Kid-bits

Last year for Christmas (as in, a year ago), the girls asked for checkers (I assume they saw it on some TV show, but I never bothered to track down where they heard of checkers) & my aunt obliged & got them Princess checkers. They played it with Daddy a few times (I must confess I'd never learned to play checkers). Then it sat for awhile. And off & on this winter, I've played with one or the other of them when they really beg. It's rather impractical, when there are 3 of us at home most of the time, to have a game that only allows 2 players. And while it was easy enough to figure out the basics of the game, I don't enjoy it. Anyway . . . yesterday dh got home just as I was dealing w/ A totally melting down because she had lost checkers (actually she gave up before the game was over, but she wasn't paying attention & if I've said THREE times "are you sure you want to move there" and you still move there, I AM going to jump your queen that you set so nicely in front of me), and looking forward (not) to playing a game w/ L next. So, when dh got home I pawned the "playing checkers w/ L" off on him. He hadn't played w/ either of them in awhile, and L's the better checkers player, she does get the basic strategies of the game pretty well, so he was surprised at how well she did, and he did let her win. He's created a monster. She now wants to play checkers (with Daddy, woo-hoo!) all the time! The first thing I heard this morning when I came downstairs was that "Me & Daddy are going to play checkers tonight!" They actually played a game this afternoon (while Ashlyn helped me shred papers), and now they're playing another game (while Ashlyn takes a bath).

Tonight when I was running A's bath I noticed her reaching for TP instead of a cloth wipe when she got off the potty (the details of the cloth wipes are a save money . . . post I keep meaning to write) and I asked why she didn't use a wipe. Her answer cracked me up "they're too hard to spot." A couple weeks ago I'd moved them from sitting on the side of the tub or the edge of the counter or wherever they happened to get stuck, to a nice little basket on the back of the toilet. But she insisted that "we're facing this way, we can't see them" So now the basket's sitting on the floor right under the TP roll LOL. But her terminology totally cracked me up "they're too hard to spot" hee hee, it still makes me giggle.

The girls' 5th birthday is exactly a month away, and just to make sure she's ahead of the game, L told me tonight that for her SIXTH birthday she's going to have a big cake! (5th birthday is an Armadillo cake for A & a Flamingo cake for L, with the caveat that if Miss Angie (our wonderful cake-baking friend) can't get the flamingo cake to come out right we'll just have plain pink cupcakes with pink icing).

While in her bath just now, A asked me "how do sea otters & seals sleep in the water" ummm . . . I don't know dear (DO they sleep in the water, or just near it?) . . . she then decided that they find a nice rock & rest their HEAD on it & let their bodies float in the water, and she's demonstrating, using the edge of the tub as her "rock", hasn't quite figured out how to keep from sliding on down into the water, but she's working on it.