to the untrained eye, bodily fluids may not seem like the best tool to use for teaching a pre-schooler, but by putting a little spin on it, they can learn something new and have fun doing it.

It all started with Fefe and her superwoman cleaning abilities. Sidenote: Fefe is like a new age Mary Poppins or something, the kids demolish the house everyday and yet she still manages to have it sparkling when I get home. I tell her to just let it be, it’s a waste of energy, but somehow she turns the chaos created by the boys into a normal looking home. It’s still a mystery to me, but she won’t tell her secrets.  Okay, back to the story: Fefe decided to get some of those toilet bowl things that turn the water blue.  We haven’t had these in quite some time, I can’t remember why, but it’s been a while.  So she pops one in each bathroom and we think nothing of it, not realizing that Ty probably doesn’t remember the last time that we used these in the house. 

After waking up from a nap, Ty goes to the bathroom and then runs downstairs with a look of bewilderment on his face.  We ask him what’s wrong, and in a some what frightened tone he asks “why is my pee green?”  Totally forgetting about the blue toilet bowl stuff, I immediately begin to question him: “What do you mean it’s green? Are you sure it’s green? Did you eat anything green?” Now I’ve been pissing for 25+ years and not once has something I ate been able to turn my pee green, so why I would think food could affect Ty’s pee is beyond me.  My only explanation is that I was worried; let’s see how rationale your thinking is if your kid comes running to you talking about their pee is green!  Don’t judge me.

Fefe on the other hand was calm, cool, and collective the entire time; obviously realizing what I should have, that blue and yellow make green.  She didn’t immediately clue us in though; I think I’m rubbing off on her.  She told us that maybe I’ve infected Ty and now he’s turning into an alien (read this post for background).  Ty shouts out that WE are not aliens and I tell Fefe that this isn’t a joking matter; we need to find out what’s wrong with the boy.  She starts laughing and now both Ty and I share his look of bewilderment.  I’m thinking why doesn’t this woman care about the well being of her child who all of a sudden started peeing green?  After she’s done having fun with us, she reminds me and informs Ty that when you mix blue and yellow you get green.  I immediately felt as dumb as a door knob and Ty was just standing there looking like what do colors have to do with my pee.

Ty didn’t believe that the blue color in the water and the yellow color of his pee caused it to turn green, so we spent the next 30 minutes discussing primary colors and how mixing different colors can create new ones.  We probably went thru a few trees in the process, because once Ty understood the concept, all he wanted to do was mix, mix, and mix some more.  After going thru the basics color combinations, we let Ty get creative and he made a few really cool colors and many many shades of doo doo brown.  But the point is, he had fun and learned something valuable all because of something as simple as going to the bathroom.