I think I might be back

So it's been a year since my last post. I've wondered about starting up again a few times but I don't think I was ever quite ready. I'm not sure that I'm ready now either but I'm going to give it a shot.

Not much to say today but OrphanAnnie(8) did say something kind of funny yesterday. She was reading an article in the Reader's Digest (this was surprising in itself) and she wanted to tell me about it. She said, "There is this woman and she's kind of young. She has friends..." Okay, so once you get a little older you don't have friends anymore? Hmm. Does she think that I have friends or not...

The "S" word

Not too long ago, Bookworm(9) was really grouchy and driving me crazy. I finally found out that she had been having some problems with her friends at school and that's why she was in such a bad mood. She told me how they had been having a conversation about some boys in her class and that one of them had used the "h" word. She didn't know what that meant and they wouldn't tell her so she felt left out of the conversation and she also felt kind of dumb. So, she asked me to tell her all the bad words as a remedy to her problem. My first reaction was to refuse but then I decided that she probably did need to know what the "bad" words are to be able to avoid then. I wrote down a little list because I don't like to say them out loud (I know, I'm such a baby) and then explained what they meant. She was so happy to finally "be in the know." We threw the paper away and that was that.

Fast-forward to today. She came up to me and said, "You know the 's' word that means poop? Well, in science class, Mr. L was talking about how scientists can tell what people a long time ago ate by looking through their human waste--I don't like to say poop. And he called it the 's' word."
Now you can imagine that I'm starting to get a little upset thinking that the science teacher said the "s" word to a class of 4th graders. So I said, "Really?! He said..." and I spelled it out.
She looked at me blankly and I realized there must be a mistake. I said, "Do you mean that he said 'scat'?"
"Oh yeah, that's what he said."
"Scat isn't a bad word."
"Oh. Okay."
Maybe we need to have a review lesson on bad words every few weeks.

More Kid Quotes

Yesterday we travelled for a couple of hours to go see my cousin who is leaving on his mission this week. Since it was a lot of time in the car the kids had to entertain themselves whatever way they could. At one point they started playing 20 Questions. It was Littleman(5)'s turn and OrphanAnnie(7) asked him what it was, an animal, vegetable, or mineral. He said it was a cinnamon roll. She said, "No. You're not supposed to tell us what it is. Think of something and then tell us if it's a vegetable, animal, or mineral." He said, "It's a cinnamon roll," and the conversation went back and forth with more and more frustration on both sides until we realized that he was saying "mineral" the way that he knew how, "cinnamon roll."

Later they were pretending that they were being chased by bad guys. Bookworm(9) was sitting in the middle row and OrphanAnnie and Littleman were sitting in the back. OA and LM told BW to shoot the bad guys so she turned around and said, "Deck the halls!" I said, "Deck the halls? What do you mean? What do you think 'Deck the halls' means?" She answered, "Get out of the halls."