The status of a fork

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Mon 29 Sep 2014 07:59
One of the biggest benefits when doing this journey is to be with the kids, of course. You might take it for granted but timewise we are with them almost every hour we are awake.Thank god it does not mean we have to play with them all the time and to be honest it can be tyring with a boy who keeps nagging you about what an airplane can do and what it cannot do...
Then you have highlights like small expeditions were we all explore together and it is truly amazing to see the world with some eyes that are 10 or 6 years old.
Yesterday I took the kids to the cave we found the other day, this time we had plenty of torches, camera w flashes, and the kids brought some Saturday candy to consume in the cave (yes we are soon running out of candy, they get 10 small pieces every saturday).
It is funny how kids just love to PREPARE an expedition, if you don't stop them they will bring half the boat.
Ellinor stayed on board for some yoga and to do some sewing (the big machine is out of the closet).
Once outside the cave, we anchored the dinghy, Erika jumped in and by the shore she scared off a Manta Rey, or whoever scared who. Then I  helped Andreas to the shore wich is like a shelf under a ceiling of lava rock, Andreas is scared of touching coral on the way up.
After that I got a big bucket that I could swim holding above the water, in it we had the kids "supplies" and my waterproof backpack with camera and tripod.
We crawled inside (it is really hard to get in) and as we entered the big chamber our lights revealed something even more spectacular than we could see before. The kids started to play around and I started to shoot pictures. It is amazing that roots from trees have worked their way through the lava and into the cave. There is also a small lake inside with some shrimp. Other than that the only animals we saw were cockroaches and spiders.
We spent a good hour in there and once we came out again it was really hitting you, the daylight.
We tried to get Erika up on another island were there is a cave that looks like the jaw of a shark, but she could not get up. A murray watched us closely from a coral head just a meter away.
This kind of expeditions are not everyday stuff, this was saturday and normally we have school in the morning and the days goe by with the same assignements every day.
 
One of them is the dishes and the kids always have to dry them. That is also another part of life were you get to see each other all the time. Drying dishes, now you think children will just do it and get it done. No.
As things evolve kids start to prefer some things over others. For instance Andreas loves to dry the sharp knives, the bigger the better, they are exciting and dangerous. Well since he found them interesting Erika starts to compete for them. If one is drying let's say a plate and I just washed a knife, that person will want to get done to get the knife. That is just the beginning, as time moves on different things get different status.
Next thing, as I have written, is that they listen a lot to books in their Ipods. Well since drying dishes is boring the Ipod comes on and I have two mute assistants that have to be shouted at if I have something to communicate. Well as they listen and dry the dishes their reaction to what comes up next to be dried creates grounts, yepees, no-s, ITS MY TURN TO DRY THIS! and other animal-like noises.
 
I remember when my oldest daughters went to preschool and they always looked at the bottom of the glasses to check what letter or number they got in that glass and how that created funny things among them, now I can see the same thing evolve in our galley.
I guess we all do that everyday without thinking about it, everything is measured, everything has a status.
Tyring...