Kindergarten Plans

On Monday I told Isaak that he will be starting Kindergarten next year. He was very excited that he will be finally starting school just like his sisters, and for the rest of the day we heard all about his ideas for what he is planning to do once he starts Kindergarten.

On Tuesday I spent most of the day on the computer, searching for and researching books for 5th grade (but that's another story), and every time I went downstairs for something, he would ask me, "Are you working on my Kindergarten?"

On Wednesday morning, as I sat at the table correcting Math and Grammar for the girls, Isaak brought up the subject again. "Mom, I don't think I'm ready to start Kindergarten yet." I told him that was OK, that we could wait a while. He sat quietly for a few seconds then responded, "OK, maybe tomorrow."

This evening I asked him to get out some kid plates for dinner, and he told me, "I got two plates and then two more so there would be four, because two plus two equals four." I thanked him and had him set them on the counter for me, and he asked, "Mom, am I supposed to know that already, or will I learn that in Kindergarten?"

Four-year-old Theology (In a Nutshell)

Discussing his Pre-K/K Sunday School lessons (with disgust in his voice):

"The week behind, we learned that God made everything. But I knew that already! Today we learned that God made plants, but I knew that already too!"

***

"God is the boss of all the bosses."

***

Isaak: "There is only one God, Mom."

Me: "Right. But He is at the same time three-in-one; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

Isaak: "Ah ha! So that's how He can see everything at the same time! The other two help Him!"

Peasant, Pee-sant, Pheasant

Playing dress-up, Jaela asked me:

J: Mom, don't I look just like a princess?

(She's wearing two dresses, three layers of shawls, and a scarf tied over her straw hat...)

Me: Actually, you look more like a peasant girl.

J: Really?!? (runs back upstairs to tell her sisters...)

Later:

J: Mom, did I really look like a pee-sant?

Me: No, you looked like a peh-sant.

Macey, a few minutes later:

M: Mom, wasn't that funny when Jaela asked if she looked like a pheasant?

Me: No funnier than when you called her a pheasant instead of a peasant!

Pirate-y Logic

Mom, the pirates just told a lie, so they were disobeying God.

But they didn't have a mom. They were pirates!

Still Hungry...Maybe

After dinner, Isaak came and found me where I was working.

Isaak: Mom, I'm still hungry.

Me: Really?

Isaak: Yeah, but if I don't like the idea, I'm not going to have it.

Me: You mean, if I tell you that you can have a carrot, you won't still be hungry?

Isaak: Yeah.

Me: You can have a carrot.

Isaak: I guess I'm full.

From the Land of Randomness

Our new neighbor is a real bear. No, really. The big, black furry kind. I looked out my kitchen window one evening, and there was a bear in our backyard. By the time I grabbed my camera, it had wandered into the tall grass behind the barn, but at least I have visual proof...kind of.

See the black fuzzy blob in the center of the picture?

That's my bear.

Look what else we've got! We had a manual well pump installed, so now if we ever lose power, we still have water...and four kids to help haul it.

It's pretty cool.

We've also got quite a few of these. We've even named some of them:

Dinner, Lunch, Stew, and Yummy.

Tonight as I was making dinner, Isaak commented from the living room:

"Mom, being a knight is hard."

And on one of our exploratory hikes before we moved in, our realtor took a picture of these signs on the hill behind the house:

(SCENIC VEIW ... NEXT 2 LEFTS)

Heard Around Here Lately

Isaak, pressing his face into the "window" of the front loading washing machine: "Mommy, when I put my head in here and it bangs around, my eyes go up and down!"

Isaak, running around in circles in the family room: "Mommy, when I run around like this I am getting my energy! Does it look like my feet will fall off?"

Jaela: "Hold on a minute, Macey. I need to catch my breath from talking!"

Anya, getting ready for soccer practice: "Mommy, when we're getting ready to go somewhere, I just get happy and sad at the same time, and it makes a blob in my heart."

Isaak, in the bathtub: "Mommy, did you hear that noise?!? My bottom burped!"

Isaak, playing hide-n-seek with his sisters, instead of saying "Make a sound!": "Give me a bah-humbug!"

