Lily: "Ange, we'll always be with you, even when you go home and even when
you're dead"
Me: "What do you mean?"
Lily: "When you love someone they stay in your heart forever. So you will
always be with us, even when you die. As long as you live and even after YOU
DIE, you will always be with me"
We tried for a while to figure out what she meant by this, and eventually
narrowed it down to "some berries Jeff brought for us, and which we ate on an
airplane last November." She was very sad to learn we did not have any nasty
dessert.
We're at the park and Lily proposed doing a "tortoise race" with the
instructions "we all run in a circle until somebody says stop." We did this,
with Anna eventually saying "stop." I didn't realize the origin of this game
until Lily then announced we had all won and we all needed prizes (which turned
out to be rocks.)
"It's ok to say 'stupidhead' to cars because they don't have feelings. But kids
do have feelings. And a mommy might have feelings, and papas might have
feelings, and a grandfather might have feelings, and people have feelings. But
cars do not and it's ok to say 'stupidhead' to cars."
Yesterday Anna turned 3, and her cousins gave her a toy dog. She gave
it a couple of names over the course of the day ("Boodo," "Guddah,")
and then went to sleep with it. This morning when she woke up: "I
named my puppy Forever Puppy. Cause I want to be with it forever."
One remarkable thing about the stuffed animals Anna has acquired in her bed is that there is no overlap in species. We have a puppy, a fox, a catbus, a baby, a monkey, an elephant, a reversible penguin/owl, a rainbow bear, a narwhal (?), a hedgehog, an otter, a beaver, a sea turtle, and a guinea pig.
I found scribbles on the hallway wall. I'd been reading about how forcing kids
to explain things like this just pushes them to lie, so I brought them both to
the scene.
Me: "I see drawing on the wall. I don't need to know who did this - "
Lily: "It wasn't me, it was - "
Me: "I said I don't need to know who, I just need you to not - "
Anna: "I did it with a penny."
Me: " - I just need to you to not draw on the walls. Ok, and no scratching the
walls with pennies."
Last night Lily decided to hold a birthday party for one of her teddy bears,
who has a birthday and a birthday party about every two weeks. Midway through
the preparations, I got a phone call and went to my room to take it. About 5
minutes into the call, Lily pushed a note under the door (dictated to Jeff):
"Dear Mama,
I'm sorry to say that you're delaying the birthday party that was going to be
celebrated this evening. If your phone call is not short we will not be able to
do the party tonight.
Yesterday Lily came downstairs and sang each of our cats (separately)
a song about how they will always be in her heart even when she is far
away, "so they will never forget me."
When Anna and Lily come down to visit and we tell them it's time to go back
upstairs, Anna often doesn't want to go—and she's not as good as Lily about
accepting that we agreed they'd go up after this story or after this amount of
time or whatever. BUT as she continues telling us about how she doesn't want to
go upstairs, we always get to this point:
Anna [getting upset]: I don't want to go upstairs. I just want to be with Mama!
Anna, "reading" from a copy of Harry Potter: "Uncle Vernon shut the door.
Chapter one, the Wicked Witch of the West. A girl named Dorothy lived in an old
house." First crossover fic?
Yesterday Lily had a cookie and 2.5 gummy worms. She asked for a second
cookie, and I asked her how much dessert was reasonable. She said two cookies
or five gummy worms should count as a full dessert. [1] Unfortunately, I wasn't
able to get her to see that if either of those makes a full dessert, then
(assuming linearity) so does what she had already eaten.
Anna asked me for a second cookie, not having had any gummy worms, and so got
one. Lily was pretty sad about that, but then Anna gave Lily a little piece of
her cookie and Lily was happy again. [2]
[1] This isn't entirely up to her, but generally I'll have her first propose
something and then go back and forth with her if I don't think it's reasonable.
In this case she seemed to be setting a good limit.
[2] You could argue that since Lily had already had a full dessert she should
have to turn down Anna's offer, but (a) transfers like this don't affect the
total amount of dessert the pair consume (b) letting them be nice to each other
seems much more important than strict limits around dessert.
...
Lily did this correctly the other night. I told her she could have two cookies
or four Hershey's kisses. She intially planned to have one cookie and two
Hershey's kisses, but after she'd had one cookie and one Hershey's kiss she
asked if she could have another half a cookie instead of the last kiss. Either
a lucky guess or a budding algebraist.
Anna wanted to go to bed in a tee-shirt and I told her she could either put on
a long-sleeved shirt or a sweater on top of her tee-shirt. She proposed a third
option: "Maybe you could put a sweater on me and I could take it off when
you're not looking in the room."
Anna has adopted the classic "My friend doesn't have to do X" technique without actually having many real-life friends, so the friend in question is Tinkerbell.
"Tinkerbell says I can wear shoes to bed."
"Tinkerbell says people don't like to be buckled in their carseats."
She's also started trying the jurisdiction-based approach, as in "People don't go to bed in Massachusetts, they stay up all night. That's how they do it in this town."
