C and M absolutely keep my on my toes. They are constantly talking to me or to each other or to themselves. Sometimes I beg for just a few moments of silence, usually around 4:00 each day, but most of the time I just listen and take it all in.
Most of the time, I find them absolutely hilarious. This conversation happened Saturday in the car:
Maddie: “Charlie, you’re about to get punched in the eyeball.”
Me: “Maddie, you can’t punch Charlie! You just got in trouble for that.”
Maddie: “But I gave Charlie a quarter to stop moving his toe, and he keeps moving it.”
Me: “Charlie, give Maddie her quarter back.”
I couldn’t make this up, guys.
Just yesterday, Maddie came up to me in the kitchen with a tidbit of wisdom:
Maddie: “Mom, people just don’t appreciate the simple things in life anymore.”
Me: “Like what, Maddie?”
Maddie: “You know, the simple things. They just don’t appreciate them.”
Me: “What specifically are you talking about?”
Maddie: “Things like lemonade.”
She was really serious about this revelation, so I had to struggle to keep a straight face about her concern for people’s lack of appreciation for lemonade.
Charlie is funny, too, but he’s more serious. He asks things like “Does God clone himself?” and “Would you rather jump off a 5,000,000 foot cliff and die, or drown in a pit of lava?” Depending on the time of day and how much coffee I have had, I can’t always answer his questions. I say, “I’ll have to look that up, Charlie” a lot.
We spent a lot of time in the car today, which means lots of interesting topics were brought up. One that really excited the children was when they asked me, “Mom, if there was a mini McDonald’s across the street from our house, would you let us go there by ourselves? Would you let us ride our bikes across the road alone to go to the little McDonald’s stand?”
Immediately I started panicking. I imagined them getting run over by one of the huge feed trucks that speeds up and down our road, or someone at the mini McDonald’s stealing them and selling them to someone in Barbados. I started to say “No, I could never let you do that. I would walk across the street with you to the mini McDonald’s.”
Then I remembered that this was totally fictitious. There is no mini McDonald’s being built in the cow pasture across the street. If Charlie and Maddie want to fantasize about riding their bikes across the street to get a milkshake without me hovering 5 feet away, they should be able to do that!
So I answered, “Sure, I would let you ride your bikes alone to the little McDonald’s across the street.”
And they just went crazy. They spent the rest of the ride planning their imaginary trip to the imaginary McDonald’s across the street. They were both just smiling so big when we arrived home and got out of the car, and Charlie was even talking about it when I put him to bed tonight.
I love their imaginations and their hope and their questions.
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