From the mouths of babes...

I believe I have mentioned that my eldest is a piece of work ... and I am learning that her little sister is quickly becoming her frame. There are days where they actually leave me speechless, and that is not an easy task. Sunday morning past was one of those mornings. Sundays are the only day of the week that we are all home and able to linger in bed a little later than normal ... funny, but it seems Sundays are also the day that my girls are awake at the crack of dawn... digressing, sorry. So both girls, my husband, myself, our 93 pound dog, and our cat are all in the bed together. We have a king sized bed, but I am curious if there may be anything larger on the market lately ... perhaps we could just inflate a bouncy castle in the master bedroom ... hmmm ... that thread deserves its own blog, I'm thinking :) Anyway, my oldest is yammering on ... and on .... and on, about ... well, honestly - I was not paying attention (in knowing her you would be aware of the fact that she lulls your brain into numbness with the incessant yammering ... the child never stops). But she wound herself around to talking about her baby sister learning to swim in the pool ... all - by - herself! (Obviously she was not all by herself, I was in the pool with them ... but for the point of the story...all - by - herself!) She proceed to regale us with the scientific explanation of why her sissy was able to do such a thing: Human Know how. Now this caught my attention. She was looking for another word, but came out with that instead. I questioned her a little on where she came up with that phrase "Human know how". She told me she had seen (on Miss Spider) a show where a butterfly was able to find its way home even when they couldn't see anything ... it was called 'butterfly know how' and she just replaced butterfly with human (her words). Someone with a slightly larger vocabulary might have said - instinct. She's 6, folks. Does this not seem like a fairly big concept for a kid that age to have such a grasp of? I work with people unable to grasp concepts less in depth than human instinct ... This was not something we discussed with her. It was a case of her plucking a lesson (of sorts) from a show on (bad ol') TV and applying it to her sister's (seemingly magical) accomplishment. I'll also point out that she hasn't even seen an episode of Miss Spider since Summer began - so this was something she had embedded in her little bean for some time. Now, perhaps I am simply being an overly proud mama, but that strikes me as a pretty intelligent comment coming from a six year old - am I crazy? Okay - don't answer that question ... I meant pertaining to this SPECIFIC situation.

And then, there is the other one... this one is my cuddle muffin - and the baby - and looks like Shirley Temple ... and is as bad as bad gets. This is a kid that can manipulate a situation to her advantage better than almost anyone else I know. So two weeks ago, I had to follow my Mom down to a service station so she could drop off her car (and I could take her home). I didn't have an issue with this, but in trying to get my monsters in the van, well they irked me into a pissy and I was huffy when departing the driveway. Mom was ahead of me ... and the girls were freaking because they couldn't see her ... and I snapped back at them that she was right THERE! and then I said, but "she's goin' the WRONG FREAKIN' WAY!!!". (She actually wasn't BTW, I was mistaken)

Side bar ... can anyone see where this is going? I bet some of you parents can...

So Mom gets back in the van after signing her car in and we head home ... uneventful. The next day comes and we have to go after dinner to pick up the car. We all pile into the van and proceed to pull to the bottom of the driveway. This must have jogged my lil' darlin's memory, because she proceeded to blurt out "Gamma .... Mommy said you were goin' THE WRONG BLOODY WAY last night!" ... 'course Mom didn't hear her the first SEVEN times she repeated it. Lucky number eight took care of it, though. I was laughing because this kind of thing is typical for her - what else could I do, really? When I asked her why she told on me she informed me it was because I wouldn't let her get an ice cream cone again that night, and that I should have -i f I didn't want Gamma to know I was saying bad things about her ... not so cute now, eh??? Little shit. What am I raising here??? Evil geniuses, I say. I guess all that is left is to teach them a sinister laugh and call it a day ...

Have I mentioned I live in constant fear of their teens?