Overheard

ME: Are you guys excited that tomorrow is a holiday?
EMMA: What holiday is it?
ME: Presidents' Day.
ETHAN: Except I'm not celebrating George Washington.
ME: Why not?
ETHAN: His pictures. He looks creepy in them.

Commando

I took Sophie to the Minute Clinic this morning. While she was sitting on the bench in the examination room she fell backwards and I saw for a brief second that underneath her princess dress she was, ahem, naked.

"Please don't tinkle in here," I thought to myself. "And please stop wiggling around."

Ten minutes later we made it out of the waiting room without incident or accident, fortunately. When I found out it would be another ten-minute wait for her prescriptions to be ready, I told the pharmacist we'd come back later.

We rushed back home and made it in time. If anyone finds her old diaper, let us know. Sophie won't tell me where it's hiding.

Overheard

Sophie stayed home from church today because of her pink eye and cold.

SOPHIE: Where did the boys go?
ME: They went to church.
SOPHIE: Can I go mess up their fort?

fyi

"Cuy is what we know as guinea pig and it is one of the special dishes of Ecuador. Cuy serves as a good source of animal protein for people living in the hilly regions of Ecuador."

Watching Elmo on the iphone

Overheard

Outside the mattress store:

ETHAN: Why do people put signs up that say "ultimate mattress" but then you take it home and it's just like any ordinary mattress?

To the barricades!

Ethan didn't want anyone looking at him during dinner tonight.

Non sequitur

Andrew is reading a biography of George Washington in his class at school.  For his homework last night, he had to invent several quiz questions about what they're reading, and then provide answers to the questions.  To get things started, the teacher provided a sample question for the kids to answer about spies during the Revolutionary War. 

Here is Andrew's first question and answer:

Q: What do you think the Tories should have been called?

A: Meerkats.

Did you answer correctly?  When I asked Andrew why Tories should have been called meerkats, he said it's because meerkats eat nothing but insects.  Alrighty then.

Overheard

Ethan, on basketball:

ME: Ethan, good game today.  You got to control the ball a lot!
ETHAN: I don't like it when I have the ball.
ME: Why not?
ETHAN: Because when you get the ball then everyone runs toward you.
ME: You like to be on defense better, then?
ETHAN: I like offense better.
ME: But you said you don't like to touch the ball!
ETHAN: I like offense better because all you have to do is run around and do this. (HE PROCEEDS TO STICK HIS HANDS STRAIGHT UP IN THE AIR.)

Overheard

GINGER: Andrew, you cannot eat broth with a fork. No wonder it's taking so long!

The quote on the whiteboard at the community pool today

"The greatest battles of your life are fought within the private chambers of your own soul." -David O. McKay

A good quote, to be sure, but not his best.  I was not surprised by the quote; I was surprised that this particular person would be quoted in a random place like that, here in Indiana.

"Mudder, I mean Mommy, I mean Mudder"

A couple of weeks ago, seemingly out of the blue, Sophie started calling Ginger "mudder" instead of "mama". I'm guessing she got it from one of her favorite songs, "the mudder song", that starts with, "I see my mudder kneeling, with our family each day..."

FYI

This little "special weather statement" came across the wire this evening:

Issued by The National Weather Service
Indianapolis, IN
3:08 pm EST, Sun., Jan. 11, 2009

... VERY COLD TEMPERATURES HEADED FOR CENTRAL INDIANA...

THE COLDEST AIR OF THE WINTER IS EXPECTED TO IMPACT THE AREA THIS COMING WEEK. ARCTIC AIR FROM NORTHERN CANADA WILL RUSH SOUTHWARDS IN TWO SEPARATE WAVES. THE FIRST ARRIVAL OF COLD AIR WILL BE DURING THE DAY ON TUESDAY AND INTO TUESDAY NIGHT WHEN TEMPERATURES WILL DROP TO NEAR ZERO OR SLIGHTLY BELOW ALONG WITH DANGEROUSLY COLD WIND CHILLS OF LESS THAN TEN DEGREES BELOW ZERO. THE SECOND... AND COLDER AIRMASS WILL ARRIVE ON THURSDAY WHEN HIGHS ARE EXPECTED ONLY IN THE SINGLE DIGITS ABOVE ZERO WITH LOWS AS COLD AS TEN BELOW ZERO ACROSS NORTH CENTRAL INDIANA. WIND CHILL VALUES WILL BE DANGEROUSLY COLD ON THURSDAY AS WELL... FALLING TO LESS THAN TEN DEGREES BELOW ZERO AGAIN. RESIDENTS SHOULD CONTINUE TO MONITOR THE LATEST FORECASTS FOR ANY POSSIBLE ADVISORIES OR FURTHER INFORMATION REGARDING THIS VERY COLD WEATHER.

Dude.

The IMA

The Indianapolis Museum of Art is free, thanks to the generosity of Colonel Eli Lilly, who started a company that made so much money he can pay for everyone in the world to go the museum. Art museums are among Ethan's favorite places to go. He especially likes African art (Jooj!), although during our visit on Friday he also made sure we stopped by the American, European and Asian sections. Andrew was mostly interested in getting some food. Emma was hoping to see paintings of kitties (there were none; but she did find a sculpture of a winged kitty).

Here is Emma in front of a drawing that Henri Matisse did of her, years before she was actually born. If you click on the image, you'll see that it's appropriately entitled "Emma L."

Security Guard: "Hey you kids! Get off the wall!"

Emma liked this horse, made by a Chinese artist 100 years before Jesus was born!

Put your hands up in the air, raise em' like you just don't care!

(Note: I set off the alarm TWICE in the African section by pointing my finger too close to the exhibits. At the end Andrew made sure he stood between me and the exhibits at all times, lest I embarrass the family any more.)

Sophie fell asleep on the way to the museum, and didn't wake up until we were almost leaving. "I want to see the paint!" she said once we got in the car. When she woke up we were at the end of our visit, in the African section, where there are lots of scary masks but no paintings.

Ethan wants to make a mask like this for Halloween.

On the way home the kids begged us to stop at the art supply store to buy some clay. They were inspired the next day to make a miniature Egyptian sarcophagus, a tarantula and a butterfly.

Overheard

ANDREW: When you become an adult and you're like a Jedi or something, you call other adults by their last name.