Storytime

I told Eddie that I had stolen his nose, and put it in a bunker: it's in a safe, in a deep cave, behind a deep dark wood guarded by dragons who are guarded by knights.  What will he do?

Eddie told me that knights wouldn't guard dragons (or his nose.) "OK," I said. "So it's just guarded by dragons. What do you do?"

Eddie decided that he would get on top of a dragon and ride it over the woods. Then he rode it down into the cave and told it to melt open the safe with its fire. Thus he got his nose back.

Since that hadn't worked, Papa took his nose again and put it on the moon. Eddie declared that he would take it back. How will he get there? "Can you walk to the moon?"

"Yeah," he said. "No way!" I told him. "You can't walk to the moon. Can you take a bus?"
"No," he said. "Can you take a train?" "No," he said. "Then how do you get there?"

He thought for a second, then remembered: "Fly!"
"Fly with what?"
"A... rocket ship!"
"But where will you get a rocket ship?"
"Rocketshipland!"
So Eddie walked to Rocketshipland, where he eloquently told the King of Rocketshipland of his plight, and the King was moved to give him a rocket ship. Then Eddie rode it to the moon and got his nose back.

Darnedest things

We talked a little bit about moving with Eddie today. We'll have to move in about 5 months. We mentioned that we'll go to a new place to live. First Eddie asked "I'm coming?" We assured him that he will come with us. Then he asked "Vincent coming?" Yes, we told him, Vincent too. But Eddie had a different idea: "No, Vincent not coming."



At dinner, Eddie asked for milk. We were out of whole milk, so he got 1%, which he's hardly ever had before. As I gave it to him, I told him "This milk is different—it's 1%" (Anne, simultaneously: "it's impoverished milk"). He guzzled it anyway. As he was slurping, I asked him "So, you still think it's potable?"

Eddie fixed me with a long stare, then exclaimed "What you say?!"

Papa (laughing): "Do you think it's drinkable?"

Eddie (scornfully): "No!"

Papa: "But you're drinking it!"

Eddie (shaking head sorrowfully over Papa's denseness): "No."

Presents

We got a tree a couple of weeks before Christmas, and Eddie helped decorate it. He thought it was missing a very important piece, though: presents underneath! He asked about the presents many times. We told him that the presents would come on Christmas day, but he thought that presents are an essential part of the Christmas tree, and that a tree without its presents is incomplete, even pointless.

After several days of expressing this point of view, we had failed to take action, so finally Eddie had to take matters into his own hands. He obtained one of Papa's socks, "wrapped" several crayons in it, and put it under the tree. Then he let us know that he'd wrapped a present.

Gingerbread

The nice thing about baking with 3-year-olds is that they're happy with pretty much any end result—they don't know any better!

Jumping

Eddie (heading off to bedroom): "I jump on the bed!"

Papa: "Uh-oh!"

Eddie (joyfully): "That's a bad idea!"

Helping

Papa's been extremely busy recently, with deadlines (hence the lack of blogging!) Often, while at home, I've had to work on the laptop and mostly ignore Eddie.

Sometimes he walks up hopefully, while I'm tapping away on the keyboard, and offers "We push buttons together, Papa?"