Some folks at church were sitting in the pew front of us last Sunday.  They have a little boy who was going nuts ninja-ing, car racing, and just generally making a lot of noise.  

"That's the worst things about boys," the mom said, " they're so rambunctious.  They just never calm down."

I reminded her that girls have their worst things too; so you just traded it for a different worst thing.

"What's the worst thing about girls," she wondered.

The KingofHearts and I glanced at one another and then answered in unison, "THE HAIR."

You might just assume that we were both on the same wavelength and our marriage is that close, but not ten minutes before leaving for church that day, I'd combed and dressed The Caterpillar's hair just the way she wanted it.  She took all the hair bands and doo-dads out within two minutes of my completing the task, handed them to me and then threw a Big Stupid Fit because I wasn't willing to put it all back in five seconds later.  I told her that if she was going to take her hair out two minutes after doing it, I wasn't going to keep putting it all back - that was The Rule.  

She stomped into the bathroom screaming and then suddenly stopped.  The KoH wondered what had ended her tantrum so quickly but I had an idea.  So it didn't really surprise me when she came back a minute later looking like this:

 
If you won't do my hair, I'll do it BY MYSELF.

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One of the best things about having girls is constantly entering a room and finding little scenes set up for you to interpret.


I choose to believe that Barbie's daughter got unwittingly mixed up in the human trafficking trade and is now awaiting her fate in a Thai prison where they serve her one large bowl of gruel per day.  She doesn't seem  too unappy about it though.  It's one of those happy Thai prison experiences... like the sequel to Bridget Jones.

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The Caterpillar has taken to playing the piano in the morning after The Dormouse heads out for the bus.  Her current favorite song is, "E - D - C" which she very carefully picks out on the piano keys and plays as determined as humanly possible.  Then when she finishes playing those three notes, she yells, "Hooray! I DID IT!!" and makes crowd and applause noises.  She's at least ready for a job playing with Keyboard Cat.


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I taught The Dormouse to make Coffee Mug Cake a few days ago.  There were squeals of delight as the cake rose like a skyscraper out of the mug while in the microwave.  She wanted a photo, but every time we opened the microwave door and no matter how quickly, the cake sank back into the mug like a frightened turtle.  We must have wasted a good twenty minutes, trying different combinations of readying the camera, having one of us throwing open the door and the other taking a picture as soon as possible.  This was the best we got... which isn't that impressive.   



What is impressive is a couple of decades ago, I would have been doing this with film and wasted about $50 in spent photographs before I got one this good.  We also would have had to wait a week in between film rolls to see if the pictures even turned out.  Instead, I grabbed this one shot of the cake to post here and deleted the other twenty photos we took.  Additional cost to me: $0.  Entertainment value for my child:  Priceless.

The digital age makes life better in so many ways, but this is something I don't think anyone ever thought about.