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Alpha is a good sleeper, which means that sometimes he is not the easiest child to awaken. A side effect of that is that he is not ready for breakfast when he awakes. Beta, on the other hand, usually asks to eat breakfast as soon as he is awake.

One morning, I could tell by Alpha’s expression and body language that he was not in the mood for breakfast. That, and the fact that he refused my initial offer of cereal and yogurt. Since we had some unusual leftovers in the fridge, I thought I would try to pique his interest in eating breakfast.
I: How about a bear breakfast?
Alpha: What?
What do bears eat?
Fish.
(giving Alpha a serving of smoked salmon, which he likes) Yep, and salmon are fish. What else do bears eat?
Berries!
(serving a small dish of blackberries) Yep, and you’re having blackberries.
Blackberries and salmon would be very yummy for a bear.
So you’re having a bear breakfast.
Beta (running from the kitchen, through the dining room, and into the living room while waving his hands in the air): Ahhh! Run for your lives!!! There’s a bear in my house! There’s a bear in my house!

Never a dull moment here, folks.

Another day, I was finishing my meal and Beta was already done and making up a game. I don’t know exactly what kind of game, but I think it was related to football. He came in from the living room and announced the teams: he would be one team and I would be the other team. Then he announced the names.

You’ll be the Princess Buddy Mermaid team. I’ll be the Silver Rock Monster Bullet Grumpy Bear team.

I see where I stand. And apparently they’re never to young to start smack talk.

I was driving with Beta and we had a fun conversation. This is somewhat paraphrased, more so toward the beginning before I knew that it would become more interesting, but it conveys the idea.

Beta : Who lives in [a certain location]?
Some Guy : Your uncle and aunt. And your cousins. And they’re going to have another baby, but right now it’s in her belly.

In the mommy’s belly?
Yes.

Not the daddy’s?
No, only mommies have babies in their bellies. That’s what makes them mommies.

(laughing) No, babies don’t make mommies.
(catching on that he understood “babies make them mommies” to mean “babies make mommies”) Oh, umm, that’s right. Mommies make the babies.

(more laughing) Did you forget that God builds the babies?
Yes, that’s right. God builds the babies and then … puts them in the mommies’ bellies.

And that was the natural end of that conversation. I’m glad he knows where babies originate. Since that’s settled in his mind, we won’t have to discuss it later, right?

Right.

Ink Eraser

The local Thai place has the option of shrimp, scallops, or squid. We asked Alpha if he wanted squid the next time we got Thai food. He didn’t say yes or no. He asked “Do they take the ink out first?”

Maybe It Could Clean Teeth

Here is my side of the conversation with Beta. You can supply the imagination to fill in his part, both his speech and his actions.
“Yes, Beta?”
“No, toothpaste shouldn’t be down here. It should stay in the bathroom.”
“What!? NO! Don’t put that in your mouth! That’s A+D ointment, not toothpaste!”

Not Impressed

Alpha wanted to ask something of a parent. I was walking up the stairs but he assumed I was the other parent.
“Mom?” he asked.
“Yes Alpha,” I replied in as good a falsetto as I could muster.
“Daddy, that didn’t sound anything like momma.”

In cooperation with LaanyKidsMom, here are some entries for this week.

• Quotes
  Our oldest found out that ketchup does not go well with strawberries.
  I said “Ketchup goes well with french fries.”
  Response from the oldest: “Caramel goes on fries”
  And the 3YO chimed in with “And caramel goes on the road if you want it to be brown!”

  Yes, it could.

  What else has brought me joy this week?

• Driving Advice
  I have started getting driving advice from my kids, thanks in part to racing games on the Game Cube.

  “Go faster.”
  “Yeah, turn on rocket power!”
  To which I had to reply with “no, our minivan does not have rocket power.”

  One more

• You Know, That Thing…
  Another thing that made me smile was this conversation I overheard somewhere (park?, grocery store?):
  Parent: You move slower than molasses!
  Child: What’s molasses?
  Parent: Something that … moves slowly.

Since the normal website for this topic is not suitable for all ages, I thought I would contribute things I heard this week at my workplace.

• Employee: “Hahahahaha… I know better than to do this, but I’m going to send this to you.”

  Okay, Ethics 101 here. If you know something is wrong and do it anyway, you are usually worse off legally than if you didn’t know it was wrong. No, I don’t know who it was who said that. Where I am, I can hear the sounds from a lot of different cubicles. I could tell you the general direction (it came from over there), but that’s about it.

• Employee: “You know, if you tell your girlfriend that her dead cat never loved her, that really [irks her].”

  The editor had to intervene on the last part of that sentence, but you get the general idea. My co-worker and I overheard that one and just started laughing. I think it is funny mainly because I was left wondering why someone would say that. What was the background there? I could ask, I suppose, but I think it’s better not knowing.

• Someone brought his kids into work for a short time, maybe around lunch, and we heard a baby or small child crying.
  Child: “waaaaaaah”
  Engineer: “New program manager…”

  When someone brings small children, especially babies, into the engineering office, that usually prompts a number of jokes.

Side note: did you ever wonder about the phrase “a little bird told me”? Today’s verse, below, shows that the Israelites had that same phrase a few thousand years ago.

We read somewhere that families are supposed to have a conversation during dinner, so we tried it. Here is how it went…

The question for everyone to answer was “What’s your favorite fruit?”
I answered “Mine’s raspberry.”

Then it was the 3-year-old’s turn. We guessed a few things, to which he shook his head no. Finally he answered “grapes“.
“What color grapes?” my wife asked.
“Green.” he said.

That went well enough.  Then it was the 5-year-old’s turn.  He thought, then answered “chocolate-malt berries“.

If I had known chocolate was an acceptable answer…

On another day, the 3-year-old and I had this little exchange:
“Eat your peas.”
“Those aren’t peas. They’re little grapes. They just taste like peas.”

Okay.

Here are some more conversations that the children had recently:

Spelling Lesson

The 5-year-old like to read, and if he encounters a word he doesn’t know, he spells it for us and asks us what that spells. The 3-year-old wants to be like his brother, so even though he is not reading anything, he will starts spelling whatever letters come to mind and ask what that spells.

One evening at dinner, I heard “What does S-O-I-S-A spell?”

He was just making up letters as he went along. Normally I oblige and try to pronounce whatever he spells, but this time I just replied “I don’t know”

To which the 3-year-old responded, to his brother, “That word is too hard for him.”

Boys-Only

3-year-old, acting playfully distraught: “Ahhh! I said a girl word! Ahhh! Ahhh!“, accompanied by great arm-waving.

Their mother, after exchanging quizzical looks with me: “What’s a girl word?”

5-year-old, helping us understand his perspective: “He said ‘Beautiful’.”