The Things They Say

Last week, as we were coming off the high that was celebrating Halloween for several days in a row (Church trunk or treat!  Daycare Halloween party!  Neighborhood trick or treating!  Trick or treating with Daddy!)  Sam and Anna were still making references to Halloween in our normal daily routine.  Sometimes I pretend to make a move to try to eat some food off of Sam or Anna's dinner plate to give their typical toddler pokey-ness a jump start to eating productively again.  This stealthy maneuver usually includes inching my fingers closer to their plate while humming the Jaws song.  (Side note: We tend to hum the Jaws song a lot in the most random situations.   One day when they are older, Sam and Anna are going to watch that movie for the first time and say, "So that's where it's from!"  I can just picture it.)  This night while making a move for Anna's food, Anna proclaimed, " I take your costume off, Mama!  You not a shark!" while wagging her finger at me and covering her plate with her other hand.

Our best one-liners must usually occur during dinner conversation, because this one took place while we were eating, as well.  Daddy was digging in the fridge for fruit, but couldn't immediately find what he was looking for.  Sam asked, "What Daddy looking for?"  then looked at me and said, "Good question!" (As if he was affirming that with me.) "What daddy looking for, Mama?" His tone and inflection was eerily familiar.  I guess I may overuse the phrase "Good question"  a bit.  Sometimes it's hard to hang up the teacher hat when you've got small children at home too.

Anna's newest phrase is saying, "I was missing you" often.  Sometimes it is just when I'm in the other room and she is looking for me, finding me within seconds.  But when she lays that one on me after getting picked up from daycare, it is certain enough to break a mama's heart.  And yet, feel so loved at the same time.

My precocious children are really into finding letters everywhere we go these days.  They love to tell me the sounds that each letter makes after naming them, and list everything we can think of that begins with the same letter.  This is the newest version of the What Else? Game.  With election signs on every corner, my little ones were constantly pointing out all the Os, B's, M's and A's.  Sam has taken this one step further and (at 2 1/2 years old) loves to spell some easy words.    He spelled O-B-A-M-A often.  (Either Romney has too many letters, or he just knew that his Mama was a Obama Mama.)  From memory he can spell Sam (and likes to point out that his name has a little a and m while Anna has a big A too), Anna, Mom, Dad, stop, and Bella on his own.  He seemed very interested in the large red Target sign and was practicing saying the letters in order to spell Target, so maybe that word will be the next one!