To Be Continued...

Sing A New Song

Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth.

Psalm 96:1

Isaak: (at the top of his lungs, of course)

Ha-yay-yu-yah, Ha-yay-yu-yah!

We all live in a yeyow submarine!

Well...it starts with Hallelujah, and I'm pretty sure no one has ever sung that particular song before...so does it count as singing a new song to the LORD?

Jenga

This morning Isaak played Jenga all by himself. He didn't create the tower and pull a single block out to relocate on the top of the tower as the game is designed. No, he just used the blocks to create ships, cannons, soldiers, prisoners, and battle scenes. He invents a new game every time he plays, and every time it is called Jenga.

This morning, his soldiers were created to look like Ts, each with a horizontal Jenga block balanced on top of a vertical one. He set them up in a perimeter around the top of the coffee table, surrounding a building he'd created from more Jenga blocks, and then came running to tell me all about it.

"Mommy, come look! It's the Battle of New Orleans! And it was 1954! And one of the soldiers is Andrew Jackson! And George Washington was there too! And there was a lot of fighting, and only these two guys lived!"

Anyone up for a nice game of Jenga?

Not An Average Vocabulary

(Important background information: Jaela has been re-reading the Grandma's Attic series, and Anya is reading the 1930s versions of Nancy Drew. There. Now these little stories will make more sense. Read on.)

The other night, the girls wore their new footed jammies to bed. Jaela came to the kitchen just before bedtime to tell me how much she liked them. (It was a long monologue...)

Jaela: (wrapping up the monologue) ...and Mommy, Macey and Anya just look so CUNNING in theirs, don't you think?!?

Today, playing paper dolls in the living room:

Macey: Isaak, PLEASE don't bug me!

Isaak: (indignant) This is not called bugging you.

Macey: But you ARE!

Anya: (in her most gentle tone of voice) Macey, PLEASE don't speak to him so harshly!

Personal History, American History...and a Little Math

Since we moved to the east/south and started visiting historical sites, I have been trying to remember whose North Carolina log cabin home I visited when I was in 8th grade. I remembered that it was a former president's birthplace, and I thought we went there on a field trip, but I couldn't remember any of my classmates being there.

Today the light bulb finally went on, and everything became clear again. It turns out that I don't remember any classmates being there because they weren't. It wasn't a school field trip. When I asked Mom about it, she reminded me that she, Randy, and I went with Ruby Knapp to visit James K. Polk's birthplace in April 1990, and she sent me this picture.

(Randy, Me, and "Aunt" Ruby Knapp)

Thanks for the picture, Mom!

It just so happens that this week in American History, Jaela and Macey are learning about James K. Polk, the eleventh president. Today I opened our Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Presidents of America to the pages about James Polk, and read that:

James Polk was the eleventh president, and his political career began after he moved to Tennessee from North Carolina, where he was born. (That was my "ah ha!" moment.) I pointed out to the girls that:

Me: He was Governor of Tennessee for a while, but he was born in North Carolina. That's whose cabin I visited when I was a kid!

Macey: (completely innocently) Was he still governor when Mommy visited his home?

Ahem. Insert short math lesson here involving dates from the mid-1800's and a certain birthdate circa 1976.

There. Aren't you glad we cleared all that up?

Any Word Will Do...

In the car this morning on the way to church, Jaela and Macey were examining their dimes they'd set aside for the offering.

Macey: Hey! My dime was made in 1996! Mommy, are old coins valuable?

Me: If they're old enough, they can be.

M: Well, how old is 1996?

Me: That's the year Mommy and Daddy got married.

M: Wow! This dime is really old!

Me: Um. Not really.

Jaela: Hey, Macey, I know! You could save it and give it to Mommy and Daddy for their next university!

University. Anniversary. Any word will do.

Matter-of-Fact

Macey came running down the stairs.

M: Mommy! Can I change my shirt? It's got some of Jaela's blood on it!

J: How did it get Jaela's blood on it?

M: Jaela has a bloody nose!

J: Why?

M: (matter-of-factly...) Because we were fighting and I punched her in the nose.