Despite years of intending to have nothing to do with ballet lessons,
I first succumbed to the kids' desire to have sparkly costumes like
their cousin Oliver and then to their requests to play "going to
ballet lesson" yesterday. We found some videos of a very chipper
Australian providing preschool ballet instruction, and the kids were
enthusiastic if not precise. After the ballet lesson devolved into
rolling on the bed, Anna bit Lily in excitement and it all ended in
tears.
Lily: Well, I know a few things about God. I know that God is a ... is not really a person but a star. I also know that God can hear everyone praying at once because he is God and not a human being.
Me: Do you think God is a woman?
Lily: I think God is a man.
Me: But if He is a star, how do you know he is a man?
Lily: Stars can be boys or girls.
Me: Do you know any girl stars?
Lily: Yes, God has a wife and she's a star and she's a girl. Her name is Lucy.
Me: What's God's name?
Lily: His real name is 'Jefferson God Flashlight' That's his real name but we call him God for short.
Things Lily has said to me recently without preamble:
"You would not do what they do in Rapunzel. You would not lock me up in a tower and tell me I couldn't come out."
"If we were ever swimming in the ocean and we were about to drown and you told me to save myself, I would do my best to swim to shore and then I would go get help."
I felt like a good STEM-conscious parent when I found this set of
balances from the kids resale shop, but it got very little interest
from my not-terribly-physics-curious kids. Until today, when my very
narrative-interested Lily saw a kitchen scale and wanted to play
Egyptian Book of the Dead (which she learned about from a podcast,
apparently?) She decided to be Anubis, weighing my heart
(represented by a rock) against a feather.
Spoiler: she repeated the
game several times and I failed to successfully pass into the
afterlife every time.
Lily: I want to be a queen, so I am dressing as an old beggar woman.
Me: How is that going to help you become a queen?
Lily: People will give me money. No, wait! I'll steal things! Then I will have lots of money!
For people who ask whether we're teaching our kids to be little effective altruists: obviously it's going great and the fairy tales are really helping.
Last night we played "Midnight Party" (a 1980s board game belonging to Allison, involving a haunted costume party in a mansion). Instead of my usual loose adaptation of the rules, Lily insisted she wanted to play by the rules written in the book. Anna was primarily interested in finding places in the illustration for her pieces to sit or lie down. Her turn always involved a lot of us saying, "it's your turn to roll the die, Anna," while she continued her narrative usually ending in "...and they fell fast asleep" or "...all cozy and warm." I think next time I'll propose that Lily and I play by the written rules and Anna just play a parallel game of putting her pieces to bed wherever she wants.
Me: I grew you in my belly. Isn't that funny? And Lily, I grew you too.
Lily (thoughtful): Did you digest your food and it became a baby?
Me: Well, to make a baby it takes one cell from a mama. A cell is a little tiny bit of you. And one cell from a papa. And when the cells get together, they start to make more cells and it starts to look like a little tadpole, and then it grows arms and legs, and then it grows bigger and bigger until it's a baby. And then the mama squeeeeezes it out of her belly and there's a baby! (both kids are delighted)
Lily: How do the cells get together?
Anna (simultaneously): And then you wrap the baby up in a blanket and give it a pillow.
Me (strategically going with Anna's comment): We did wrap you in a blanket, but you actually don't give pillows to little babies.
Anna (furious): I WANTED A PILLOW
I calmed the situation down by doing impressions of a baby wriggling out of a swaddle (always popular) which seemed to satisfy Anna's deep interest in putting babies to bed with accessories. Also bought me a little more time to figure out how to answer Lily's question.
Me: "Sorry Anna, you can't have a hotdog until you finish your Nutella and whipped cream"
Not something I expected to find myself saying as a parent! We have a new rule that if they ask for a food we won't go get them a different food until they finish it. This is climbing us out of a bad rut of them sequentially asking for things and not eating any of them.
The kids find the word "bummer" hilarious. Anna has started using it as an insult ("Mom, you're a bummer.") She informed me that a bummer is a person with a bum instead of a neck.
Julia and I were sitting on the couch and Anna came over and snuggled up between us. She closed her eyes and I was just thinking how cute she was when she clarified "I'm pretending to be dead"
Lily, after listening to the moral of "Little Red Riding Hood": "You should never talk to strangers. It's dangerous. I don't talk to strangers."
Also Lily, every time we go outdoors, to everyone: "Do you know why I can't run very fast? It's because I fell down at school and my leg hurts. We were playing banana tag but I had to stop playing. This is my scooter. It's red because red is my favorite color. My sister's favorite color is blue and she has a blue scooter."
Lily: "I'm going to be a servant girl and you can be the queen. I'll get you a crown. Don't look at my face so you don't see that I'm a cat. And pretend you can't see these wings."
For a servant girl who asked the queen to assign her work, she was remarkably ineffective at cleaning off the coffee table.
Lily has started undermining my incentives. Every morning I give Lily and Anna each a penny if they're up and ready for breakfast without me needing to chivvy them. Lily is very into getting a penny and never misses a day, but Anna is slower to get ready and more often gets distracted by toys etc along the way, and sometimes doesn't get a penny. Lily feels sorry for her, and so this morning told Anna: "don't worry, if you don't get a penny I'll give you a treasure". Of course then Anna didn't meet the penny criteria, and Lily gave her a red stone that Anna prefers to a penny...
