Almost daily diary!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Small Sprogs world

I picked Small Sprog up from school today and presented him with the fact that we had to go and get a new tyre for the car, before we went home. Usually he hates having to do 'jobs', and just wants to get back and relax. However this was different. A chance to go to somewhere where he could inspect tyres and look at cars, hmmm, absolutely no complaining at all!

Once at the garage, Small Sprog was out of the car like a whippet! He carefully followed the 'tyre man' around the car, kneeling down and inspecting each tyre as he went. By the time he had finished his hands were almost as black as the 'tyre mans' (I briefly wondered, if the 'tyre man' managed to get all that black stuff off his hands every night, or whether it was a build up over time!)

Anyway we all waited in the, thankfully not too crowded, waiting room. Small Sprog wanted to go and watch the whole thing. I took him out to have a look but he felt a bit shy and came rushing back in. For a few minutes peace reigned. Then he realised he could shunt his chair across the tiled floor if he rocked his body backwards and forwards. Off he went, shuffling the thing across the waiting room, rocking in the most demented fashion. I glanced at Tall Girl, everything he does in public embarrasses her! She was not amused,  and I wondered if my expression matched hers.

"Can you stop doing that?" I asked politely
"Just once more?" He asked, wearing one of his most winning smiles
"Just one more time" I replied
And goodness how he milked that one more go. It was ingenious really. He could maneuver the chair anywhere he wanted to go. Tall Girl and I watched as he shuffled forwards, left, and then right, carefully avoiding the vending machine, before ending up back at our sides but the wrong way around. We all looked at each other...........and exploded into laughter. He certainly looked very pleased with himself!

And then I thought, well, I suppose he is a boy, and one day he'll be playing 'beat the flush' and lighting his own farts! So, in a way, this was a fairly harmless way of passing a few minutes.

On the way home Small Sprog piped up from the back....
"Mummy?"
"yes?"
"How many atoms are in an ant?"

For a minute I thought we were talking '80's bands again!

15 comments:

Kitty said...

There is no doubt, is there, that boys' brains are wired COMPLETELY differently to girls' brains. It wasn't until I had a son that I quite appreciated that fact to the fullest extent.

x

Steve said...

Oh to be young again - I haven't shuffled my chair nearly enough!

Saz said...

great post....in fact your posts are very upbeat you know lately....good on you girl!!

FFF x

Maggie May said...

He is so cute!
Go on then, answer the question...... how many atoms in an ant? Fair question!

Suburbia said...

Hi Kitty, indeed, and a very useful bit of info it is too!

Hi Steve, it's never too late !! ;)

Thanks Saz, still frantically paddling under the surface though.

Maggie, I was hoping someone else would have that information at their fingertips and let me know! (Lazy mummy)

nick said...

Small boys eh, the peculiar things they find enjoyable. You can only tell yourself once again that "he'll grow out of it". I think my worst trait was writing cryptic jibberish inside the covers of brand-new books my parents had bought me. It drove them potty, and I have no idea why I did it.

Mean Mom said...

You are right, of course, as a boy, he will probably get up to more things than your daughter. Hopefully, you won't get to know about most of them!

Furtheron said...

Now mine are grown up I miss some of that unbridled enthusiasm and innocence. I was in the garden Sunday re-seeding a bit of the lawn where some cabbage like plant thing had invaded and Mrs F finally went mad on it... that is close to where my son at about 4 or 5 would spend hours digging... that is still a bare patch and I can't bring myself still to populate it - it was his "digging bit" and still is.

Luckily we had ours the other way round so my daughter is now at the everything is sooooo embarrasing stage - so me and Mrs F feel the need to fill that void now our son is working on getting his Nobel Prize and uni, normally by singing in public or dancing to Simply Red - or me headbanging at the traffic lights to Black Sabbath etc. etc. Hours of fun.

By the way - how many atoms are there in an ant?

Furtheron said...

From

http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070624030810AAXVZuA

Q: How many ants can you line up in one inch?

A: 10, 20?

Q: How many atoms can you line up in one inch?

A: 250,000,000

So take the 20 answer that is at least 5,000,000,000 but I take it the line is single atoms and an ant must have multiple lines of atoms. So thinking of the area of an ant - we have to multiply that by at least a 100

so at least 500,000,000,000

I tried WolframAlpha a new mathematical search engine but that said it didn't know what to do with my input... :-)

Suburbia said...

Massive thanks Furtheron, I heard about the launch of that new search engine yesterday, funny about your reply! However, I showed SS the number of atoms from your other research and he said "Yay, How many in a sky scraper then?!!".........
(love your embbaresing tactics and bit of lawn :) )

Rose said...

Yes, do enjoy his little boy antics before he gets older and does something to REALLY embarrass you and Tall Girl! Great story, Suburbia, and I love the way you described it--I can just see SS wiggling and scooting around the waiting room:)

Just noticed Furtheron's comment. I will have to check that out, but the Wolfram search engine sounds like it was started by a small company based here where I live. Small world:)

and1moremeans5 said...

award for you over at mine enjoy! x

Furtheron said...

Good grief - I thought I'd take another tack...

Answers from various searches on the internet...

An ant weighs 0.003 grams
1 hydrogen atom (lightest) weighs 1.674X10-24 or

0.000000000000000000000001674gram I think which is

1,792,110,000,000,000,000,000

So that might be closer to the number in an ant. I think we'd run out of zeros for a skyscraper

Furtheron said...

Final thought... my last set of figures based on Hydrogen have a error bar of between that and 300 times less since the heaviest atom in the periodic table is approx 300 times heavier than Hydrogen.

Wanderlust Scarlett said...

You have such sweet babies. Small Sprog's shenanigans always make me smile wide.

I love that you have these wonderful blessings and that they have you, because you are an awesome mother.

;o)

Scarlett & Viaggiatore