Our Little Recycler

Last month, I was holding the longest skinniest 5 and a half pound baby I've ever seen in my arms and marveling at how very perfect she was, from her darling little nose down to her ten wiggly toes.

A couple weeks ago I rejoiced at every minute I could spend with a chunky little toddler with gorgeous golden ringlets, who entertained us all with her adorable antics.

And last week, I gasped as our little girl started kindergarten, and learned to read and write and add and subtract. (Well, okay, she could do that before kindergarten. But go with me here.)

Yesterday, Little Girl turned seven. How can it be possible? Why does time go so slowly when you're young, and so quickly the older you get?

Well, with birthdays come presents, of course, and since our little Earth Girl is constantly talking about recycling and coming up with such creative ways to recycle and re-use things that you'd think she was Ma Ingalls' little clone, you can only imagine my pleasure at spying a Paper Recycling Factory by Bill Nye the Science Guy at a local store. The perfect birthday present for Little Girl!

Let me just say that I'm glad I also bought her some things at Disney World while I was there with Baby Boy, or it would have been one bummer of a birthday.

We opened the Paper Recycling Factory up and got right to work.

Before we recycled paper, Little Girl was scolding me for some tree bark pencils she found on my old school desk, purchased from one of the Little House sites. "That wastes trees!" she gasped. I pointed out that regular pencils are also made of wood, and she gasped again. "But it wastes trees!" I said, "But we NEED pencils so we can write." She argued, "But we NEED trees so we can breathe." Yeah. She wins.

After we recyled paper, this same child moaned and said, "Let's just waste trees. It's easier."

That is how ridiculous the paper recycling factory was. Hours and hours and hours to make one little piece of paper that doesn't even look or feel like paper, with great amounts of manual labor involved.

We won't be making paper again.

Good job, Bill Nye. Your paper recycling factory teaches kids NOT to recycle!

Sheesh!