This is the sight that greeted my husband at the end of this Monday. He did not appreciate his daughter’s blossoming practical joke skills.

My daughter is a slow hand-washer. She does not want help and likes to do it all by her lonesome three-year old self.  She, like Peter, not only washes her hands, but her face, and legs, and back, and tummy, and feet, and hair, as well. Her thoroughness consumes about 20 minutes a pop.  She leaves the bathroom dripping wet, and has a tendency to slip or cause others to slip with her excess water. We are trying to teach her not to do this.

This morning she was washing her hands at the sink, and it started leaking a large amount. (It always leaks a small amount, this being, as you know, Cambodia.) Turns out her body weight had disconnected the sink from the drain below it. The sink was now wobbling.

Upon further inspection from Papa the Plumber, we discovered that not only had the pipe not been installed correctly in the first place (a common occurrence here), but also that someone’s children had been sticking straws down that very sink. The straws being subsequently removed, Plumber Man was able to reconnect all parts, and even, impressively, screw them together correctly.

Leak solved.

*********************

Later the kids were watching a Khmer language video, and I heard a blood curdling shriek. Not the sound of kids arguing, which often happens during Khmer lessons, much to the disappointment of this wannabe mommy blogger who uses that one hour of precious time to try and hammer out some coherent thoughts. Oh no, this was a MUCH scarier sound.

The boys were screaming, “Her finger! String! Her finger’s stuck on some string!!” I ran in, and looked, and sure enough, my other daughter had wrapped a string around her finger. The top third of her index finger was already dark purple, and the threads looked deep. I told the boys to go get the scissors, but I was able to untangle it before they returned.

When I could breathe again, I took her to Plumber Man/School Nurse to examine the injury. He assured me that her finger would recover, and that in this case, he would not need to reconnect all parts.