Things I never realized

• The reason sand gets hotter the further you walk away from the water is that the wet sand stuck to your feet insulates them for a while, and as it dries it lets more and more heat through to your feet. Thanks, Sybil, for pointing out what should have been obvious to me years ago.
• I'm willing to let my daughter swim in Lake Erie next to trash I would go out of my way to walk her away from in a parking lot - takeout food container, disposable lighter, dead fish, bottle cap, some kind of icky insect larvae-looking stuff that could also have been waterlogged cottonwood fluff, cigarette butt, etc. The water dilutes the yuck, right?
• My daughter understands me well enough that when I tell her not to drink the lake water or eat the sand because it's yucky and will give her nasty diapers like she had the last time she attempted to eat the whole sandbox at one sitting, she actually listens. Listens so well, in fact, that whenever she gets splashed in the face with a wave she starts yelling "Oh, no! Yucky diaper! pthpt! pthpt!" and tries to spit out every last microliter of water that's anywhere near her mouth. That's my girl!
• Dollar General currently has a great selection of temporary tattoos in kid-friendly designs (mostly cartoon flowers - sorry, boys), with sheets of 30 or more for $1. Compared to the $4 I spent for 12 (admittedly very cute) monkey tattoos on eBay, it's a steal. Especially since we'll be using them for potty training, so we're gonna need quite a few.
• My daughter has developed a time sense and a memory, or at least she talks a good game. Yesterday when she was stalling and trying to convince me she didn't need a nap, she claimed she had poop in her diaper. When I checked and she was clean, she laid back down and said " 'member last week? Hand in diaper? Yucky hand!" referring to an incident that was indeed last week, when she (once again) stuck her hand in her poopy diaper and came up with souvenirs on several fingers. My little baby's all grown up and chatty!
• If you tell a child enough times that whining won't get them anything, and you expect them to use a nice tone of voice to ask for things, and you demonstrate the right tone of voice umpteen million times, sometimes the kid will remember. If they're not sick, tired, cranky, or otherwise out of sorts, of course, but it's just so nice to hear "Please have a little candy?" instead of "Maaaaaaamaaaaaa! Little candyyyyyyyy! Pleeeeeaaaase! Maaaaaaamaaaaaa!" that sometimes I'll even break down and give the kid an M&M. And when she wakes up at 6:45am and I bring her into bed with me to snuggle for a few minutes until I am fit to deal with a toddler, and she slides out of bed and comes over to my side and says "Mama, up! Sit here! Right here! Please have some juice please!" in a pleasant voice, darned if I don't get up and do what she wants, despite the fact that I'm not actually awake or coherent yet.