Last night Anna asked me, “why is our mouth and lips red”? Ironically, I was on my way out the door to teach Human Physiology and she stumped me.

 

“Because our mouths and lips are made of muscles and skin and it’s a special type of skin. See? Our muscles help us chew.” We were eating Subway. “Also because blood is red and so there’s blood in the muscles.”

 

“I have blood in my MOUTH?”

 

“No, well, not exactly. Blood in the muscles and tissues.”

 

“Well why are my fingers pink? See? They’re pink everywhere” (looking at the insides of her hands/palms).

 

“Because you use your hands a lot and they have blood in them and that makes them look pink.”

 

“Are YOURS pink?”

 

On the way home from school last night she asks me if she can have some pickled peppers because she LOVES pickled peppers like Dora (the chartoon character) is saying she does. “I LOVE pickled peppers, the green one we picked from the garden, remember mommy? I’m a big girl!” (She meant the little bell pepper that actually survived our planting this spring). I told her I’d have to buy some pickled peppers from the store, and it’s the first thing she asks me about the next morning.

 

Knowing this would be the case, I stopped by the store on my way home from teaching last night to buy the child some pickled peppers. MILD, pickled banana peppers.

 

I gave her one this morning and she made that bitter face, eyes watering, and she spit it out. Then we laughed at how bitter it was and she wanted to try again. She ate a small pepper ring and then said she was done. She was pretty proud of having eaten pickled peppers J

 

 

This morning, in the car:

“Mommy why’d you call that man a jerk?”

 

Noted. Changed the subject. Will adjust driving language even more these days.

 

Incidentally, my officemate said I should have just told her that our lips/mouth are red because God made us that way! She was being fecitious ofcourse but it still cracked us up to think of how easy that would be. And it’s been used for generations. In fact, Anna has told me before that God made light and dark and animals. The core of her Lutheran schooling.