Maggie: “I don’t want to play any games. I only want to read D&D books!” At which point she heads upstairs and does just that.
(Note that she can’t quite read these books yet, but she loves looking at the pictures, especially the gruesome monsters.)
Maggie: “Oliver, you’re the best person in our whole family. I love you more than Mama. I love you more than Daddy. I love you more than Griffin. You are better than anyone.”
At least we know where we stand!
After I got home from school today, Maggie called me upstairs. She specifically requested me, rather than Mama, which is somewhat unusual. As I reached the top of the stairs, I saw her proudly holding one of Sarah’s new dresses, as if she were wearing it, with most of it bunched up on the floor.
I laughed and said something banal, but Maggie decided she wanted to show me what it looked like “for real.” She started yanking aggressively at the zipper at which point I began to wonder if this was a good idea. I asked, “Maggie, are you sure Mama is ok with this?”
“Well,” Maggie ponders, “I did it this morning too!”
I slowly digested this, when Sarah’s voice floats up the stairs, “What you meant to say, Maggie, was, ‘Mama told me I’m not allowed to wear her new clothes.'”
“Oh yeah.” Maggie rolls her eyes and tosses the dress back on the bed.
During an epic game of Munchkin Deluxe, Maggie was on a rampage and I was getting pummeled by nasty curses. After drawing yet-another card of doom, I exclaimed, “Ugh, I’m getting knocked down at every turn!”
Maggie, chuckling with evil glee, countered with, “And I’m getting knocked UP at every turn!”
Maggie regularly refers to her brain as her computer, usually in reference to her dreams or imagination. This morning as Griffin and I were talking about bad dreams, Maggie declared, “I don’t have bad dreams anymore because I thumbs down them in my computer.”
Me: Maggie, you and me and Oliver are going to smash the patriarchy!
Maggie: No we’re not!
Me: Do you know what the patriarchy is?
Maggie: No
Me: It’s when boys are only in charge and tell girls they can’t do anything they want.
Maggie: Oh. We can smash that.
Griffin and Maggie both love jokes and riddles. Griffin, Maggie, and Grandpa Jeff often exchange video riddles with each other—this is worth its own post sometime—and we have a children’s joke book that we often read before or after dinner, resulting in lots of silliness.
Maggie has recently begun telling her own jokes, which appear to be a combination of the knock-knock joke and riddle jokes, like “Why’d the chicken cross the road?” The humor is often opaque (or translucent) to an adult ear, but I love it that she is playing with the genre.
Here are two recent examples:
Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Dog.
Dog who?
Why did the dog go on a walk?
I don’t know. Why?
He sneaked out the door to get his other bone!Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Door.
Door who?
Why did the door open the door?
I don’t know. Why?
To get to the other door!
Like many parents, I’ve adopted the weird tradition of expressing my affection toward my children in cannibalistic terms. When Griffin and Maggie were babies, I regularly described them as “delicious” or “so cute I could eat you.” As I write this, we impatiently await the arrival of our third child, who will no doubt receive the same dubious treatment.
These days, it’s more of a faux threat that I toss out when we’re playing tickle games or otherwise rough-housing. I’m a hungry troll! I’m going to eat your belly button! (My beard is an astoundingly effective tickler.)
This morning, while chasing Maggie around the loft, she suddenly put our her hand and yelled, “STOP! Persons don’t eat persons.”
I burst out laughing, as did she, and I pressed her further. “What about delicious little toes?”
“No!”
“Crunchy elbows??”
“No!”
“Angel hair salad???”
“No! Persons do not eat persons. Period!”
I was simultaneously amused by the whole interchange and pleased that she’s properly internalized the cannibalism taboo. And then she continued, doubling down on the weirdness factor.
“Because we have brains.”
“What?”
“Persons have brains. Up here,” tapping her head.
“Ok. So, I shouldn’t eat people because they have brains?”
“Yes.”
Now that that was settled, I prepared to tackle her for some more tickling, but she added, “And when you die you turn into a plant.”
“Um. Wait, what?”
Grinning with increasing excitement, she explained, “Daddy, when you die some day, you will grow into a plant. Or a bush. Or a flower! Or a TREE!” She was very pleased with the thought that I will be a tree.
There is nothing cooler than a 4 ½-year-old brain.
At dinner tonight, Maggie asked “How did animals came?” A few clarifying questions revealed that she was interested in how animals arrived on the planet Earth… literally, where animals came from. We talked a bit about microbes and evolution, but she wasn’t especially interested. After some consideration, she produced her own version. Here’s what she had to say (scrawled down verbatim on a scrap of paper at the dinner table):
The ground came.
The animals came from the ground.
And humans came from the animals.
Humans built houses and then
they lived in houses.
New career possibility: developer of creation myths.
Maggie and I were joking around this morning about whether it was night or day. She pulled open the bedroom curtain and pointed to the sky and said, “See, the sun is in the sky!”
I replied, “Wait, Griffin is in the sky???”
She rolled her eyes, “No! That’s not what I was meaning. The Earth has a sun in it. Not a kid son.”
I clarified, “The earth has a sun in it?”
“Yes,” nodding vigorously, “it’s what makes it day time.”
Update: During a recent bike ride, Maggie demonstrated more of her astronomical knowledge. The kids love biking around a circular paved area in front of one of the dorms at Macalester College. Maggie decided that she was “the sun” and biked in a tight loop in the center of the circle. Griffin and his friend, Zoe, orbited Maggie as planets. They whooped and hollered, arguing over who was which planet, while Maggie repeated, “I’m the sun! I’m in the middle!”
At some point Griffin got too close to her, and she shouted, “I’m super hot! I’ll burn you! It’s called a sunburn!”