things kids say

Between Tommy's Cub Scouts and baseball and Annabel's soccer and ballet, we are having an exceptionally busy spring. Each activity meets one evening or morning every week and so far, Will and I have divided and conquered these practices along gender lines. This is mainly because Will has to be at Tommy's activities since he's an assistant baseball coach and treasurer for scouts and then wants to stay home on Friday night (soccer) and Saturday morning (ballet) to catch up on his home-body-at-heart activities. It works really well for us to do it this way, but it means that I'm spending less time with Tommy these days and even more time with Annabel. I try to make up for the lost time with my sweet boy on weekends and on the couple nights when we're all home, but I'm really happy that he's getting this time with Will. They're having fun and I love seeing them head off to activities laughing and joking with each other.

A fun result of spending more alone time with my best girl are the hilarious and interesting conversations I've been having with her on a daily basis. I thought I'd share some of them here with you today, if you'd like to read! A couple of these date back to the fall when I first started to write some of them down, but the rest are from the last few weeks.

During a conversation about fire safety on the way home from school:
"You know when a dragon comes into your house and breathes fire and it gets on your clothes and you call 911 and the fire department comes to your house and then they give him a big hug so he stops breathing fire."

While staring at the Elf on the Shelf that was sitting on the mantel a few weeks before Christmas:
"Mama! I think Elfie is goin' to talk to me. I think he wants a-move onto the Christmas tree. He can hear me with his ears. He really can. Hear dat, Mama? He talked for pretend! Elfie, Elfie, Elfie on the shelf!"

After having to tell her to get her shoes on for the FOURTH time and asking her if her listening ears were turned on:
"I turned my ears off in the night. When I'm sleeping."

After preschool, while we were potting up some herbs in the sunny driveway:
"Mama, I know how to make ham. First the farmer gets a knife. Then he slices half of a pig off and puts it into a machine and he presses the RED button and it makes it into a ham and he puts it in a bag and he puts it in a delivery truck and it brings us ham." {Pause} Am I smart?!" (For the record, I have no idea where this came from. She loves to eat ham, but we've never talked about the details of the farm-to-table process besides the fact that "ham comes from pigs which start out their lives living on a farm." Also, she was VERY insistent that the button is RED.)

On the way to school the morning after a thunderstorm:
"I knowed there was goin' to be a thunderstorm. I turned my listening ears on just a little and I heared it."

While driving her babies around on her bike in the driveway:
"I have my own bubble on me. It goes to outer space with me."

Just before heading off to her first-ever soccer practice:
"Let's do this, girrrrrl! I'm a soccer star!"

After I told her that we shouldn't play with her balloon outside because she might drop it and it will float away:
"I can play with my balloon outside because if I drop it we could just ask a giant to save it for us."

While describing what it feels like when her foot falls asleep in the night:
"When I was sleeping lots of buggies crawled into my skin and into my bones and they walked all over me and it waked me up and feeled funny. I don't like those buggies in me!"

Since Annabel is in school four days a week until 2pm this year, up until now, I've had less one-on-one time with her during the day. Once Tommy comes home from school and Will gets home from work, it's a flurry of homework and studying and time with Daddy and making dinner and eating dinner and heading out to other activities. I'm thankful for this extra time with her to play a game of candy land (every Monday night during scouts) and take her on picnics in the sunshine and work on the garden and take her to the farm and hear all the thoughts that are floating around in her pretty little head. Love my sweet girl.

Happy Monday, friends! Wishing you a day full of sunshine and spring temperatures and a perfect record on your March Madness bracket. So far, Annabel has picked all but one of the huge upsets!