cat named pig

[Only one word of the day in this here family lexicon update: humidifier. It continues to baffle (children) and amuse (me), so it gets a whole post.]

Elliot had a stuffy nose the other night, so we got out the humidifier.

OK, fine: to be totally accurate I had gotten it out a few days earlier and cleaned it with bleach to get rid of any germs/dust that might have settled on it over the summer. Because I just knew.

You see, I am cursed to go through life as a modern-day Cassandra of minor pediatric discomforts, always prophesying colds! or ear infections! yet never believed until we are handing over the co-pays and filling the prescriptions. My prophesies are often met with eye-rolling and derision, which is unfair when you consider that they are really just based on common sense. (If the month is not July, and if one or both children have been a) inside a building and b) in the presence of one or more other children, then one of them will get a cold. And if one of my children gets a cold, then he or she will develop an ear infection. Also true: if one of my children gets a cold, then the other one will also have a cold within five minutes. And within ten minutes of that, I will have a sore throat and lose all ability to perceive nuance of flavor in food and wine. After which point, why even bother drinking wine at all? Except to dull my senses as I listen to all the cold- and ear-infection-related keening, of course.)

I seem to have lost myself in a paragraph that got swallowed by the world’s longest parenthetical aside. Where was I? Oh, yes, the whole seeing-the-future thing: if you’re not prophesying colds and ear infections, you’re just not really paying attention. Ahem, Husband.

So I had the humidifier at the ready, which was convenient when Elliot came out of his room snuffling and saying he couldn’t sleep. OH YES YOU CAN. Here, have some steam.

Poor sweet Elliot had absolutely no idea what I was talking about when I said I would bring in the humidifier. He had no idea what word I was even saying.

“Fire?” he asked, looking worried as I plugged it in. “Dat FIRE in dere?”

“No, sweetie. No fire. It has water in it, and it makes steam to help you breathe.”

“Why it called FIRE?”

“It’s called a hu-MID-i-FI– Oh, never mind. There’s no fire in it. It’s OK. Now lie down.”

As I left his room I recalled how Siena, at about the same age, thought the humidifier was called “Human Fire.”

“I need some Human Fire,” she would say when she wasn’t feeling well, but also sometimes when she just felt tired. I think her mystical-sounding interpretation of its name led her to envision it misting out magical vapors of energy and good health — the Human Fire that fuels us all. I also just thought it was cute.

I kind of miss those days. Last night she told me she knew exactly what it would feel like to be in a cloud — cold and wet — because clouds are made of water vapor that condenses. OK, maybe she didn’t use the word condenses; I think she said “turns back into water” but still. Pretty impressive for a kid who thought the humidifier was magic just a few short years ago. Go kindergarten! Or go PBS Kids! Whichever. As long as she’s learning stuff.