Book Recommendation

On his book recommendation for 'Franny K Stein: Lunch Walks Among Us':

Aidan: Recommended for children 1st grade and up. Because smaller children (yes, he says 'children') might be scared and the words are kind of harder. Babies should definitely not read it because they could easily do those experiments and get hurt or at least get in trouble.

Yes, babies could easily sew lunch meat together and add toxic waste to make a giant walking monster. Easy Peasy.

Third Week of School

Aidan loves activity. He climbs, he runs, he throws, he fights (for pretend...at least mostly), he cartwheels, he jumps, and he keeps on going. I would think that his favorite parts of school would be recess and PE. I would be wrong.

"Do I have school in the morning?"
"Yep, tomorrow is Thursday."
"Aw, I don't want to go to PE"
"What??! Why not?  I thought you'd love PE. You get to play and exercise."
"Yeah, but that guy doesn't listen to me. Just everyone else. He said 'do we want to do crab walk or race?' I said race and the other kids said crab walk. And we had to do crab walk!!  Don't they remember we did that yesterday??"

As far as school goes, it's pretty great. He goes happily in the morning, comes home happily in the afternoon and is happy all day. He is learning some Spanish already. Last week he told me his Spanish word of the day.

"Today's Spanish word is lapiz."
"Cool, what does lapiz mean?"
"It means...the fan is on."
"No it doesn't."
"Well, it doesn't but I don't want to tell you. I want you to guess."
(Google Translate to the rescue.)

One down side is this. Sometimes he just wants to make up words. So he says weird sentences and says, "it's a different language. Not Spanish. Not English." 

Well, in that case, copasapata. :)

Allie: I Believe

"I believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus and God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost and Wizards and fairies."

Leave it to the magic of childhood innocence to offend Christians, Atheists, Wiccans, and Pagans all in one fell swoop. Nope, I don't care that they're all together.  I think kids can just be kids. There are plenty of years to be adults. Childhood lasts only a short time, and even then, when the magic is gone, you can't really get it back.  Keep believing, Allie!

What is Shrimp?

Allie: I will eat most foods, except not a lot of meat. And not shrimp.
Aidan: What's shrimp?
Allie: Shrimp is and animal and you cut off its tail and its legs and I think its head. And then you cook it and then it's meat. I don't like it."

A Snowman

This kid keeps me laughing.


Last week, we had the unfortunate honor of receiving a book from our friends. It was a lovely little book that plays a song ... over and over and over. Apparently, Aidan found it and since they didn't play with it anymore, they told him he could take it home. Well, today, we were reading it (singing it because that's how you HAVE to read this book), and he kept asking me, "he's a snowman?" "Is he a snowman on this page?" "He's a snowman."

"No, Aidan, it's not a snowman; can't you see it's an alligator?"

"No, a snowman."

"Look, he has a pointy alligator mouth with teeth. And he's green. And he has ridges on his back."

"Well, where's the snowman then?"

"There is NO snowman in this book, buddy."

"Yes, there is, mom. It says "A Snowman, he played one, he played knick knack on my thumb"

Uh...yeah...I was dying of laughter at that point, so he thought I was laughing at his rhymes and continued to make more of them up.

Um...I really thought he knew this song...for a year at least. Has he really been thinking it was "A Snowman" the whole time?!


(To clarify...the book is just the original song lyrics "This Old Man". Also, "unfortunate" was used a bit sarcastically. The first day it was in our home, everyone explored the cool new button, and with 4 kids, 2 parents, and friends over, that's a lot of "this old man". )

:)

Aidan Explains

Allie: Aidan, How do you make a snowman?
Aidan: First, You make a snowball. A big ball. Then it melts. Then you make it again.

(He won't know what to do with himself when he only has to make that snowman once if/when we ever move up north.)

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For Thanksgiving, Aidan's preschool asked them each to tell how to cook a turkey. This was his response.

"Give the turkey a bath. Put it in the oven and cook it for two days. Put it on the table and poke it. Then eat it."

Off For The Summer

Allie: So, is tomorrow the last day of church?
Mom: No, church doesn't have a break for the summer. It just keeps going.
Allie: Oh man. Aw.

This small exchange tonight took me way back. I remember being Allie's age and thinking the exact same thing. The year I realized that church didn't have a summer break was also the year I realized that Dad didn't get work off for the summer either. Wow, life seemed pretty unfair. Tonight it just made me smile....and shed a small tear for childhood innocence.

Bananas According To Allie

"Fruit is juicy. No other fruit is like a banana. I don't know why bananas are fruit. They should just be called a snack."

Christmas Quote #3

Oringinal Photo courtesy of Darwinek.

Christmas Quote #2

He who has not Christmas in his heart

will never find it under a tree.

Roy L Smith

There are myriads of Christmas movies about this very fact. "Christmas isn't something you buy at the store...Christmas...is a little bit more." (paraphrase from "How the Grinch stole Christmas", which we read and watch at least a couple times each year.)

Christmas Quote #1

I love quotes. It may be the perfect wording of a perfect thought, or just that someone has captured the feeling.

My Christmas quote of the day:

Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree.

In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.

Larry Wilde