Sometimes explaining things to Bubba really gets me down. Not because I don’t want to teach her and watch her beautiful little face light up. And not because I don’t absolutely love it when I tell her something, her eyes widen and she says Wow!

Just sometimes explanations aren’t happy ones. Take yesterday afternoon for example – we were walking home from daycare (334 metres for those of you weren’t privy to my Facebook status that morning) and twice I found myself explaining something to Love Bug and thinking to myself how depressing that was at the end of it.

Oh, what was my Facebook status about? That it’s a whole 334 metres (approx 365 yards) from our front door to day care. According to Google maps, a person should be able to walk that in approximately 3 minutes. That may be right if you’re not walking with a toddler, particularly one who likes to stop and offer loves to every anipal she passes in the neighbourhood. This walk included one cat, two lovely old dogs (and their human friend) and stopping to listen for – and tweet back to – the birds!

Anyway, so we were walking home (loves to anipals: three dogs) and Bubba saw a truck with a huge cow painted on the side. Moo moo moo yells my little love, face alight. Yes Bubba, moo moo is the noise cows make. Except for those cows. Because it was a butcher’s truck. Don’t get me wrong – my daddy was a butcher, and I’ve only been vegetarian for a couple of years – but this afternoon, thinking that I’m going to have to explain to her that not all animals hang out on farms or at gates in our neighbourhood waiting for Bubba loves, made me sad.

We rounded the corner and she touched the first tree we saw, wrapping her little arm around it as if to give it a cuddle, then kept walking, waving to it as she left. Bye bye whistled her little high-pitched voice. The next tree she stopped to touch was not a tree. Well, it started life as a tree, but then someone cut it down and it is now a telegraph pole. Bye bye tree indeed.

I know the world is not all hearts and flowers and rainbows and puppy dogs and sunshine (and chocolate and Pinot).

But yesterday afternoon, talking to my baby girl … I kind of wished it was!