Out of the Mouth of Babes

Oddities abound at my house today.

Just minutes ago, when I asked my daughter if she wanted corn dogs for lunch she bellowed, "yeah, but with the stick in it!". It was in a tone that suggested she was thinking, "how dare you even think about giving me a hot dog without a stick!" If I had been looking at her, she probably had her eyebrows furrowed in my direction with a scowl across her face. But then again, the scowl could have been because her pet fly was smooshed.

Yes, I said "pet fly". Let me tell you how it started:

I had to fill out some paperwork for my dr. yesterday. The lobby was small and we were the only ones there, which was fabulous because I didn't have to worry about them bothering others too much. As I filled out my papers I hear the girls cooing, "oh it's so cute! Look, it likes me!" They get my attention to show me how cute "it" is. It takes a second to realize that "it" is the fly perched on S.'s shoe (she's 2). Alrighty then. I think. "That's great!" I say, and go back to my clipboard. The cooing continues for some time. But then I hear S. crying in distress. This was not an I'm-bored-and-tired cry (well, not entirely). It was more like a someone-just-stole-my-bike kind of cry. You know, the ones kids save for REALLY BIG crisis. Being the *ahem* good mommy that I am, I get up and see what's making her so upset. You know what she tells me through her tears? "It went away! It doesn't like me anymore!" Cross my heart. "It will come back" I tell her, hoping that 1- it will or 2- she'll forget about it in mere seconds. But then the fly came back and a good time was had by all.

Flash forward to today:

A. (whose 4) claims a different fly. One that's been buzzing around our house all morning. She shows me the top of her hand, where it's sitting, looking at me with those thousands of buggy fly eyes. She declares it her pet, I tell her how great it is, and then she moves on. Minutes later I hear A. tell S., "I think it's hungry. Let's go see in the pantry." Oddly, those words did not strike the panic it maybe should have as I overheard that. What I wondered, was what do you feed a housefly? Later I find a box of vanilla mini-wheats discarded to the floor. One lone mini-wheat stood outside the box. Alone. My only thought was, "so that's what you feed a housefly." So I start the what-do-you-want-to-eat, no-not-cereal-for-lunch conversation. This is when A. reveals to me that she was, in fact, trying to feed her fly that mini-wheat. But then in a startling chain of events yet unclear to me, she says she smushed it.

"Smushed it?" I ask. "Why would you smush your fly?"

"Because I wanted a new one!"

Ah, out of the mouth of babes.

On a completely different note, but not really, the girls locked managed to accidentally lock the bathroom door at the dr's office from the inside. Meaning, they locked the door but did not stay in. A. said she had to pee (which is what started the debaucle in the first place), went into the restroom. Her sister followed. A minute later I notice that there is a lot of joy emanating from the restroom, and S. is nowhere to be found. Then I see the colorful striped shirt lodged in the cracked-open doorway. I spring into action, chastise them for playing in the bathroom (even though no one else was there), drag them out by their wrists and tell them to sit down. It's not until A. tells me that she still has to pee do we all realize the door to the ONLY bathroom in the lobby, was locked! So we wait, and watch the receptionists come over with one key after another until finally one of them says, "if she has to pee you might want to take her somewhere else. It might take us awhile to find the key." This was after two failed key attempts and nearly 10 minutes… I apologized profusely, and she insisted it was fine. And maybe it was. Some people have considerate internal dialogue in situations like this. I probably would have thought, man, that lady's kids are out of control! Good luck to her.

It might be interesting to note that she kept telling me how darling the girls were when we first got there. I wonder if she still thought that when we left.