Cuckoo for Coconuts

First, a big shout out Thank You to P's wonderful Aunt Alicia. Thanks to her, we have a loaner camera to again capture the child's every last breath. Thanks Alicia!!!

I don't know where it started, what book or image inspired the child, but coconuts fascinate him lately. They enter his stories, engender creative thinking.... Just the other day, seemingly out of the blue (as is much of a four year old's chatter), P asked me if the coconut was actually a seed. Would it grow another tree to grow more coconuts? Like an acorn? To which he got the standard reply - let's google it!

Can I just say I LOVE learning alongside this child?! Everyday is something new. Something I was probably told before :) but it may actually stick this time :)

So, of course we had to get a coconut the next time we were at the co-op. We purchased a young Thai coconut (a large-ish white thing) and a typical, hairy, brown, round one. Cluelessly, we cut into the white thing and gave it a try. Yuck. So we googled young Thai coconuts and found out you had to machete them open. Oh. Short of a machete at the moment we used our butcher's knife, as instructed on the web page. When my whack didn't produce the hoped for split, we drained the juice out of the pathetic crack and then spent the rest of the afternoon with a hammer and flat headed screw driver working our way in....

The next day P thought Papa should get in on the fun and help open the hairy brown one. Ahhhh. The realization hit us then (yah, we're kinda slow. And have I mentioned we're from Kansas originally? Not a lot of coconuts there...) that the brown thing was previously hidden inside of the hard white thing we had chopped away at the day before. Ethan, cackling at our cluelessness, pulled out his power tools to show off.

P was pretty impressed with this approach:)



He quickly drilled a hole into the nut and they sucked at the juice, thinking themselves pretty brilliant:





Then, instead of whittling his afternoon away with a hammer, the man pulled out his saw and he and P took turns neatly slicing the hull in half.



This second coconut contained meat galore compared to our flimsy first one. P was excited to try a big ol' bite.... and then he decided they'd make great BB boats for the bath. He smiled and sweetly said that cooked with a little sugar it wouldn't be too bad :) Two co-op trips since then and he hasn't requested any more coconuts :)