Ketchup

My husband likes to grow things on our deck.   He’s done herbs every year and tomatoes for a few years as well.  Last year the children got interested in plants in part because of my husband, but also because of something their Aunt A had sent in the mail.   So this year, my husband decided to get them involved.

He got additional planters and put in a drip system.  The children selected their plants and then we say back and watched them grow.  

The growing has been the most fun and interesting to the children.   We’ll go out to the deck and check on the status of the various plants, pick what’s ripe and then, usually, eat them once inside.  My daughter will go out with one of the three of us to ask what the status is of her plants or of dad’s tomato plants.

This morning she went outside all by herself and came in with a green pepper—her first green pepper from her pepper plant she selected.   She had been talking to us about the size and had waited until it was the “right” size to pick apparently.   And today was the day.

She brought it into the bedroom and named it…wait for it…”Cutie”.   Which is what she names everything.  I am not exaggerating on this point, I assure you.   I told her she had to come up with a name that didn’t involve “cutie” in it.   Meaning it couldn’t be, “cutie pepper”.   She tried, “cute pepper”, insisting that didn’t have the word, “cutie” in it, but I told her no go.

She went away for about a minute before coming back to the bedroom at which point she asked if I wanted any ketchup?  No, I was fine, I told her and then she explained she had named the pepper, ‘Ketchup’.

She called it Ketchup as she bit into it five minutes later.    She called it Ketchup as dad cut it into pieces five minutes after that.   She offered me a piece of Ketchup, which I accepted.   And then she came to find me to show me the last piece of Ketchup before she ate it.

It might have been a confusing name, but it was so much better than another ‘Cutie’.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got up from the dinner table and said with appropriate hand gestures, “Hey guys, I always have a shotgun when I’m in the house.”  He was smiling.   I was confused because we don’t have a shotgun in our house and he knows it.   I was more confused when he told me his father told him that advice.   And then I realized what he was talking about—Fortnite, the game.   I agreed with him that for close range spread damage a shotgun was good to have in a house while you’re looking for supplies.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked me if I could read the next chapter of, “The Phantom Told Booth”.  I explained what a tollbooth was and that it was that word instead of ’told booth’.   My daughter said, “I’ll just keep calling it ’told booth’”.