I bought a loaf of bread yesterday for this week's lunches.

There is just enough bread to last us to Wednesday... and today they had half sandwiches! We're flying out Thursday, though.

Ana asked for an extra sandwich. I told her no, we don't have enough bread for that. Ana asked for a half a sandwich. I told her no, we don't have enough bread for that. Ana asked - and I stopped her. We. Do. Not. Have. Enough. Bread.

Later, as Evangeline is napping, Ana asked me again for some bread, this time for bread and honey. I told her no. But Connie...!

Connie is not very happy now, so Connie sat down with the loaf of bread and the nutritional information that tells us how many slices are in a loaf.

There are 16 slices in a loaf. We used 4 slices today. 16 take away 4 is how many, Ana? 12.

Tomorrow we'll use 6 slices of of bread, and another 6 the day after and - oh look, we're out of bread for the week. Luckily, we intend to be gone by then.

So, what's the moral lesson here? When Connie says there's not enough, believe her or you'll get a math lesson.

Also? Jenn needs to buy more bread. She has as much trouble understanding this concept as Ana does, because she's everlastingly running out of bread and saying to my complaints "But I bought bread!" Yeah, you bought bread - one loaf, two weeks ago. Well, the math shows it lasts approximately three days. If 'dul would give Ana half sandwiches like I keep saying he should during the year, it... still wouldn't last that long. 16 slices, at two slices a day, still only lasts a week and a half. (And that's assuming none of the adults has a sandwich or a piece of toast during the week!)

Homework in the summer, ye gods.

So, now we're doing Ana's summer homework. I'm giving her 4 - 6 math problems a day (that's just me, because I noticed to my horror she'd become super recalcitrant over the subject. If she's not being a pain it's over in 2 minutes flat) and she has to write her 5 sentences about her daily book (that's her teachers).

I've found that I can easily get her to do her work by... um... bribing her. STOP READING OVER MY SHOULDER, ANA. IT IS RUDE. GAH! AND I WILL TICKLE YOU! I tell her a bad joke every time she finishes a math problem or a sentence.

I've found that a lot of jokes go right over kids' heads. When is a door not a door? When it's ajar. Have you ever used the word "ajar" except in that joke? Or they're precipitated on knowing the original joke first. Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide - a joke that falls flat if you don't know why the chicken crossed the road. (For that matter, THAT joke doesn't make any sense until you thoroughly understand how it subverts the normal joke format, which kids often don't.)

When I was a child, I thought that what's black and white and red all over was a zebra falling down the stairs, or maybe a penguin eating watermelon. My mother was told it was a nun fingerpainting. These "jokes" didn't make any sense until I learned that what's black and white and red all over is supposed to, originally, be a newspaper. But like many kids I heard the parody first and was completely baffled.

Help this guy get a million giraffes by 2011!

I'm totally doing something with the nieces this week. Maybe a giraffe out of used Metrocards...? I don't know, whatever.