Mouths of Babes

Every once in awhile M Girl (our six-year old) asks for a baby sibling, even though I've told her that it ain't gonna happen. This time she said she wanted me to have a baby so she could go to the hospital and see how the baby gets out. (This isn't unusual since she always wants to see for herself how everything works). I told her that even if I did have another baby she probably wouldn't be able to be in the room when the baby was born. To her indignant "Why not?!" I explained that it can be scary for kids to see that because as wonderful as it is, it can be painful and she might get upset seeing mommy in pain. We talked a little more about the birth process which fascinated her (especially the part about how the baby gets out through such a small opening).

Later as I was telling my husband about that conversation, she said "Daddy, I really want mommy to have another baby. Can you make that happen?"

More first grade ficshun

M Girl made up a story for me tonight before bed. I can't recall how we got on the subject of rain and umbrellas but somehow we got to this:

Once there was a man who didn't have an umbrella. He was the only person in the whole universe who didn't have an umbrella. He never went out in the rain and he never bought an umbrella. One day he bought an umbrella and he went out in the rain and he died.

You can see from this story and this story that she has a slightly dark and twisted sense of humor, which I love. (Kind of like Alanis Morissette, I guess.)

I am not old!

Apparently, my youngest child seems to think announcing her mother's age in public is a good thing. First there was the incident at the zoo and last night there was this:

We were at our local yuppie pizza restaurant for our older daughter's birthday dinner. The waiter (who my younger daughter started calling "Hungry Guy" because he kept begging her for a bite of her pizza) was guessing how old A Girl was. He said, "I know! You're 45!" and M Girl says (loudly, of course and pointing right at me) "No, but my mom's almost 45!" Cue embarrassed laughter from everyone in the restaurant.

It's not that I'm embarrassed about my age. I'm not - if you ask me, I'll tell you that I'm 42 and that I earned every gray hair that I haven't managed to cover with highlights. But I don't necessarily want to call it to the attention of the patrons of random restaurants and food courts across the city. But that's just me.