"Do You Speak Spanish?"

At Target the other day, our checker was a very dark skinned man, something my kids don't often see. While he was checking us out, Rachel asked me if he speaks Spanish. I told her I didn't know, and maybe she should ask him. She asked me if I could ask him, so I did. He said he speaks a little Spanish, but he does speak French. Then he asked her if she speaks Spanish. The extent of Rachel's Spanish comes from what she learned on Dora the Explorer, so she told him "no". I thought it was neat that she was so curious and upfront about seeing someone so different, as opposed to being afraid or upset. I told Shelby about it that night on our date. When we got home I told her how proud Shelby and I were about that conversation. She looked shocked and said "you talked about that?" I said "yes, dad and I talk about you all the time." She looked incredibly flattered. Then she said, "but you don't talk about Lilly."

That same night, we had a couple of baby-sitters, Kayleen Perrin and Ashley O'Brien. When I was taking them home, I asked how the kids were and they both cracked up. Ashley said "they taught us some things about our bodies." I nervously awaited the rest of the story. Apparently Lilly told Ashley that she has "Mommy boobies." They also talked a little about bums and other things. Luckily neither girl seemed too traumatized by any of this.

Last night Lilly got in trouble for something. I put her in time out, told her why she was there and that I wanted her to think about it. She was sobbing, and told me "I'm not going to think about it! I am going to think about princesses!" Lilly has a collection of "swear words" that she uses to show us how mad she is. Among them are, "poop" or "poopy" (her very favorite), stupid (which she always claims she is aiming at inanimate objects like "no, no, I was calling the chair stupid!"), and the insult of all insults "I don't like you!" It is pretty hard to take any of these too seriously.