excuse me! excuse me! nuestros cuchillos muy afilados!

we look down at sparklet, and she is knawing on a set of cutlery wrapped up in a napkin, which is a relatively normal part of her dining routine.

we were just about to say, “oh that’s okay” when we noticed instead of the usual table knife (the ones that can’t cut butter) she was gnawing on a steak knife.

frankly, i’m surprised that the waitress didn’t call the costa rican version of Child Protective Services.

she watched us let sparklet eat a steak knife, spoil her dinner with a blackberry smoothy, and adhere loosely to our version of the “five second” rule (which really works out to be more of a “minute and a half” rule).

not our finest moments — but also sadly not our first.

this morning on the trail to arenal, we had three separate groups of people stop us to “let us know” that sparklet was chewing on a stick (yeah, we knew).

to make matters worse, perhaps you’ve noticed a new gash on sparklet’s head from a couple of days ago? yup, she ran into a wall in our hotel room.

there’s also a (less noticable) bruise under her chin, which she got when she tripped over her own feet and landed chin first on the tile floor. oh, and when she fell she bit her lip, so that’s been bleeding on and off, too.

and then, of course, there was that double gainer off the deck into the pool.

come to think of it, maybe i should call CPS myself.