Gems

My children delivered all three of these gems within a five minute time period, so I thought I'd share the chuckles with you:
___________

3 year old, looking outside during lunchtime: "Mommy, the sky is not dark. They sky is on."

___________

6 year old: "Mom, what is daycare?"

Me: "It's for if both mommy and daddy went to work all day. We would take you to a place where the people would take care of you until we got home from work."

6 year old: "Is that called jail?"

___________

8 year old: "Mom, if I lick my elbow joint, it means I want to change the subject."

::lick::

An acronym to die for

My oldest son came home from school one day and started talking about something that happened during deer time. It caught me off-guard, so I stopped him.

"WHAT time?"

"Deer time. When we read."

After a bit of investigation, I uncovered the shocking truth: it wasn't deer time, it was D.E.A.R. time. Well, that explains everything, I thought. No, really, D.E.A.R. stands for "Drop Everything and Read." It's a program that fosters the habit of random reading anytime, anyplace. They hold it near the end of the school day. Okay. I can get behind this idea.

A few months later he came home with what looked like a quick pencil drawing of the inside of his classroom. I held it up and asked him to tell me about it. He said,

"Oh, yeah, we drew that during Drop Everything and Draw time."

Hmmm... I can see why they don't use the acronym for that one.

Overshare

My youngest son, now three, is no shrinking violet. I'm not sure where his friendliness comes from; after all, I was painfully shy as a child. Even my older two boys have been reserved around unfamiliar people.

So I glory in his chatty nature. Is it because he's third in the birth order? Who knows. He certainly sucks the marrow out of life: burping, giggling, chewing loudly. His enthusiasm brightens my day when it's been a tough one. And I like to share his happy disposition with others.

Lately he's been updating everyone on the planet about our family acquisitions. He'll run up to a complete stranger, out of the blue, and tell them that we just bought milk. Or paper towels. Sometimes the information is just about him, like his birthday bike. People are gloriously forgiving of a tiny person with a smile. At times the unfamiliar person will look at me for direction and I will just smile and nod. Thankfully, they just mimic me.

For our middle son's birthday we gave him a baby leopard gecko. This type of lizard only grows to be about nine inches long. I figured it was a safe first pet. However, you would think it belonged to our youngest with the way he kept the public informed.

TOTAL STRANGER: "Oh, hello little guy."

YOUNGEST: (standing inches from stranger) "I got a gecko."

TOTAL STRANGER: "A what?"

ME: (stage whisper, with hand motions) "A gecko. Lizard?"

TOTAL STRANGER: "Oh...." (walks away, smiling.)

I like to think that his friendliness is a reflection of my parenting style, though as any parent knows, you can only take so much credit (and sometimes you really don't want to.)

We went to the pet store recently to buy more lizard food. My little guy was fascinated with the small bucket of mealworms and held them all the way home. Next time we were out, he ran up to yet another unfamiliar (and unsuspecting) person and declared,

"I have WORMS!"

Oh, lovely.