"One time I woke up in the morning, I woke up from my nap, and I opened my drawer and I looked inside and I saw something that was purple. And I saw that it was shaped like a dress. And I put on the thing that was shaped like a dress, and it was purple."
Anna's explanation of how she came to be wearing a purple dress today. The details of daily life are extremely interesting to three-year-olds.
Anna: "I'm putting up these pieces of sticky paper to celebrate the freedom of our family."
When Jeff asked about what she meant by freedom, she said, "Because me and Oli play together and like each other a lot and want to stay together forever."
Anna: "Look, mom!! The leaves are shining in the sun! I'm going to zoom out there like a bird and get them, and spread them all over the house as leaf-treasure."
Lily is very sad that she isn't sick. "I really really really really really want a virus. I want one so much. I. Want. A. Virus. I want to be sick. I want a virus so much. I really really really really really really really really really really really really want a virus. I * want * a * virus * . I want a viiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirus. I want a virus. I really need to be a virus. I really take really really want to be wait no have a virus. I really really really really want a virus. I want a virus so much..."
(Anna is a little bit sick, nothing serious)
...
As we tuck her in: "there's something I want for my birthday"
"What's that?"
"A virus"
[The birthday in question would have been March 2020]
"My family is more important to me than a thousand coffers of emeralds."
"When you die, can you really be burnt up into ashes?"
"When I die, I don't want to be burnt up because I don't think that sounds very fun. I want to be buried so you can visit me and there will be a stone with my name on it."
"I wish we could be immortal."
"If you got sick and had to be in bed, I'd be nice to you. Like I'd let you watch Moana on my tablet." (A truer measure of her love than coffers of emeralds.)
Lily: [sings song she just made up] What do you think of my song?
Anna: I think it's stupid.
Lily: [outraged crying]
Anna: Songs don't have feelings, so you're allowed to call them stupid.
This is following the letter of the law we taught her (don't call people stupid because it will hurt their feelings, but you can call inanimate objects stupid) but is missing some elements of practical application.
...
Later in the same meal, Anna is eating chicken.
Lily: I don't think it's fair to the chicken.
Anna: The chicken is dead. It doesn't have feelings.
One of Anna's favorite hiding places is inside our duvet cover. She can undo enough buttons to climb in, but then sometimes gets lost and calls for us to come extricate her.
Anna and Lily have such different reactions to bugs:
Anna: Papa, I think there might be a little bitty worm in my raisins
Anna: [completely unfazed when Catalina Island turns out to have lots of yellow jackets]
Anna: [enjoys sweeping out a play house with me in California to make sure that there aren't any spiders]
Lily: [ear splitting shriek] ... [severe sobbing] ... "There was a spider in the cardboard box we brought up from the basement, and bugs are my deepest fear!! [refuses to even go in the room that has the box, even after I verify there's no longer any spider]
Me: What might happen if the ball rolled into the street and you ran after it?
Anna: A car would run over the ball, and a car would run over me.
Me: We could get another ball. We couldn't get another Anna.
Anna: If you had 25 Annas and 25 Lilys, that would be too much kids for you and Papa. You would pick 2 Lily and Annas, 1 Lily and 1 Anna. And you'd put the other ones out.
Another round of liberating kid posts from Facebook. For reference, in 2019 Lily turned 5 and Anna turned 3.
(Some of these were from me; some were from Julia. Ones saying "me" could mean either of us.)
2019-01-05Anna: I was kicking Lily over and I tripped on a balloon.
Me: You were doing what?
Anna: (pause) I was accidentally kicking Lily over and I tripped on a balloon.
2019-01-08Anna asks me to give her pictures of different objects. Then she colors them blue. Blue every time, everything is blue.
This one was "a mama frog and a papa frog and a brother frog and a sister frog and a baby frog sitting on a log."
2019-01-17[From Ange]
Lily: "Ange, we'll always be with you, even when you go home and even when you're dead"
Me: "What do you mean?"
Lily: "When you love someone they stay in your heart forever. So you will always be with us, even when you die. As long as you live and even after YOU DIE, you will always be with me"
She really focused on that part.
2019-01-22Poor Lily got the conscientious genes from both sides. Things she's cried about in the last two days:
- her grandfather said they were going to make s'mores, and she had already had her sweet for the day
- she's sick and knows she's supposed to drink water with electrolytes, but she wanted to drink plain water
- Anna held her hand, and she's afraid her germs got on Anna.
2019-01-27I read the kids a story where Death is personified but then goes away to the graveyard.
Anna: What is that?
Me: It's a place where they bury people.
Anna: Does Death bury people?
Me: No, people bury people.
Anna: That's so...rude.
In retrospect, I could have explained that better.
2019-02-01Lily: I want an ice cream cone with sprinkles.
Anna: I want the nasty dessert.
We tried for a while to figure out what she meant by this, and eventually narrowed it down to "some berries Jeff brought for us, and which we ate on an airplane last November." She was very sad to learn we did not have any nasty dessert.
2019-02-02Doing a rhyming puzzle with Lily. "Goat...kayak?"