Oh. Of course. I guess that would do it!

I think maybe my little ladies have been reading too many adventure/detective stories...

Isaak-isms

After choosing a pull-up to wear grocery shopping, Isaak decided to let me in on his thought processes.

I: I chose this pull-up because it has a robot on it, and I'm going to be a robot when I grow up, after I'm a Navy Seal. Do you know why?

Me: Why?

I: Because I'm a boy.

(pause...)

I: But pretty soon I won't be a boy any more because I'm growing up to be a man.

Later that day, sitting with Mr. Mark and Ms. Mary outside on their patio, Isaak wondered why Emmie (the beagle) had to go inside.

Mary: Because she's too hot. (it was 92˚ and 65% humidity)

I: Why is she too hot?

Mary: Because she is wearing a fur coat. If you were wearing your warm coat outside right now, wouldn't you be too hot?

I: Yes...but why did you put a coat on her?

Because

I have finally gotten through to Isaak that "Because" is not a reason. Our conversations used to go something like this:

I: Mommy, do you know why I took my shirt off?

Me: No, why did you take your shirt off?

I: Because.

I'm not sure that our conversations have improved much, though. Now they tend to go something like this:

I: Mommy, do you know why I am wearing no shirt?

Me: No, why aren't you wearing a shirt?

I: Because I can get lots and lots of exercise running around like THIS!

And he runs off to demonstrate that THIS means running in gigantic circles, while I sit and wonder how that necessitates being shirtless. On the other hand, if Mr. Mark asks him if he likes lemonade:

I: Yes!

Mark: Why?

I: Because it's YUMMY!

Maybe I just ask the wrong questions!

Backseat Conversations

In the van, Jaela and Macey sit in the very back seats. Anya and Isaak sit in the middle row. As we were driving to the grocery store the other day, Jaela and Macey were talking to each other, and Anya tried to join in the conversation.

Jaela, with a very condescending tone: Anya, WE are having a BACKseat condersation, NOT a MIDDLE seat condersation. Please don't interrupt.

Anya heaved a very deliberate, exasperated sigh. (I imagined eye-rolling and head-shaking to go with it...)

Anya: It's conVERsation, Jaela, with a v, not a d.

Riddle Me This

A few evenings ago, Mike and the girls were all taking turns making up riddles. They were mostly things like "What lives in the water and looks like a fish, but isn't a fish?" (Answer: a dolphin) Nice and simple. Everyday examples of 6 and 8 and 33 year old humor. Until...

Anya: What has seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns?

Mike and I stared at each other incredulously as Jaela and Macey shouted the answer in unison...

Jaela and Macey: The Satan dragon in the Bible!

Ahem. Yeah. Anyone up for a nice friendly game of Bible Trivia against my girls?

Little History Buff

At Goodwill last week, as I was sorting through the bookshelves, Isaak sat contentedly in the cart, surrounded by a growing pile of books. He picked them up and leafed through them, one by one.

I: What's dis one about, Mom?

Me: It's a book for Mommy and Daddy about Wilbur and Orville Wright, the men who invented the first airplane.

I: Oh. (pause) Is Amela Ehhaht in it?

Yeah. He knows about Amelia Earhart. And he's still only two.

The Giant and David

Tonight at bedtime, Isaak was telling me all about the giant:

Isaak: ...and he had a shield, and a sword, and a hat, and a...what was dat ting called again?

Me: You mean his spear?

Isaak: Yeah, and den he put a rock in it...

Me: No, David had the sling and put a rock in it.

Isaak: Yeah, and den he killed the diant!

Me: Who was on David's side?

Isaak: (horrified) David's DOGGIE died?!?

Me: No! WHO was on David's side? Why could he kill the giant?

Isaak: Oh! God was on David's side. I tought you said David's DOGGIE died!

Bedtime Threats

Isaak was told that bedtime was approaching, and he objected (loudly). Jaela and Macey, who have been reading a lot of Hardy Boys books lately, thought that maybe they could encourage him to accept the idea...

Jaela: Isaak, if you don't go to bed, it will be curtains for you!

Macey: Yeah, and you'll be a goner!