The phone rings and Leo answers.  It’s for Sunny.  A woman from the local church youth program is calling to invite Sunny to a weekend activity.  I know this because I saw the caller ID.  I would probably have not answered.  I don’t like talking to people on the phone very much.

I hear Leo say, “Hello?..  Yes, yes you can.  In fact, she is right here.”  He waves the phone in Sunny’s general direction, says it’s for her and repeats the name he read off the caller ID.

Sunny is busy playing some hand held electronic thingy.  She answers him impatiently, “Hold on!”

Leo puts the phone back to his ear and says, “Hold.  On.  Dee dee do wah do dee dee do dee do….”  He is making hold music with his mouth.  Into the phone.  With the church lady on the other end.

Sunny grabs the phone and begins speaking as the rest of the room dies laughing.  Leo is surprised that we find him funny.  “What?”, he says, “I always like to hear music while I’m waiting.”

“I’m OK, it’s just pain!” -Leo, age 10

“Mom, do we have a plan to survive a nuclear fallout?”

“That’s not going to happen Leo.”

“How do you know?’

“Because… well, I guess I don’t know for sure but it’s really, really unlikely.  And it’s not something you should spend time worrying about.  We will all be fine.”

“There is a meteor that is going to hit the Earth in 2024.”

–Leo, age 10

“Oh.  My.  God.  Mom, my milk is breaking the laws of physics!  It’s fizzing!”

“Let me see this fizzy milk…”

“Oh, I killed it.  With my FIST!”

–Badger, age 7

“Toilet! Prepare to fall victim to my butt blade!”
–Leo, age 10

It is 7:30 in the morning and the kids are up sitting at the kitchen bar eating breakfast.  They are sleepy, but slowly waking up and resigned to their fate of another day of public education.  Badger, like so many seven year olds, uses his first moments of wakefulness as a time for self reflection.

“I don’t cry nearly as much as I used to.” he states, with an air of accomplishment.

“I think you are right…you don’t cry as much.”  I reply.

He looks at Sunny, who has been semi-silently moaning and weeping since crawling out of bed five minutes before.  A bad nights sleep and some unfinished homework making it impossible for her to hold her shit together today, so all her 11 year old woes come tumbling out of her like glass shattering on top of a wounded animal who is being forced to listen to finger nails on a chalk board.

“But Sunny, she cries a lot more now.”  he observes.

Being the sympathetic mother that I am I offer up an explanation.

“Well, Sunny is about to go through a really emotional time in her life.”

“Yeah, it’s called her period.”  Leo says.

“Fuck You, and Merry Christmas!”

–Badger, age 7 (after making an awesome kill on Nazi Zombies video game)

“Mom, you are the Best Mom in the Universe.  That is if there are other planets in the universe with highly intelligent animals on them.  If not, Best in the World isn’t bad.”

–Badger, age 7

“I think I’d be well suited for a career in stand up comedy”
-Leo, age 10

Sunny and her friend are playing with an old doll house. Being the little girls that they are, their world revolves around little furry creatures, so the tenants of this doll house are not a happy Mother, Father, and four small children with smiles permanently affixed to their plastic faces. No. Those figures have been tossed aside, and the house is owned by two small plastic dogs.

Sunny’s dog is a boy, and the friends dog is a girl. The friend is very anxious for the two dogs to be married and not living in plastic sin.

Sunny very wisely states: “Gosh NO! They are NOT married. They love each other and they just connect really well. But they aren’t married.”