Apparently her vocabulary has outstripped her rhyming skills or boat identification skills.
2019-02-09We're at the park and Lily proposed doing a "tortoise race" with the instructions "we all run in a circle until somebody says stop." We did this, with Anna eventually saying "stop." I didn't realize the origin of this game until Lily then announced we had all won and we all needed prizes (which turned out to be rocks.)
2019-02-10"What do you want for breakfast?"
"I can't think of what I want for breakfast, but I CAN see everything with my biyoculars."
2019-02-12"It's ok to say 'stupidhead' to cars because they don't have feelings. But kids do have feelings. And a mommy might have feelings, and papas might have feelings, and a grandfather might have feelings, and people have feelings. But cars do not and it's ok to say 'stupidhead' to cars."
2019-02-12Anna jumping on the bed: "I won't fall, I'm using my balance to balance my balance."
2019-02-15Lily: Last night I had a dream that I got TWO lollipops after dinner!
Me: Wow, that sounds like a fun dream!
Lily: Yeah, because it was MORE THAN ONE!
Her dreams are very pointed sometimes.
2019-02-17Yesterday Anna turned 3, and her cousins gave her a toy dog. She gave it a couple of names over the course of the day ("Boodo," "Guddah,") and then went to sleep with it. This morning when she woke up: "I named my puppy Forever Puppy. Cause I want to be with it forever."
[Later Anna traded Forever Puppy to Lily]
2019-02-19Lily: "let's play 'goose, goose, gray duck'"
2019-02-28One remarkable thing about the stuffed animals Anna has acquired in her bed is that there is no overlap in species. We have a puppy, a fox, a catbus, a baby, a monkey, an elephant, a reversible penguin/owl, a rainbow bear, a narwhal (?), a hedgehog, an otter, a beaver, a sea turtle, and a guinea pig.
2019-03-01[From Ange]
Lily was singing a song and I managed to write it (Me llamo = My name is)
"Me llamo Anna, me llamo Anna!
Me llamo Ange, me llamo Ange!
Me llamo Natalia, me llamo Natalia!
Me llamo Ricky!
Me llamo Alice!
Me llamo Silvana!
Me llamo Rosie!
Me llamo mamma!
Me llamo Julia!
Me llamo Jeff!
Me llamooooooo me llamoooooooooooooooOllieeeee.
I'm singing a song!
Of all the names!
In our family!
Our family!!!!!
... Anna I'm gonna sing a song about all the girls in our family, yeah yeah yeah!
Me llamo Anna! Me llamo Anna! Yeah yeah yeah!
Me llamo Allison!
Me llamo Alice!
Me llamo Claire! Yeah yeah yeah!
Me llamo Julia! Me llamo Julia!
Meeeeeee llamoooooooooooooo Lily!!!!! Yeah! yeah! YEAH!"
2019-03-02Lily: Ask me what I want for my birthday.
Me: What would you like for your birthday, Lily?
Lily: I want a giant stuffie octopus so when I get tired I can just curl up in its tentacles and go to sleep!
Me: I'll keep that in mind.
Lily: Keep it in mind until you've bought the octopus!
2019-03-03I found scribbles on the hallway wall. I'd been reading about how forcing kids to explain things like this just pushes them to lie, so I brought them both to the scene.
Me: "I see drawing on the wall. I don't need to know who did this - "
Lily: "It wasn't me, it was - "
Me: "I said I don't need to know who, I just need you to not - "
Anna: "I did it with a penny."
Me: " - I just need to you to not draw on the walls. Ok, and no scratching the walls with pennies."
I guess that went well.
2019-03-15Last night Lily decided to hold a birthday party for one of her teddy bears, who has a birthday and a birthday party about every two weeks. Midway through the preparations, I got a phone call and went to my room to take it. About 5 minutes into the call, Lily pushed a note under the door (dictated to Jeff):
"Dear Mama,
I'm sorry to say that you're delaying the birthday party that was going to be celebrated this evening. If your phone call is not short we will not be able to do the party tonight.
Love, Lily.
It's just your daughter letting you know."
Ouch.
2019-03-15Al: Lily, why do you play the kazoo before going to sleep?
Lily: it would be impossible for me to play kazoo *while* I'm asleep!
2019-03-17Me: [goes to hug Anna]
Anna: I am not a stuffed animal. I don't have anything to puff me up. I am made of chicken.
2019-03-21Lily: I have a secret.
Me: Oh?
Lily: I have [whispering] magic powers!
Me: Oh, earlier today you told us you were a human with no magic powers at all.
Lily: I was joking.
2019-03-26[From Al]
Yesterday Lily came downstairs and sang each of our cats (separately) a song about how they will always be in her heart even when she is far away, "so they will never forget me."
2019-04-02Anna: We have 2 heads. We have a head under our hair and we have a forehead.
Lily: yeah that means we have 5.
Anna: No we have 2.
Lily: But we have one head and a "four-head"
Anna: Oh, right
2019-04-03Anna [distraught]: why are we driving so slow! We will never get home if we drive so *slow*!
