Who's your Papa?

I was in the store with D when my cell phone rang. It was N; I told him I'd call him right back, since I was busy with the sales clerk, and I closed the phone.
"I want to talk to Mommy!" D protested.
"It wasn't Mommy, it was Papa," I told him.
"WHICH Papa?" D asked. "YOUR Papa? The one who says 'Supie-dupe'?"
Well, yes, that's the one--how many OTHER Papa's does he know?

Old friends

Today in the car, D said, "I want to go see your old friends." My old friends? Who is he talking about? My old college buddies? But he's never met them--so who on earth DOES he mean? His mother supplied the answer: "I think he's talking about Bubbie and Pop-pop!" (Makes sense- OLD and FRIENDS!)

Things that go bump in the night...

We were in the mall, and D looked around and announced, "I want to go see those bumpy things that wiggle their heads and their ears." Depsite all of my questions, he wasn't able to explain it any better, and I wasn't able to figure out what in the world he was talking about. (It wasn't until we got back to his house and I asked his mother that I found out that he was talking about the battery-operated stuffed animals in front of Kay-bee toys.)

For the birds

Yesterday, K and Papa were watching the birds fly south. Today K told me, "Papa said he wants to fly south too, but he can't."
"Why not?" I asked him.
He answered, "Because he doesn't have any wings!"

Breathe easy

D poked a fork into the holes in the spout of his sippy cup. "I'm helping it breathe," he explained.

Horses

S was getting something for K, and he was impatient. "Hold your horses," I told him.
He answered, "Forty-nine."
Puzzled, I asked him, "What's forty-nine?"
"It's a number," he explained patiently.
"OK, I know it's a number," I said, "but why did you SAY 'forty-nine'?"
Kivi answered, "Because that's how old my horses are!"

Too bad for the birds-

Kivi saw a flock of birds flying in the sky.
"The birds are supposed to fly south for the winter," he told Papa. "But they can't go, because South is closed."

Little Houdini-nothing up his sleeve!

Shosh was on her way home from an NCSY convention in Minneapolis, so Dovid came over with the kids to watch a football game (Packers vs. Dolphins.) After lunch, he made Donny a bottle and put him in the crib upstairs for a nap. For a while we heard Donny singing and talking to himself, as he usually does, but then he went to sleep. When Dovid went upstairs to get him later, he couldn't find the bottle. Norman went up to look for it, but he couldn't find it either. Dovid and the kids had to leave, but Norman knew the bottle had to be there somewhere, so he went to do a more thorough search. Eventually he found it: it was in the crib, UNDER the crib sheet. And the crib sheet was tucked in tightly all the way around the mattress. We still can't figure out how Donny managed to get the bottle under there AND get the sheet tucked back in, especially while he was IN the crib, ON TOP of the mattress. At least, we assume that's what he must have done--but we'll probably never know, since a good magician never reveals how he does his tricks!
P.S. Earlier in the day, Dovid had called us to tell us that last night, an hour or so after he put Donny to bed, he heard Donny scream, and when he went in he found that Donny had somehow managed to wedge his entire hand in between the body and the axle of the yellow plastic bulldozer he sleeps with. (Some kids sleep with stuffed animals--Donny sleeps with trucks.) Dovid had to cut the axle with gardening shears --or, as Donny calls them, "grown-up scissors"--to get Donny's hand out. Who knows what he was trying to do--hide the bulldozer up his sleeve, perhaps? At least he isn't wasting those minutes between getting in bed and falling asleep- he's practicing his magician skills!

Every boy's dream, no matter how old

Kivi and I were watching a video about firefighters, and Kivi told me that only men can be firefighters. (That was certainly the impression one would get from watching this particular video, which used the term "firemen" and featured not a single woman.) I explained to him that women could be firefighters too.
"Why?" he asked.
"Some women want to be firefighters," I said.
"And ALL men want to be firefighters," he answered.
"Not ALL men," I pointed out. "Daddy doesn't want to be a firefighter."
"Yes he does," Kivi insisted. "He can be a firefighter when he gets a little bigger."

Why wait?

Today we took Donny with us when we went to get flu shots at the Oakton Community Center. (Donny wore his firefighter jacket and hat.) But when we got there, there were already 200 people in line in front of us, so we decided not to wait. There were several construction trucks on the street, which was being repaved, so I said, "Come on, Donny, let's go watch the trucks."
"But you and Papa didn't get your shots," he pointed out.
"I know, but there are too many people in line in front of us," I told him. "It's too crowded."
"That's OK," Donny replied. "We can just jump over them!"