Boughs of folly?

The boys are getting into that festive holiday spirit. Yesterday I heard Seth singing his heart out. "Away in a danger..."

Alan was holding Skyler today singing to him (to the tune of "Happy Birthday"), "Merry Christmas to you, merry Christmas to you..." Skyler waited until he finished the song, then pointed out, "But I'm not Mary!"

Name-calling again

The boys are still experimenting with name-calling as a sport. However, while they have the concept down, there is quite a bit of room to hone those skills. "You a towel!" "I not a towel!" "You David!" "I not David!"

The other day Skyler began wailing in the bathtub. "Sethie called me a name!"

I sighed. "What did he call you?"

"Jesus!"

Another verse from the Revised Substandard Perversion

"I don't like being bossed around," Anaya grumbled today. "Why do we always have to obey you?"

"Because the Bible says so," I explained for the bazillionth time. "It says, 'Children, obey your..."

"...parents in the Lord," Anaya growled. "But I wish it didn't. I wish it said, 'Parents, obey your children in the Lord.'"

Size this up for me

Anaya has just been proudly going through her drawers with me, getting rid of her size 5 clothes now that she is a solid size 6. You can understand her surprise when I received a box from my sister Valerie with clothes in it for me. "Look," I exclaiming, showing Saralyn a skirt I was trying on, "it's a size 4 and it fits me!"

Anaya came around the corner round-eyed. "You're a size 4?!"

My heart pleads for you

Anaya came to me today with a package from under the Christmas tree. "Mommy," she said, "Can I open my presents? I plead with you to let me!"

I laughed. "No."

She sighed, returning the box to the tree. "What does 'plead' mean?"

Postmodern thinking

My children have boundless energy--except when it comes to cleaning up their messes. They demonstrated this yesterday in an ardent protest against the evils of cleanup time. "Cleaning up will take forever," Anaya moaned.

"No, it won't," Saralyn assured her. "If you put your mind to it, it won't take long at all."

"It will take forever," Anaya protested. "If it were not so, I would not have thought it!"

Philosophies on turning three

Speaking of going in circles, Skyler demonstrated his philosophy on aging yesterday (though his birthday isn't for another month). "Mommy, I turning three," he crowed. Then he carefully spun around. "Now I turned three!"