(We were in a parking lot)
2019-04-05[From Al]
When Anna and Lily come down to visit and we tell them it's time to go back upstairs, Anna often doesn't want to go—and she's not as good as Lily about accepting that we agreed they'd go up after this story or after this amount of time or whatever. BUT as she continues telling us about how she doesn't want to go upstairs, we always get to this point:
Anna [getting upset]: I don't want to go upstairs. I just want to be with Mama!
Me: Oh, where do you think Mama is?
Anna [cheering up]: Upstairs!
At this point she happily goes upstairs.
2019-04-06Anna, "reading" from a copy of Harry Potter: "Uncle Vernon shut the door. Chapter one, the Wicked Witch of the West. A girl named Dorothy lived in an old house." First crossover fic?
2019-04-08Anna: "If you are outside you need a rainbrella and a raincoat"
2019-04-09Yesterday Lily had a cookie and 2.5 gummy worms. She asked for a second cookie, and I asked her how much dessert was reasonable. She said two cookies or five gummy worms should count as a full dessert. [1] Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get her to see that if either of those makes a full dessert, then (assuming linearity) so does what she had already eaten.
Anna asked me for a second cookie, not having had any gummy worms, and so got one. Lily was pretty sad about that, but then Anna gave Lily a little piece of her cookie and Lily was happy again. [2]
[1] This isn't entirely up to her, but generally I'll have her first propose something and then go back and forth with her if I don't think it's reasonable. In this case she seemed to be setting a good limit.
[2] You could argue that since Lily had already had a full dessert she should have to turn down Anna's offer, but (a) transfers like this don't affect the total amount of dessert the pair consume (b) letting them be nice to each other seems much more important than strict limits around dessert.
...
Lily did this correctly the other night. I told her she could have two cookies or four Hershey's kisses. She intially planned to have one cookie and two Hershey's kisses, but after she'd had one cookie and one Hershey's kiss she asked if she could have another half a cookie instead of the last kiss. Either a lucky guess or a budding algebraist.
2019-04-16Me: Do you have a bank, Lily?
Lily: Nah
Anna: I don't either, I just have a back...yard and my mom has 2 gardens
2019-04-16Anna wanted to go to bed in a tee-shirt and I told her she could either put on a long-sleeved shirt or a sweater on top of her tee-shirt. She proposed a third option: "Maybe you could put a sweater on me and I could take it off when you're not looking in the room."
2019-04-17The kids' new favorite activity is trying a stuffed animal to a rope, lowering it out the 3rd floor window, and bringing it back.
2019-04-20For a while Anna has ended Baby Beluga with "... little white whale on the goat".
And now it's "little white goat on the whale"
2019-04-24Things Lily requested within about a 7 minute span tonight:
- Mama, get out the pie game!
- Can we make a lake for me to dance across?
- Can you fix my crown?
- ANNA GET OFF MY LAKE
- Can you cut me a circle out of cardboard?
- Can we play the pie game now?
- NO ANNA CAN'T TOUCH MY CARDBOARD
- Can you glue a piece of paper to my cardboard and draw a skeleton on it?
2019-05-03Lily: "It would be very sad if I froze to death. You would have to bury me in a coffin"
Me: "We would be very sad if you died. We won't let you freeze."
Anna: [super enthusiastic]: "But you would still have one more child!!!"
2019-05-04Lily: "Dad, I don't think grownups would look good in dresses. But at least they would look good in tutus or skirts."
I guess we can be permitted to wear those, then.
2019-05-11Anna learns words from Lily's story podcast and tries them out when the time seems right. Recent ones:
(smelling a flower in someone else's yard) "It's so enchanted."
(Just now at the playground) "This portapotty is auspicious."
2019-05-13Anna has adopted the classic "My friend doesn't have to do X" technique without actually having many real-life friends, so the friend in question is Tinkerbell.
"Tinkerbell says I can wear shoes to bed."
"Tinkerbell says people don't like to be buckled in their carseats."
She's also started trying the jurisdiction-based approach, as in "People don't go to bed in Massachusetts, they stay up all night. That's how they do it in this town."
2019-05-14Anna: ...and this is my fishing bra
Me: your what?
Anna: My fishing bra!
Me: fishing rod?
Anna: yeah! That's what I said!
2019-05-16Anna: "I will put the noodle in my mouth and break it with my mouth claws"
2019-05-29"I discovered something about my nightgown."
"What have you discovered?"
"It's made of pure magic."
And here I thought I'd made it out of a purple sheet.
2019-05-29Anna: I don't want you to brush my teeth, I want Mama to brush my teeth
Me: that's ok, here's your toothbrush
Anna: I'm going to run away, leaving it on the floor
2019-06-02Despite years of intending to have nothing to do with ballet lessons, I first succumbed to the kids' desire to have sparkly costumes like their cousin Oliver and then to their requests to play "going to ballet lesson" yesterday. We found some videos of a very chipper Australian providing preschool ballet instruction, and the kids were enthusiastic if not precise. After the ballet lesson devolved into rolling on the bed, Anna bit Lily in excitement and it all ended in tears.
2019-06-04Anna: "If there were a hole in the bus and if we were birds, we could fly out. And if we were people we could just jump out with a big jump."
