My funny children (emphasis on Chloe)

Chloe and Ryan (but mostly Chloe) had me laughing pretty hard this evening.  Neil was working in Sonora until late, so it was just the kids and me.  As soon as I announced dinner was ready, Ryan disappeared.  I didn't notice where he had gone because I was busy getting food on plates.  As I headed to the table and asked Chloe if she'd seen him, she replied,

"He's in timeout."

When I asked why, she shrugged her shoulders and said,

"I don't know.  He heard you say dinner was ready and ran straight to the laundry room." 

I had to laugh, and let me explain why.  Lately, getting Ryan to eat has been gosh darn impossible.  In his own defense, he's had a bad case of the runs for the last five days straight and has been on a liquid diet minus a few bites a day of this or that.  But aside from that, eating issues have been present for months.  Generally when we sit down at the table he's already fussing, "it's too hot!" or "but I'm not hungry."  We coax him, humor him, reverse psychology him, whatever it takes to get him to try a bite and realize that I'm not such a bad cook.  What we've done in the past when he's refused to eat is sent him straight to bed.  Well now when we're sitting down to eat he'll often automatically say, "I want to take a nap instead."  But that's just too easy of an out, and frankly, if it's only 5:30 in the afternoon, that's the last thing I want him doing!  So we've changed our strategy a bit and now send him to timeout for however long it takes before he's willing to eat.

Tonight, Ryan was a step ahead of me.  I'm still laughing at the fact that he put HIMSELF in timeout.  I tried and I tried and I tried to get him to eat, but he would have nothing to do with it.  Even after several attempts, more timeout and a spanking to finish it off, he just wouldn't give in.  He was in bed by 6:25, which is not too early (unlike 5:30).  Thankfully, due to the fact that he doesn't nap anymore (or at least regularly), I can get away with putting him to bed as early as 6:30 and he'll sleep a solid twelve hours, which is perfect since I get up at 7 every day.  Perhaps we'll have better luck with food intake tomorrow. 

So onto Chloe.  Amidst fighting Ryan to eat his potato soup and green salad, Chloe chattered away like always, half the time not even noticing that I was preoccupied with her brother.  One thing she said did catch my attention though, and I just had to share it.

Chloe: "I can't wait to go up to heaven and see Heavenly Father and Jesus."

Me (wondering where on earth this came from): "Why are you excited to see them?"

Chloe: "It's gonna be fun!  They love me so much and I'm just gonna get up there and jump on them and hug them!" 

After a slight pause, she went on: "But  when you die, your body stays on earth, right?  Like a statue?  But the rest of you goes up?!" 

Another slight pause (while contemplating).."So that's called your spirit!  So your spirit goes up to heaven!"

While I found it interesting that Chloe would bring up such a deep and random topic at the dinner table, I was pleased to see that she is beginning to grasp the basics of our mortality and the purpose behind it.  Love the way her smart little mind thinks.

After dinner, Chloe and I were practicing her reading.  Each week she's sent home with a new set of words that all end with the same few letters.  They're called "word families," I believe.  Anyway, this week she's working on the "ot" family.  Well, she whizzed right through the packet of words tonight and I was so impressed, as always.  I swear the kid's smarter than I am.  At one point, in addition to reading the words, she started tacking on an example of how the word could be used.  This is how it went, and again, this is ALL her:

"Lot!  ...like a parking lot!"
"Not! ...like 'I'm not going to paint that!"
"Pot!  ...like 'I'm cookin' something up in a pot!'"

This one's hands down my favorite:

"Rot!  ...like 'rat' in a British accent!'"

The final word in the packet was "Tot," to which she said, while giggling, "I thought that was 'toot' at first!"  Then a few seconds later, "How do you spell 'toot' anyway?"

Let me give you just a bit of background before I share the final conversation of the night (which, I should warn you contains a private body part name).  A few weeks ago, Chloe asked Neil what he does for work. He explained that he watches a lot of surgeries and helps the doctors to know how to use the various instruments that he provides for the surgeries.  In explaining what a surgery is, Neil referenced my c-section and showed Chloe my scar.  When we told her that that's where she and Ryan came out of my body, she naturally then wondered if all babies were born that way.  We answered honestly and told her that while many babies come out that way, most babies come out of their mommy's vagina.  Hey, we are all about using anatomically correct terminology.  Anyway, here's what Chloe said to me as I was tucking her into bed:    

Chloe: "I wish I had a baby sister.  And a daughter."

Me: "Well, you've got quite a while to go before you have a daughter!"

Chloe: "I know.  But I don't want to have them cut my stomach open to get her out.  I want her to come out of my vagina."

I chuckled and kissed her goodnight.  Love her honest, blunt innocence.  May it continue to blossom!

It is currently 12:54am.  Guess who just wandered downstairs?  A certain grumpy boy who refused to eat his dinner.  And what's the first thing he said?

"I'm hungry!"

The second thing? "Can I just snuggle with you for a few seconds?" 

Guess I'd better get to it.  Goodnight, everyone.