Parents are stupid

Today was a glorious fall day.  One of those days that you wait all summer for, a day that you dream about in the depth of cold and grey March.  All four of us spent hours at the local farmers' market, parents drinking too much coffee and letting the girls get too dirty.  Follow that with a birthday party for a friend of the girls, the fence getting fixed, and an amazing dinner with our best of grown-up friends, and all in all it was a day that you want to bottle up and put in your pocket and sell for millions of dollars.
But a day like that makes for very tired girls.
After a near total meltdown and a promise that Darling Husband would carry all 45 pounds of Gryphon home, we set off for home at 10pm (BAD MOMMY).  While we were walking, Gryphon inquired about why there was a cat walking down the sidewalk without its family all alone AT NIGHT.  Darling Husband started to explain "cats see really well at night, kind of like people see during the day, so their night is like our day, their day is like our -"
Gryphon interrupts and deadpans "Oh, cats are nocturnal."
Um, yeah.  

rainbow chocolate cookies

In the car coming home from school today, Gryphon started telling me all about someplace she could get 'rainbow chocolate cookies' - talking the way only a five year old can (and I must admit that I was only somewhat listening. . . BAD MOMMY!).  

When she finally drew my attention away from the bad drivers that make up the norm in my dear DC, she was saying "Mommy, the tower!  You have to take me to the tower!  Isabella told me that she had 'rainbow chocolate cookies' at the place with the tower, and that there is one more left JUST FOR ME!"

"What tower are you talking about, honey?" I answered.

"The tower, Mommy!" Apparently I was being dense.  "The tower back there, Mommy!"

"Which one???"  I looked out my rear view mirror trying to figure out where she was talking about.

"Mommy!"  True five year old exasperation!  "The big tower building where the baby Jesus is supposed to live!"

Ah, the perspective of a child living in a decidedly non-religious household in a hyper-religious world.

 

Conversations I

Gryphon: "So Mommy do you know what sp- spa- spontaneous combustion means?"

Wow! They went to the Air and Space Museum today - they must have learned something about engines or something! That's really cool. . . I can't wait to hear her answer!

Me: "Tell me what it means, honey!"

Gryphon: "It means that we stand up really tall and then Ms. Lacey says 'SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION' and then we all jump around like crazy kids and explode."

Ah.