2019-06-07Anna: [singing, Daniel Tiger style] when you're not hungry you don't have to sit at the table... you can play outside forever...
2019-06-12Lily: Well, I know a few things about God. I know that God is a ... is not really a person but a star. I also know that God can hear everyone praying at once because he is God and not a human being.
Me: Do you think God is a woman?
Lily: I think God is a man.
Me: But if He is a star, how do you know he is a man?
Lily: Stars can be boys or girls.
Me: Do you know any girl stars?
Lily: Yes, God has a wife and she's a star and she's a girl. Her name is Lucy.
Me: What's God's name?
Lily: His real name is 'Jefferson God Flashlight' That's his real name but we call him God for short.
2019-06-13Things Lily has said to me recently without preamble:
"You would not do what they do in Rapunzel. You would not lock me up in a tower and tell me I couldn't come out."
"If we were ever swimming in the ocean and we were about to drown and you told me to save myself, I would do my best to swim to shore and then I would go get help."
2019-06-15I felt like a good STEM-conscious parent when I found this set of balances from the kids resale shop, but it got very little interest from my not-terribly-physics-curious kids. Until today, when my very narrative-interested Lily saw a kitchen scale and wanted to play Egyptian Book of the Dead (which she learned about from a podcast, apparently?) She decided to be Anubis, weighing my heart (represented by a rock) against a feather.
Spoiler: she repeated the game several times and I failed to successfully pass into the afterlife every time.
2019-06-18"Do you know why I'm bringing this croquet mallet? It's because I'm afraid of bugs"
"I'm not going to get the ladybugs because they're good for life"
"If I see any bugs I'm going to swing this croquet mallet right around, because you know how I freak out if there are bugs"
2019-07-01Lily: I want to be a queen, so I am dressing as an old beggar woman.
Me: How is that going to help you become a queen?
Lily: People will give me money. No, wait! I'll steal things! Then I will have lots of money!
For people who ask whether we're teaching our kids to be little effective altruists: obviously it's going great and the fairy tales are really helping.
2019-07-09Last night we played "Midnight Party" (a 1980s board game belonging to Allison, involving a haunted costume party in a mansion). Instead of my usual loose adaptation of the rules, Lily insisted she wanted to play by the rules written in the book. Anna was primarily interested in finding places in the illustration for her pieces to sit or lie down. Her turn always involved a lot of us saying, "it's your turn to roll the die, Anna," while she continued her narrative usually ending in "...and they fell fast asleep" or "...all cozy and warm." I think next time I'll propose that Lily and I play by the written rules and Anna just play a parallel game of putting her pieces to bed wherever she wants.
2019-07-22Last night during bedtime snack, out of nowhere:
Anna: Did you grow me?
Me: I grew you in my belly. Isn't that funny? And Lily, I grew you too.
Lily (thoughtful): Did you digest your food and it became a baby?
Me: Well, to make a baby it takes one cell from a mama. A cell is a little tiny bit of you. And one cell from a papa. And when the cells get together, they start to make more cells and it starts to look like a little tadpole, and then it grows arms and legs, and then it grows bigger and bigger until it's a baby. And then the mama squeeeeezes it out of her belly and there's a baby! (both kids are delighted)
Lily: How do the cells get together?
Anna (simultaneously): And then you wrap the baby up in a blanket and give it a pillow.
Me (strategically going with Anna's comment): We did wrap you in a blanket, but you actually don't give pillows to little babies.
Anna (furious): I WANTED A PILLOW
I calmed the situation down by doing impressions of a baby wriggling out of a swaddle (always popular) which seemed to satisfy Anna's deep interest in putting babies to bed with accessories. Also bought me a little more time to figure out how to answer Lily's question.
2019-08-06Overheard from Anna as she's in her bed "falling asleep":
"Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie."
"I'm not talking about pitter-pat, pitter-pat, I'm talking about boom crash bang!"
...
Tonight's (her door is open to let the breeze through, so she knows I can hear her):
"Mooooooom I'm hot. And I need you to tell me the first part of the alphabet."
"Swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming."
"Mom, I'm a princess!"
2019-08-11Anna: hey dad?
Me: yes?
Anna: I'm not talking to *you* dad!
...
Same day: We're at the pond and I'm standing a few feet from Anna in the water. Suddenly:
Anna: Get away from me!
Me: That's rude. If you want more space you can say, "Give me space, please."
Anna: No, I just want to be mean all the time!
2019-08-14Lily: knock knock
Stevie: who's there?
Lily: interrupting earthquake
Stevie: interrupting earthquake who?
Lily: [sits quietly, as in quaker meeting]
2019-08-21Me: "Sorry Anna, you can't have a hotdog until you finish your Nutella and whipped cream"
Not something I expected to find myself saying as a parent! We have a new rule that if they ask for a food we won't go get them a different food until they finish it. This is climbing us out of a bad rut of them sequentially asking for things and not eating any of them.
2019-08-26Anna, crying after picking flowers, throwing them on the ground, and then deciding she wanted more flowers but not those flowers:
"I changed my mind. Now I have the same mind I had the first time."
