royal trivia

Lucy has a little felt face toy--like a Mr. Potato Head made of felt.
There's a hair piece that is spiky and yellow. She thinks it is a crown. So, naturally, she started making a queen head.
She found the ears and asked me what they were. (Hard to see what ears are out of context, no?)
"They're ears, honey," I told her.
She looked at me and shook her head. "Momma, queens don't usually have ears."

multicultural

Lucy: Did you know that I'm African-American?
Me: Really?
Lucy: Yes. From South Israel.
Me: Oh.
Lucy: And I speak Spanish.
Me: Of course you do.

Would that make her sort of a Latina Sammy Davis Jr.?

would this be funny if it happened to someone else?

1. Husband gone.
2. Sick.
3. Three-year-old taking waaaay too long to fall asleep.
4. Moving. In four more days. Yes, I mean the whole house in boxes.
5. Baby waking me every hour.
6. Insomnia in between some of those wakings.
7. Upon waking, finding cat puke all over the carpet.

Merry Christmas. Would someone please get me some caffeine? Perhaps laced with something stronger, like heroin?

pet sounds

Today Lucy said, "Mama, I want a dog."

Surely most children say this at some point. And since both Dyami and I are really not (not!) dog people, I know that we will not be getting a dog anytime soon. Or ever.

But I was actually flabbergasted that Lucy asked for a dog, because she runs screaming to me any time a dog comes near her. Even a chihuahua on a leash.

How do you think it would be, dear child, if there were a dog in the house all the time? Would you just stay in one room while it was in another?

I guess we'll never know.

(lack of) conservation of energy

The law of the (lack of) conservation of energy is as follows:

F+S+N+X =/<0, where:
F is the daytime fussiness quotient of the tiny human,
S is amount of sleep everyone is getting,
N is whether the small human is napping,
and X is anything else that can go wrong.

If S is positive, then (at least) one of the other values must be negative, since the total value must be equal or less than zero.

Example:
Baby starts sleeping? You will decide to major home renovations and/or your toddler will stop napping.

Toddler starts napping? Baby will start being inexplicably fussy all day, and/or you will get sick.

Getting better? It's tax time, and the older one catches your cold.

This explains why I keep expecting to catch up, and I never do.

the gourmand

Lucy is quite entranced by real tools--the tape dispenser, the pencil sharpener, and, now, the knives. Occasionally I let her cut things with a paring knife. Very soft things, like bananas and oranges. (Confession: I tried to let her cut a baby carrot, and was white-knuckling it while she very carefully tried to muscle her way through the slices. Surprisingly, three-year-olds do not have the hand strength for vegetables. Who knew?).

So, if you're going to cut a bunch of fruit, what do you make? Fruit salad, of course. The first time we made some, I directed the recipe: your standard bananas, oranges, apples and frozen blueberries.

Today, Lucy took over. And decided that the salad really needed some frozen peas.

A few notes:

1. It makes sense, really. Frozen blueberries: small, round, frozen. Peas: small, round. Also frozen.
2. They look nice in the mix. Very rainbow.
3. Peas: they're a fruit, right? Or are they more of a seed?
4. Lucy happily ate the mix.
5. I gamely tried it. For a moment, I thought, "What if it's a good combination? Who knows?"

However:

6. Not a good combination. Whether they're a fruit or not, they should not be combined with very finely-chopped bananas. Ick.

So what's next? Edamame and mango? Green beans with pear?

the archaeology of Mother Goose

Question: How do we know that Humpty Dumpty was an egg? It says nothing about a shell in the rhyme.