Broken records and all that jazz

Today's theme is REPETITION. The boys, Henry in particular, have been asking me the same questions all day. There are the five that have been in constant rotation:

1. Why did Humpty Dumpty fall off the wall?
2. Why didn't the king's men just use a bandaid for Humpty?
3. Why didn't Humpty use crutches?
4. How many sides does a circle have?
5. Why are there spiders in the secret passage?

Imagine being asked these questions at least a dozen times every hour and you will understand my day. I started out varying my answers, then I began to repeat myself. When it became apparent that my responses were not sufficient, I had to ask Jeff for help. Between him and me, this is what we came up with:

1. My answer -- Humpty was being careless and didn't sit still when he was on the wall. Also, eggs don't have brains so he wasn't thinking about how dangerous it could be to sit high on a wall. Jeff's answer -- Because he was not paying attention, and he was goofing off. Or he was drunk. (Nice...)
2. My answer -- A bandaid and crutches won't help when you've cracked into a million pieces. Jeff's answer -- Sometimes, boo boos require more than a bandaid, like when you had to go to the hospital. The king's men are doctors at the hospital.
3. See above
4. My answer -- A circle has an infinite number of sides. There are so many sides, it would take forever to count. A circle just looks like it has one continuous side. Jeff's answer -- A circle has an infinite number of sides, which means that it has an infinite number of corners as well. If you take one section of the circle, it will look curved. But as you zoom in, it will look less curved, and eventually you will have linearity. That is where the sides come from. As proof, look at a decagon (10 sides). It is starting to look round. As you add more and more sides to a polygon, it starts to look more and more like a circle. If you had a polygon with 1000 sides, would you be able to distinguish the different sides? (use Wikipedia much??)
5. My answer -- Spiders like the quiet and darkness of secret passages (I could have used a little bit of that quiet right about then). Jeff's answer -- Spiders don't like light.
   

Although I was exhausted by late afternoon, I rallied and we all went to the National Gallery of Art's Jazz in the Sculpture Gardens. It was our last minute attempt at taking advantage of one our favorite summer activities. Clearly, it has been a while since we've been because we rolled up with a full bottle of wine only to see that museum security was confiscating outside alcohol. Oops. Fortunately, we saw the signs in advance and Jeff was able to save our Pinot Grigio from an uncertain fate by bringing it back to our car.

Once safely in the gardens, we relaxed on our picnic blanket, listened to the loud sounds of jazz (the only open spot was next to a speaker), read Curious George books and enjoyed our homemade dinner and an $18 Smithsonian-sanctioned pitcher of sangria. Even the boys had fun. Not even the late sighting of a DC rat or Jeff using me for leverage to push himself off the ground in fright could ruin our perfect evening.

I love Fridays, even repetitive ones.