Words from the Blogger Draft Vaults, Set Down So That I Don't Lose Them Forever

Time:  2008?  Child: Susannah  Place: Good Ol' Walmart
A distraught Susannah sits in the cart, repeating these soft and lamentably audible words, "I not livin', Mama--sniffle, snif--I not livin', Mama."  Each person we passed looked at her with concern, and as we barreled around the corner to a new batch of sympathetic shoppers, and as her self-pity rose along with the certainty of how much she's been wronged by the world, she loudly exclaimed, "I don't like livin', Mama-- sniffle, snif-- I don't like livin'."

Try explaining to an elderly woman in the baking goods aisle that your 2 year-old really IS well-adjusted with that refrain in the background, will ya?

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From 2012.
Mildred Elise.

We've taught our girls that "Santa," as he's represented in popular culture, is not real, and they've always known this. We still have fun pretending, and the girls make all manner of knowingly cheeky comments about him and the tooth fairy both, such as the one Millie spoke:

"We need to make at LEAST twenty extra cookies for Santa." [She gives me a Very Significant Look.] "Because I know Santa, and he eats a LOT of cookies."

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Piper and Lu: 2012

One day, Piper announced out of the blue, "When I'm five, I want a little saw to cut off a tree branch."

 

Me: "What would you do with the branch?"

Pip:  "I would make a pair of twigs!"

Me, continuing with the boring follow-up questions:  "What would you do with the twigs?"

Pip:  "I would hold them in my hand and go like that (pantomimes twig-waving)."  Thoughtfully,  "I like making twigs."

Lu busts in, 

"When I'm tfweee, oh, when I'm tooour, I can peel a bwanch okk!"

(translation: When I'm three or when I'm four, I can peel a branch off!)

That's all folks.

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Luci, still confused a few weeks after we attended a friend's wedding

"Did I marry Miss Jennifer?"

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These are all from around fall 2013.
While we eat supper, Susannah gingerly moves the food around her plate without eating any.

Susannah: I think I'll like this squash when I'm older.

Me:  Yeah?  Do you like it now?

Susannah:  Um.  Sort of....  Not really.
......long pause.....
If it had no taste, I'd LOVE it!
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 Fall 2013.

Susannah, again.
I go through spurts of time in which I don't use the dishwasher in our kitchen.  I don't really know why.  I had never used one before we moved into this house, and sometimes I get into a rut of washing dishes only by hand for a month or three.  (Shameful.)  This could explain why one night while I loaded the dishes, my then seven year-old and I had the following exchange.

 Susannah, with a confused tone:  "Why are you putting DIRTY dishes in there?"

Me, confused just as much: "Um, so they can get clean."

The light slowly dawns on Susannah's face as she asked loudly and incredulously, "WHAT?!  It WASHES them?!!"

Come to find out, all that time, she thought I was just using the dishwasher as a glorified drying rack.
I think her reaction is perfect, though. Think about it:  a machine that WASHES OUR DISHES.  We live in a magical age.

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Fall 2013.
Piper Joy.

I overheard Piper singing sweetly to baby Ezekiel in the adjacent room, but then I actually listened to the lyrics.  "We love you, we love you, Oooh, we love you more than a dog..."  When she asked, "Do you like that song, Mama?" I didn't quite know how to honestly respond.

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 Recently.
Our Skinny Bones.

Luci, earnestly, after asking for a donut and me granting her 1/2 of a donut:  "Mama, you know what?  You should give me MORE donuts, because I'm so 'kinny, and you want me to be FAT."

Yup.
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Backdrop: we teach our children that we are enormously wealthy, because, in fact and in truth, we are.

Susannah, brushing her teeth: "Mama, are you glad that we are so wealthy?"
Me, absentmindedly: "Yup."
Susannah: "But don't you sometimes wish you were poor?"
Me:"......."
Susannah: Wistfully and with clear longing, "...so you could live in a hut?"

Another question for which I had no ready answer... :)