It’s funny the positions you can be put in by little ones.  But it just shows why I prefer to do my grocery shopping early, when the store is empty, even though we usually don’t do it that way any more.

Samantha has added a number of words to her vocabulary lately, including cracker.  And she really likes crackers.  So when we went down that aisle on Tuesday, thank God at about 8:30 in the morning, she got very excited, and started shouting,

“Ca-ca!  Ca-ca!  Ca-ca!”

Happily, I’m not the only one with these sort of experiences.  Craig’s parents’ neighbors have a daughter right between Lucy and Samantha – she’s about 2 1/2 now.  And Jasmine’s dad took her to the store one afternoon, and she started shouting, all through the store, and could not be bribed or threatened to stop, “Daddy, I suck!  I suck!”

When he got out of the store (swearing that he would never bring her shopping again), he realized that she had gotten her hand stuck in the cart.  She was trying to say “stuck”.

And thus the running jokes begin.  Anyone care (or dare!) to share similar stories?

Lucy (playing with my hair): I’m going to pull your hair out (=make it stand up).  I want to make it look funny.  Like Daddy.

Lucy (checking Craig’s knee with a hammer): I’m not a doctor, I’m a fixin’ girl.

Lucy (about the glass coaster on the coffee table): “It’s made out of whack!”

Apparently in reference to my just calling something “wacky”.

By which I mean, “Lucy’s favorite thing to say right now.”  Here it is:

“Stop sneaking me up!”

By which she seems to mean, “You’re getting on my nerves!”

It’s amazing how kids learn.  It’s so totally effortless.  There are always the examples of four-year-olds casually using curse words in polite company, much to their parents’ embarrassment, or course.  Yesterday, on the other hand, Lucy was walking around the house with her Fish do the Strangest Things book, standing on top of things, holding the book in front of her, and proclaiming, “A reading from Saint Paul.  Babies and sisters…”  I stopped in my tracks.  She is clearly paying much closer attention while she wiggles away through Mass than we have been giving her credit for.  (I asked about the “babies”, and she seemed to think that made more sense than “brothers”, which is understandable I guess since she has a severe lack of brothers at the moment.)  Anyway, we are redoubling efforts to have such good influences and Saint Paul and his letters around, so that her osmosis can do its thing.

Lucy: I can’t help pick up.  It really gives me a headache.

That’s right, she skipped a few years, and is now sixteen.  In case you hadn’t heard already.

Craig: “Lucy, why are you so intense?”

Lucy: “I’m not intense!”

Craig: “Yes, you are!”

Lucy: “I’m not in tents, I’m right here!”

The part of the conversation I caught between Lucy and the sweet potato in the (new) microwave (thank you Fr. R.B.!):

“…because you’re my dinner and I’m warming you up.”

Lucy: Row, row, row your boat, gently down the street!

That’s right, only in New Orleans.

We were playing with a blue slinky the other day, and it sat still in an arch.  I said “It looks like a rainbow.”

Lucy said, “Yes!  It has lots of beautiful colors!  Like blue.  And also, blue!”

It’s true, the slinky was only blue.  I laughed really, really hard, and Lucy didn’t quite understand why.