2019-08-29Lily, discussing Thanksgiving dinner: "I feel sorry for turkeys like David and Al."
Presumably she meant, "Like David and Al, I feel sorry for turkeys."
2019-08-29(We were talking about moths.)
Anna: I don't know where my larva is.
Me: Do you have a larva?
Anna: I don't know which part of my body is the larva.
Me: You don't have a larva. You're not a moth.
Anna (distressed): But you have a larva!
Me: I don't have a larva either. I'm also not a moth.
2019-08-30The kids find the word "bummer" hilarious. Anna has started using it as an insult ("Mom, you're a bummer.") She informed me that a bummer is a person with a bum instead of a neck.
2019-08-30Julia and I were sitting on the couch and Anna came over and snuggled up between us. She closed her eyes and I was just thinking how cute she was when she clarified "I'm pretending to be dead"
2019-09-03Anna, surrounded by crumpled tissues and trying to open a big tin: "I need to open this so I can put garbage in for your doll to eat next year."
Apparently my doll is a prepper. Apparently she also eats tissues?
2019-09-12Lily, after listening to the moral of "Little Red Riding Hood": "You should never talk to strangers. It's dangerous. I don't talk to strangers."
Also Lily, every time we go outdoors, to everyone: "Do you know why I can't run very fast? It's because I fell down at school and my leg hurts. We were playing banana tag but I had to stop playing. This is my scooter. It's red because red is my favorite color. My sister's favorite color is blue and she has a blue scooter."
2019-09-14Anna: "don't brush my teeth because last year you told me we're not going to brush my teeth anymore"
("last year" being Anna's way of saying "sometime in the past, usually yesterday")
2019-09-15Dressup time:
Lily: "I'm going to be a servant girl and you can be the queen. I'll get you a crown. Don't look at my face so you don't see that I'm a cat. And pretend you can't see these wings."
For a servant girl who asked the queen to assign her work, she was remarkably ineffective at cleaning off the coffee table.
2019-09-22Lily: "I'm a fairy in a bad mood, and when fairies are in a bad mood they do bad things."
2019-09-23Lily has started undermining my incentives. Every morning I give Lily and Anna each a penny if they're up and ready for breakfast without me needing to chivvy them. Lily is very into getting a penny and never misses a day, but Anna is slower to get ready and more often gets distracted by toys etc along the way, and sometimes doesn't get a penny. Lily feels sorry for her, and so this morning told Anna: "don't worry, if you don't get a penny I'll give you a treasure". Of course then Anna didn't meet the penny criteria, and Lily gave her a red stone that Anna prefers to a penny...
2019-09-29"One time I woke up in the morning, I woke up from my nap, and I opened my drawer and I looked inside and I saw something that was purple. And I saw that it was shaped like a dress. And I put on the thing that was shaped like a dress, and it was purple."
Anna's explanation of how she came to be wearing a purple dress today. The details of daily life are extremely interesting to three-year-olds.
2019-10-18Me: Anna, what would you like for dinner?
Anna: maybe I could have a baby? Maybe I could have a baby made out of wood for dinner? Or some chocolate. Or water.
2019-10-21Me: what do you want for dinner
Anna: can I eat... hair?
Me: uh, hair is not for eating
Lily: people eat some kinds
Me: uh...
Lily: with long ears, hops along the ground
2019-10-24Anna: "I'm putting up these pieces of sticky paper to celebrate the freedom of our family."
When Jeff asked about what she meant by freedom, she said, "Because me and Oli play together and like each other a lot and want to stay together forever."
2019-10-26Anna, at dinner: Every day I'm going to look at my feet and see if they got big.
Jeff: What will you do if you notice that they've gotten bigger?
Anna: I'll take them off and throw them in the trash.
2019-10-29Anna: Mom, I want to drink the suckle in the honeysuckle.
Me: The nectar?
Anna: Yeah, I want to put the nectar in my mouth and swallow it up. I'm a honeysuckle girl! That's my guess, because I like honeysuckle.
2019-11-02Dad: "A microscope lets you see things that are so small you can't usually see them."
Anna: "Like mouses. And lil baby flowers. [looking at her current project] And cut up pieces of bubble wrap."
2019-11-06Anna: "Look, mom!! The leaves are shining in the sun! I'm going to zoom out there like a bird and get them, and spread them all over the house as leaf-treasure."
2019-11-07Lily is very sad that she isn't sick. "I really really really really really want a virus. I want one so much. I. Want. A. Virus. I want to be sick. I want a virus so much. I really really really really really really really really really really really really want a virus. I * want * a * virus * . I want a viiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirus. I want a virus. I really need to be a virus. I really take really really want to be wait no have a virus. I really really really really want a virus. I want a virus so much..."
(Anna is a little bit sick, nothing serious)
...
As we tuck her in: "there's something I want for my birthday"
"What's that?"
"A virus"
[The birthday in question would have been March 2020]
2019-11-09Lily: which would make your sadder: if you didn't have a glue stick, or if I died?
2019-11-10Lily: I don't think we should kill animals for food, it's not fair to them
Anna: Papa, can you go into the kitchen up get me some dead meat? Some dead chicken? Not chicken nuggets, something that looks *chickenous*.
