Say What?!?

While Mark and I were in the kitchen, doing dishes and making lunch, Caroline was flitting around us, describing the new game she and a friend had invented.

The gist of the game was that they were poor orphans who made it big by becoming models. (Caroline could write scripts for Mary Kate and Ashley kids movies.)

"We were in modeling contests and we won every time and made lots of money. We were in Beautiful contests, Sex contests..."

I choked. "What kind of contests?"

"Sex contests."

Her Dad is apoplectic, so I quickly say, "What is a sex contest?"

"You know, where you are supposed to be sexy. There are contests for most beautiful, most sexy..." she says, as if it is obvious.

Mark has regained his composure enough to ask what she thinks being sexy looks like.

It's hard to explain, Caroline admitted, but being beautiful means wearing dresses and pretty things, and being sexy means wearing stuff that isn't dresses and which shows your belly button.

It won't be long now before she starts writing scripts for the teenage Mary Kate and Ashley movies.

Galaxy Girl

One year at Christmas, Mark bought the kids a toy from the Discovery Channel store that projects constellations onto the ceiling. The rotating mechanism has long since been destroyed, but we still have the globe itself, which sits on top of a flashlight so that the images can be projected.

When I walked into her room today, Caroline was standing on the bed, draped in a sheet, holding the "torch" straight up into the air.

"Look, Mom!" she said, "I'm the Statue of Galaxy!"

Loyalty

Caroline and I watched the movie Aquamarine, about a mermaid who has three days to make a human boy fall in love with her.

Caroline wanted to know why so many of the girls in the movie were interested in the male lead, a hunky 17 year old. I said that the boy was good looking and nice, so all the girls wanted him to be their boyfriend.

Caroline said she understood why the girls like him.

"But I would never want him as my boyfriend," she said.

Why not?

"Because I already have a boyfriend! Caden is good looking and nice too."

(For those of you who have not been keeping up with CadenWatch, Caroline and Caden met when he was 2 and she was almost 3, and fell "in love" at first sight. They have now been going steady for 4 and a half years. By the time Mark and I had been going out for 4 and a half years, we were married!)

Bilingual

The children were having a philosophical debate in the backseat of the car, attempting to establish a definition of "alive." Trees, Colin argued, were definitely alive, but he was unsure about plants and bugs. Caroline felt that everything was alive. I chimed in with answers, but both children seemed not to hear me. Instead of listening to the wisdom of their mother, they chose a different expert.

"Let's ask Tiger Lily," Caroline said, suggesting that a cat would naturally have an innate understanding of all things organic.
"But Tiger Lily only meows," Colin said sagely.
But this was not a deterrent for Caroline, who said confidently:
"I speak Meowish."