Sam stories: April 2009 Archives

Have you ever been to the Bass Pro Shops at the Harrisburg Mall or a Cabela's? In case you're not familiar with them, these are huge stores that sell outdoorsy stuff: Boats, hunting gear, fishing gear, etc.

Sam calls the Bass Pro Shops in Harrisburg "The Fish Store" because it also has a giant tank with gargantuan fish in it. Personally, I think they're kinda creepy, but Sam loves to go right up to the glass and make faces at them.

On a recent weekend, my brother-in-law Nick (who is a regular blog reader, by the way -- Hi Nicky!) came to visit, and we were talking over breakfast on Sunday morning about what to do that day. Nick wanted to do some shopping, so we decided to take him to the Harrisburg Mall because it also has a great kids play area.

For some reason, I can't get Sam to understand that, if you pick a flower out of the ground, YOU CANNOT REPLANT IT AND HAVE IT GROW MORE!

I've been explaining this to her since she was 3, and it just doesn't make any sense to her.

On Monday morning, as we were getting ready to head out the door, she handed me a daffodil she had picked from our yard the day before.

"O, Mom," she whined. "I picked you this flower, but now it's dead. How 'bout if you just go put it back in the ground when we go outside so it can grow some more?"

"Honey, it doesn't work that way," I said as patiently as I could. "Remember? Once you pick a flower, you can't put it back. You've pulled it away from its roots, which give it the food to grow."

"No, Mom," she said (continuing her trend of arguing with everything I say, which is another blog post for another day). "Look, see? It's not really even dead. Look. If I hold it like this" -- here she turned it on its back, which made the petals flop backward -- "it doesn't look dead anymore. So it will really grow if you put it back in the ground."

*sigh*