...
"moooooom, *I* want a dead turkey"
2019-11-12On the walk to school today Lily met up with a classmate and got into a debate over whether it's ok for owls to kill mice:
L: I don't think it's fair to the mice.
D: But if the owls didn't eat the mice then they would be hungry
L: The mice are in a field, it's sunny [sic] and then suddenly a great big barn owl swoops down out of the sky and eats them.
D: What should the owls do?
[at this point I stop being able to hear them]
2019-11-16Thoughts from Lily during bedtime tonight:
"My family is more important to me than a thousand coffers of emeralds."
"When you die, can you really be burnt up into ashes?"
"When I die, I don't want to be burnt up because I don't think that sounds very fun. I want to be buried so you can visit me and there will be a stone with my name on it."
"I wish we could be immortal."
"If you got sick and had to be in bed, I'd be nice to you. Like I'd let you watch Moana on my tablet." (A truer measure of her love than coffers of emeralds.)
2019-11-20Lily: [sings song she just made up] What do you think of my song?
Anna: I think it's stupid.
Lily: [outraged crying]
Anna: Songs don't have feelings, so you're allowed to call them stupid.
This is following the letter of the law we taught her (don't call people stupid because it will hurt their feelings, but you can call inanimate objects stupid) but is missing some elements of practical application.
...
Later in the same meal, Anna is eating chicken.
Lily: I don't think it's fair to the chicken.
Anna: The chicken is dead. It doesn't have feelings.
2019-11-24Again technically true, and yet...
Anna: why does a hat have to burp?
Us: why?
Anna: because it has to get out of the head. Like your ears. Or your forehead. Or your nose. Or your eyes.
2019-12-27Me: Anna, how old were you when you were born?
Anna: eight and a half?
Me: what number comes before three?
Anna: two?
Me: what number comes before two?
Anna: one!
Me: what number comes before one?
Anna: ... eight and a half?
2019-11-27Out of nowhere, while I was putting her to bed:
Anna: We have huge cheeks. [feels her cheeks, evaluating] I have medium-huge cheeks.
2019-11-28Laura: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Anna: I want to be a mommy.
Laura: That's a good thing to be.
Anna: But I'm not going to have a husband.
Laura: ...that's your choice to make.
Anna: I don't want to die. I wish I lived in the land of Oz. In the land of Oz people can't die.
Lily: But they can be destroyed.
2019-12-04One of Anna's favorite hiding places is inside our duvet cover. She can undo enough buttons to climb in, but then sometimes gets lost and calls for us to come extricate her.
2019-12-04I put Lily to bed. Twenty minutes later I hear her shouting, so I come upstairs. "No, Jeffy, I was just talking *in my sleep*!"
2019-12-04Anna and Lily have such different reactions to bugs:
- Anna: Papa, I think there might be a little bitty worm in my raisins
- Anna: [completely unfazed when Catalina Island turns out to have lots of yellow jackets]
- Anna: [enjoys sweeping out a play house with me in California to make sure that there aren't any spiders]
- Lily: [ear splitting shriek] ... [severe sobbing] ... "There was a spider in the cardboard box we brought up from the basement, and bugs are my deepest fear!! [refuses to even go in the room that has the box, even after I verify there's no longer any spider]
2019-12-04Anna: "I wish *I* were a bush covered in snow with lights on me."
2019-12-09Lily: it's ok Anna, I'll be back from school soon. Time will fly by like a phoenix.
Anna: no! You don't have wings!
2019-12-14Walking home from the park after playing ball.
Me: What might happen if the ball rolled into the street and you ran after it?
Anna: A car would run over the ball, and a car would run over me.
Me: We could get another ball. We couldn't get another Anna.
Anna: If you had 25 Annas and 25 Lilys, that would be too much kids for you and Papa. You would pick 2 Lily and Annas, 1 Lily and 1 Anna. And you'd put the other ones out.
Me: Out of what?
Anna: Outside the house.
2019-12-21Lily requested the same Christmas carol she usually does at bedtime.
Me: "And though she lulled a little babe, great was her majesty
And all the flowers and all the stars were not so fair as she."
Lily: all the . . . who was not so fair?
Me: All the stars and flowers were less fair than her. So she's more beautiful than the stars and the flowers.
Lily: Whoah. That's really beautiful. I would marry her.
Me: You should get to know someone before you marry them, not just see that they're pretty.
Lily: I would get to know them for like one or two weeks.
2019-12-22Lily: I think... there is a possibility... that my dinosaur... could be a pencil sharpener.
[The dinosaur turned out to be the kind of eraser you can put on the end of a pencil]
2019-12-22Lily: if you tell Mama about my present I'll be furious
Anna: and you will hit me?
Lily: no, I will just be very mad at you
2019-12-25Same carol as before, different bedtime.
Me: "Oh keep your grimness and your gold - "
Anna: What's grimness?
Me: It's like seriousness. [finishes song, moves on to Lily on the other side of the room] What song do you want, Lily?
Lily: "Silent Night," and I'm grim about that.
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