Overheard

My new favorite photo ...

So my worst nightmare that I didn't even know was my worst nightmare happened this week. The air conditioner blew out in the middle of a 90 plus degree week. The kids went to bed in only undergarments and woke up sweaty and miserable several times. I took them on a breakfast picnic to the Observation Park at the airport first thing in the morning because it was 10 degrees cooler outside than in our house. No joke. The good news is that we only had to sweat it out for one night (wonder if I lost any weight in the process?? i mean, i was sweating and sleeping, people. isn't that some kind of super weight loss combination?). The AC repair man came earlier than expected, replaced an under warranty part and left a bill for only a service call on the door step. It's the best service I've gotten outside my in-house repair service (the husband) in a long time ... mostly because we haven't had to call any outsiders in a long time. If you want the guy's number, e-mail me. And the best part of all? The kids and I enjoyed a lovely, relaxing breakfast outdoors. They actually ate more breakfast there than they do at home and I didn't have to sweep the floor.

Enjoy ...


That lady squeaks when she talks, mom, Danny said about a woman that he exchanged pleasantries with at the store. Thank God I didn't understand him the first two times he said it, so maybe she didn't hear it either.

Mommy loves you, I tell Fiona as I kiss her good night.
Get out. Ouch.

I want a hug, Fiona informs me one day. Who is this child?

You stink, Fiona, Jim tells her while we're at the park. 
I got a big poop. Oh, thanks for sharing.

Finish your hot dog. Then you can have some watermelon. Wait, what? Did I just tell my daughter to finish her highly processed meat product before she can have a piece of fresh fruit?

We can put for really fish in Nana's pool and go fishing, Danny tells me. Sure we can, right Nana?

Hey, Fiona, what's wrong with your hair?

Fiona put her pony hair in the pool, Danny says. I put Fiona's hair in a pony tail for the first time this week.

Choo Choo, Danny says as he pulls the strings on Fiona's dress. Fiona was not pleased. At all. And so begins our son's lifelong misunderstanding of women's clothing and hair.

Uni means one. A unicorn has one horn, I tell Danny while we were discussing various prefixes -- uni, bi, tri. (This all stemmed from a discussion about the dinosaur, triceratops.)
Unicorns scream, he says.
Um, no, unicorns don't like screaming. 
They never come. 
Yeah, screaming kills unicorns. So they stay away.

The stubbornness is strong in this one, Jim says one night during a particularly loud and contentious dinner. Owen kept putting his foot on the table. He screamed indignantly when we placed his foot back under the table and told him no. He kept putting his foot back up.

It's an ice cream cone, Fiona informs me after she snatched a large mushroom from Nana's fridge.

I'm doing work. I'm doing a good job, mommy, Fiona tells me. She was using the dust pan. She's actually pretty well coordinated, getting most of it up and even getting it into the trash can one handed with out spilling a speck of it. The reason she's good at cleaning up? She makes most of the messes around here.

I swear, child, if you make one more mess today, I'll hang you up on the clothesline. She was going for the pool bag that I had just packed. And she just stared at me. Utterly unflappable, this one.

Have a great weekend!