Canola

The girls and I were reading a "Prairie ABC" book the other day. It's a great book we picked up in SD last summer. Each page has a sentence focusing on one letter of the alphabet, and then in the picture you can find lots of things that begin with that letter. I particularly love that on the "z" page, there is an envelope addressed to someone in Zap, ND. Plus, it's written by a Canadian, so there are some language differences that I get to explain to my "southern" children who are not growing up watching Canadian television. Anyway.

On the "c" page, Sunny got really excited about a field of canola. She and Miss Mouse played in one two summers ago with Grandpa Bob. He doesn't grow it, but there's a lot of it around. In fact, two summers ago when I made several trips home with the girls by myself, keeping our eyes open for canola fields passed just as much time in the van as the Barney dvds did! These girls love their canola.

So, of course, we had to discuss it because they thoroughly discuss e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. (this is why breakfast takes 45 minutes....we're working on that one). Deep down, I really do love their verbosity. They come by it naturally. Cough. Cough. I digress again. Sooooo....Miss Mouse stated her love for canola oil. Sunny countered that she dislikes "all kinds" of oil, but she really loves that canola out at Grandma Kathy's.

What?

Grandma Kathy grows some great plants, but I hadn't noticed any canola out there lately.

Upon further discussion, Sunny explained that this canola is served at breakfast, and she doesn't really know why Grandma calls it canola. Oh dear. I realized at that point she was talking about GRanola. My mind went racing as to how to save face for Sunny. So often she is corrected and sort of 'smacked down' by her elder sister's knowledge. I try to correct her when I need to, but sometimes, sometimes it just isn't needed. She'll figure out it's GRanola sooner than later without us embarrassing her during storytime; she'll figure it out and either laugh about it or just be very quiet and hope we've forgotten that she was mistaken. That's just how she rolls. During my thinking, Sunny was chattering on about how Grandma must think that this breakfast mixture looks like a canola crop, and I could suddenly see the lights come on in Miss Mouse's head.

So, we moved onto "D" really, really quickly, and I gave Miss Mouse the getting-to-be-quite-common look of "just let it go for now". Sunny's right, though. That breakfast stuff, canola or granola, is really good!