Ugly Babies and Old Maids

The thought process of a 4-year-old can be....interesting. Here are two examples from just the last week. For her birthday, Lily was given the card game, Old Maid. Most games we'd played up to this point had a single winner (Memory, Candy Land, etc.). Old Maid, on the other hand, is really more about not being the loser. So the other day, she and I sat down for a game of Old Maid. I dealt out the cards and we started. As we had fewer and fewer cards in our hands, I realized there was still an even number of cards in play. Now think about this for a second: Old Maid is all about making matches and the one with the Old Maid loses. An even number of cards means they should all match up. I knew I didn't have the Old Maid, so I cheated a little and asked Lily to see her cards.

Me: Lily, where's the Old Maid?

Lily: I took her out.

Me: Why?

Lily: If you have that one, you lose, so I took her out before we started.

So no loser means everyone wins, right? She's so diplomatic.

The second venture into Lily's mind is a little less diplomatic, and I hope I don't have to explain to some poor mother why my kid just said that. When we first brought Timothy home, we said something along the lines of "He's pretty cute. Do you think we should keep him?" The answer was always yes, of course, and now she says a variation of it at least once a day. "Should we keep him?" "Are we going to keep Timothy? He sure is cute." But out of the blue on Saturday, Lily confronted me with this question:

What do people do with the babies that aren't so cute?

Trying my hardest not to laugh, I asked what she thought people did with them. Apparently, they get rid of them. See where I could have problems if we run into someone with a not-so-cute baby? Luckily, there's no such thing as an ugly baby, right? Then again, maybe it's time to introduce her to the word, breathtaking.

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Plain White T's

Looks like February is our month for concerts. Last year, we headed to Vegas for Jack's Mannequin. This year, we stayed close to home for Plain White T's. I LOVE Plain White T's, so when I found out they were coming, it was a no-brainer. And I'm so glad we went. They put on a great show, and we had a blast. And during a surprise change up in where they were singing, we ended up being super close for the all-famous Hey There, Delilah.

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Once there was a snowman

After a couple blissful days of Mother Nature's toying with my emotions by giving us some semi-springlike weather, she went and dumped an obscene amount of snow on us. I wasn't too thrilled. Lily, on the other hand, thought it was fantastic. In fact, this morning, she got herself all dressed, including her non-snow boots and informed Erik that she was going out to shovel. This turned out to be not quite the whole truth and was really just a ploy to get to the park. After tromping through the snow and getting completely soaked, she came back in only with the promise that they would go out and build a snowman once I came home and could wrangle Timothy.

At our office Christmas party, we had a white elephant exchange. We managed to snag a snowman kit. I know...how hard is it to build a snowman and what would be in a kit since the majority of a snowman can't survive in a kit? But it was awesome. It came complete with hat, matching scarf, eyes, mouth, carrot, and pipe. Somehow, though, in the two months since Christmas, we had yet to use it. It seemed like whenever it snowed, we didn't get to the project before the snow had lost it's optimum snowman consistency. So as much as I hate snow, this most recent storm was actually good because we finally managed to use this dang kit.

Even though the forecast said it was supposed to snow today, too, it was blue skies and sunny while we were out, so I carted Timothy along and even Laddie took a few romps around the park...I like to call it frolicking, really, since the snow reached his belly and he had to leap everywhere he went.

In the end, Lily and Erik managed a fairly decent snowman - although the eyes and mouth have already been brought inside because they fell off. I'm hoping we don't lose the rest of the kit before we can snag it all and put it back in the container. You'll also notice the hat and scarf don't match. Lily decided she'd rather use the lid to the container than the actual hat, but it still worked. Plus, she's pretty convinced it's magical. She keeps trying to check on "Frosty" with her flashlight from inside the house. I'm pretty sure she thinks he'll get up and walk away...

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