Friday Hodgepodge

Four Things

Five, counting the picture.

What's this? My "Little Man dozes off on the couch" checklist, of course. See P.S.

1. Answering a question from my daughter about whether chickens "poop out" eggs, I mispronounced the term cloaca, sounding more Roman than American in the process. (I  blame years of Latin for this.) My wife quickly corrected me, advising Pumpkin to check with her for pronunciation of new words, but with me for spelling.

As if our division of labor isn't weird enough already...

2. Pumpkin took her unicorn headband with her on an outing and, predictably, grew tired of it. Stuck carrying it, I put it on at one point and got her attention. "A manicorn does not look good," was her immediate verdict.

3. Pumpkin has often amazed me with her ability to spot things that blend into backgrounds. I recently inadvertently put that use.

I had lost my black-framed eyeglasses earlier in the day, and was afraid that they might get damaged, so I warned the kids: "You don't have to go looking for them, but watch out for my glasses when we get home. I lost them, and I'm worried that someone might sit on them or step on them."

Within minutes of getting home, my daughter piped up, "Daddy, I found your glasses!"

Where were they? On a black step stool in the downstairs bathroom.

4. My kids are at their most talkative on the ride home from school. During our last couple of days in Baltimore, while we were using a hotel, my son relayed to me a most interesting dream he'd had the night before. He told me about how monsters were attacking his sister, and he fought them off by kicking them.

I got a good laugh out of Pumpkin when I mentioned a strange coincidence: He had woken me up that very night, by repeatedly kicking me in the back.

-- CAV

P.S. What's up with the picture, Van Horn?

I'm glad you asked. My son, who can sleep like a log, sometimes dozes off on the couch before bedtime. Rather than wake him, I just picked him up one evening and deposited him in his bed. Waking at two in the morning, he became quite upset that he was not in his pajamas. The next day, he created the pictured bedtime checklist for me, so I wouldn't forget that important step in the future.

Two things about the image. (1) Kids his age flip things around from left to right, so I flipped it around for better "flow" (2) It's on moving paper, hence all the crinkles.