Perceptive Kid

At Disneyland, I took Alana on the Star Tours ride (it's one of those sit-in-a-dark-room-and-get-bounced-around-while-you-watch-a-movie rides). While waiting to board our 'starship', there was a safety video, showing Chewbacca and other aliens boarding, chatting with customers, stowing their bags and putting on seatbelts, etc.
A- "Are there going to be monsters on this flight? I don't want to fly with monsters."
K - "Those aren't monsters, they're aliens. And that's Chewbacca. He's a good guy. There might be aliens on our flight--we're going into space, after all!"
(Maddie, little girl behind us in line) "I don't want to get killed by aliens!"
(her mother) "Maddie! Hush! You might scare the little girl!"
K - "I don't want to get killed by aliens either, but that won't happen on this flight. They have good security and friendly aliens."
A - "What's the flight like?"
K - "Like skiing, except you're strapped in. Actually, remember when you rode on Uncle Rob's lap in the pickup truck?" (on a farmstead in NY, through fields and down a road named 'Punctured Lung Lane')
A - "Mm-hm."
K - "It'll be like that, except with something to hold onto."
A - "That's good. I didn't have anything to hold onto in the truck."

...so we take the ride, and she's fine the whole time...then the ride ends and we disembark.

A - "Hey, we were right here the whole time! It was just a movie!"

Perceptive kid...

Sharing...or Not

AC is in the car with Alana, Tommy, and Xander. The kids are starving. AC hands a box of snack crackers back to X and instructs him to share some with the other kids.
X - "No."
AC - "What do you mean no? You know you need to share. Why not?"
X - "If I give them the box, they will eat them all!"

Typical Conversation

K, drying off Alex after shower, finds him cranky. So he wraps him like a monk in the towel and starts singing Monty Python: "pie jesu domine, pie deus requiem...[bonk]".
Alana asks, "what's that?"
Keith, distracted: "Latin."
"What's Latin?"
"A language spoken by the Romans."
"Who were they?"
"They had a big empire."
"Whats a vampire?"
"An EMpire is a bunch of countries that are run from a single place. This was run by a ruler called a Caeser."
"Oh. And he talked liiike thaaat?" (she says, in a creditable Pythonesque drone, albeit 2 octaves higher)
"Well, I don't know what he sounded like, but he spoke that language. Then the Catholic church adopted it."
"Why didn't they like it?"
"Hunh? They did like it. Oh, to adopt means to start using. They liked it because lots of people could understand their services if they used that language."
"Oh." Blank expression, wheels clearly turning. Then she got distracted, but I'll be interested to see where that turns up next .

Distinguishing...

K - "That's the distinguisher...how we tell the difference."
Alana - "but that's not a container with foam in it."
K- "Huh?"
Alana - "A distinguisher. To put out fires."
K- "Oh! Extinguisher. No, to distinguish means to tell the difference. To 'Extinguish' is to put out a fire." (we had recently talked about fire extiguishers and looked at our kitchen extinguisher)

Phonetic Learning and Little Parrots

"Just use the moat control".
"Oh, that's what that cartilage is" (referring to a printer cartridge)
"Fancy that!"
"His name is Meet Diego."
"Can we go cantelope-watching some time?" (after we talked with her about antelope browsing near Antelope Canyon)
"Geez Louise!" (a common phrase around our house...strong words from AC!)

Music With the Kids

Alana sings all the time (both her parents do, too, so she doesn't find it at all odd). She knows a bunch of the bass lines that AC sings in her chorus, from hearing Mommy practicing at home. She knows "Over the Rainbow" pretty well, and more typical kids' songs, too.

We sing whatever songs we can come up with that incorporate the kids' names, and then the kids pick them up, too. Alana first learned to spell her name because we sang B-I-N-G-O with new lyrics about a little girl named A-L-A-N-A.

At the moment, Alana is pretty frequently singing the Alleluia Chorus, because she hears us singing it with her brother (substitute "Alexander" for "Alleluia" and you'll get the idea). Her original version was pronounced "all-a-you-uh", but she's getting the alleluias now.

Alexander, at 18 months, was humming tunes quite clearly (twinkle, twinkle in particular). He'll also drum on anything we drum on (most kids do, but he's *into* it!) If we leave the basement door open, he makes a beeline downstairs for the drumset. He loves to play with it. Piano and guitar also fascinate him...I'm sure music will be a big part of his life.

My Possibility

I came home the other day, and Alana happily said to me: “Daddy, I did my possibility!”
"Your possibility? I don't understand."
"You know, my possibility! I made my bed!"
"Ohhh. Your responsibility!"

Cuz I'm a Blonde

Alana was walking around singing the refrain from "Cuz I'm a blonde--yeah YEAAHH yeah". Finally we asked her to stop, because it was getting really old. Keith said "You're really more of a brunette, not a blonde." Then we asked if any of the kids in her class were blonde. "Isn't Isabelle blonde?" "No." "I thought she has yellow hair." "She does, but she's not blonde." "Uh, yes she is. Blonde means you have yellow hair." She pondered. "I thought blonde was when your eyes don't work."

Distractable

AC, frustrated: "Alana, you are so distractable".
Alana, calmly: "Yes, just like my Daddy."

Not There Yet

After finally swapping Alana over to underpants exclusively, and subsequently doing a lot of laundry after she consistently woke up wet, we've moved back to training pants for her at night.