Green plastic flowers

So, you know how it goes. Your husband gets home after a long hard day's work and starts tackling the kids in the living room, and while wrestling and tickling, grabs a bag of sanitary (ahem) napkins that your 2 year old pulled out from under the sink in the bathroom, and then said husband teaches your four year old how to throw them like throwing stars...

or maybe you don't know how it goes...

...and the pads are flying, here there and everywhere, tossed, chucked, sailing high over everyone's heads in a flurry of green plastic wrappers... and these same pads have been scattered so far and so fast that the next morning, as you're pulling one out from the plant pot, dear, dear Ben has triumphantly hunted down a fistful of his own, clutched like a green bouquet in his hand, and the following conversation ensues;

"Mommy, do you need any of these pads here?"

"No, honey, but thanks for offering" (with a smirk)

"Well what are these pads for anyways?"


-----------------------large pause---------------------


"They're for when I have my period..."

And now i'm thinking fast, trying to figure out the most appropriate information to dole out, how much do I say? I've always wanted to be honest and straightforward, and thought to myself that any questions they could come up with would be answered in the most sincere, simple and direct way, so as not to confuse them at a later date, or mislead them into thinking, like I did at one point, that a "rubber" my friend had told me about was something cut from a car tire. On the other hand, how young is too young? How much information is too much? I don't want to get one of those phone calls when Ben is in Kindergarden informing me that he was trying to tell little Suzy that when she's older she'll start to bleed from her you-know-what (oh goodness). A thousand possible scenarios come to mind, and as I sort through them all in about a millisecond, I hear from the living room, Ben's voice...


"Oh, ok."

'Nuff said I guess...