Penelope Duck

I was reading a book with Penelope the other day, a story about a family of ducks. She correctly identified the "Mama Duck". Then, when I pointed to the baby duck and asked her what it was, she said, "Penelope Duck!"

You had to be there.

I had to make sure

Two of my sisters-in-law, their 5 children, my father-in-law, and I went hiking yesterday morning. The views were beautiful and the trail was easy (except for the side trail we took which ended up being a very steep dirt-and-rock-slide). On the way back to the car, I was holding Taylor's hand and Porter was walking behind us, picking up little rocks and acting like he was going to throw them at Taylor. This made Taylor very nervous (he's a somewhat anxious child anyway), and when Porter began walking beside us Taylor reached over and slugged him on the shoulder. Porter responded with a punch of his own, followed immediately by a second one. Taylor began to cry. "But that's not fair!" he whined. "I only hit you once! You punched me twice! You can't do that!"

Porter responded, very matter-of-factly, "Well, I punched you the first time but I didn't think it really hurt. So I punched you again to make sure it hurt."

To which Taylor responded by punching Porter on the arm, just to make things even.

Oh, those boys. They love each other, really.

Questions II

This week's question to ponder comes from my nephew, Taylor (5).

"Who lived first, the dinosaurs or the pioneers?"

Pterosaurs

Porter (5) loves dinosaurs. Like, he REALLY loves them. His favourite game to play is "Prehistoric Park", where everyone pretends they're different prehistoric animals, and the first thing he says to me when I visit is "Guess what I learned about ______ (insert ridiculously long dinosaur name here)?" He knows more about dinosaurs than anyone other than a professional archaeologist - and he probably even would give some of them a run for their money. It's probably because, for instance, he is told to pick out a bedtime story and says the following:

"Can we read about pterosaurs from the Middle Cretaceous period?"

Of course. Who wouldn't want that bedtime story?

Questions

A couple of deep questions to ponder from my 2-year-old niece, Sarah Ann:

1.) Is today yesterday? When will it ever be yesterday?

2.) Does it take longer to get to Spain or Heaven?

The 100 Club

In Taylor's kindergarten class, kids who write their numbers from 1-100 become part of the "100 Club". His mother, Leslie, heard about it from another mother whose daughter was a proud member. She wondered about it because Taylor had never said anything about it, despite having been able to write at least that high for a while. When she asked him about it, he said simply,
"Well, mom, it just gets too boring once I get to 63."

I can totally understand that - can you imagine a 5-year-old sitting still long enough to write out each number to 100? I myself would get bored out of my mind - and I've had lots of practice sitting still (though I'm still not good at it). He finally did, though, and even wrote all the way to 104.