Fewer whackings

Jack: "I didn't sleep so well last night. My head was kind of stuffed up."
Laura: "You should take an aspirin, a vitamin C, and tell me how pretty I am."
Jack: "You're so pretty."
Laura: "See, doesn't that make you feel better?"
Jack: "I imagine it makes you feel better."
Laura: "You'll feel better too because I won't whack you nearly as much!"

Church paranoia

[Laura and I sat down in church and started scanning through the announcements in the church bulletin...]

Laura: "Let's see ... does it say anything bad about us?"

Party like a rock star

[Laura was watching a TV show where they were playing the song "Party Like A Rock Star" and she was singing along.]

Laura: "That's what I'm going to do tomorrow."
Jack: "What, become a rock star?"
Laura: "No, party."
Jack: "Oh, of course."
Laura: "I'm hoping there's a lot of eating bon-bons ... and sitting ... and no laundry."

Motherhood

[ Jason, who is two and a half, sometimes just likes to get our attention it seems...]

Jason: "Mommy, Mommy!"
Laura: "Yes, Jason?"
Jason: "Mommy, Mommy!"
Laura: "What, Jason?"
Jason: "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!"
Laura: "Ohhh ... sometimes the pay just isn't enough..."

[On another occasion, when the kids were being whiny and inconsolable...]

Laura: "Motherhood isn't nearly as fun as the color brochure made it seem..."

Sour Milk

[Laura is ultra-squeamish about food going bad so it's hard to resist teasing her sometimes...]

Jack [smelling the milk and pretending that it's gone sour]: "It's probably got another day left in it ..." [and then pouring it on his cereal.]

Laura: "It's a wonder I kiss you at all."

Wedding Vows

[Laura was helping some friends get ready for their wedding and she heard that they were writing their own wedding vows... ]

Laura: I would have had to let Jack do that because if it were left up to me they would say, 'I kind of like you ... I'll try not to shoot you.'

An Easy Customer

[Laura was flipping through some catalogs for something to do while riding in the car...]

Laura: "I don't need anything from Pottery Barn ... but let's see what they want me to buy from them ..."

Chex Mix

[ Laura had just made a large bag of Chex Mix (with M&Ms, honey roasted peanuts, dried fruit, and other yummy goodies) for a cross-country car trip with my parents and my sister's family.]

Laura: "Do you think that's too much Chex Mix?"
Jack: "I could finish that in 2 days."
Laura: "You have to share this among three cars."
Jack: "Or you could make three of those bags."
Laura [crunching slowly on some Chex Mix and glaring at me]: "Pretend you're the Chex Mix."

No snacks for Jack

Jack: "I have council tonight."
Laura: "Good, bring me home a snack."
Jack: "We don't have snacks tonight. That's only on the first council meeting each month."
Laura: "No snacks? Poor Jack. And they still expect you to show up?"

Ring around the rosie, Laura's version

[Early one morning when Laura was still groggy and the kids wanted to play "Ring around the rosie" in the kitchen, Laura obliged with her own version of the song.]

Laura: "Ring around the rosie,
Pocket full of posie,
Ashes, ashes,
Everybody but me fall down."

[Both kids fell down still holding onto Laura and pulling her down with them.]

Take me with you!

Laura: "Take me with you!"

[What Laura pleads from the doorway as I'm leaving for work in the morning while the kids behind her are yelling and fighting.]

The Right Opinion

[It was a warm night -- almost too warm for sleeping -- and I was thinking of getting up to turn on the air conditioning...]

Laura: "Before you go turning up anything you should consider removing a blanket. That's just my opinion ... but it's the right one."

Cricket playing

[We were talking about how we both hate ironing...]

Laura: "Ironing is hard."
Jack: "I know, it's not worth it."
Laura: "And it gets in the way of my...cricket playing."
Jack: "Cricket playing, eh? How's that going?"
Laura: "Well, it's fun, but I feel bad for the crickets!"

Brainwashing

[I was about to take Brianna to her swimming lesson and Laura was hoping I would stop at Starbucks on the way home...]

Laura: "I bet I know what you would like to do on the way home."
Jack: "I bet I know what you're going to ask."
Laura: "I bet I know what you WOULD LIKE to do on the way home."
Jack: "You could have a career in brainwashing."
Laura: "It's not so much 'washing' as it is 'beating into submission'."

I can feel my mind going...

[ We were listening to classical music on the car radio and I couldn't remember the name of the composer for "The Barber of Seville"...]

Jack: "What is the name of that composer? Why can't I think of it? I'm losing my mind!"
Laura: "Welcome to the club. The dues are steep...but it's fun."

A Groggy Morning

[ When the alarm goes off on an early school morning, we both lie in bed wishing we could sleep later... ]

Jack (groaning): "Why can't school start an hour later?"
Laura: "I know. I put in a suggestion in the suggestion box. But they said, 'No curse words.'"

Female numbers

[The newsletter for Brianna's pre-Kindergarten class said that next week they would be learning about nickels, the letter N, and one-to-one correspondences.]

Laura: "I wonder what 'one-to-one correspondence' means."
Jack: "That's where you match up one set of things with another; one item from this set pairs with one item from that set."
Laura: "That PhD was good for something..."
Jack (getting warmed up): "Did you know that you can make a one-to-one correspondence between the integers and all the fractions?"
Laura (looking for an escape): "I, uh, have to go over there..."
Jack: "What's more interesting is that you cannot make a one-to-one correspondence between the integers and the irrational numbers."
Laura (looking at me suspiciously): "Those would be the female numbers?"

Prioritize

[Laura was about to leave for a women's breakfast Saturday morning, leaving me to supervise the kids...]

Jack: "Do you suppose it's safe for me to leave them downstairs while I take a shower?"
Laura: "Well, you might want to prioritize..."
Jack: "Prioritize what?"
Laura: "You know, like what body parts really need cleaning."

Competitiveness

Jack: "You're pretty competitive."
Laura: "I'm not competitive. I just want to win at everything."

The Desserts I Did Not Eat

[Google has amazing desserts, all free of course, and resisting them is like shoveling against the tide. So sometimes I have to put a positive spin on things...]

Jack: "Ask me how many desserts I didn't eat today."
Laura: "Jack..."
Jack: "At lunch, I didn't have a second piece of the moistest chocolate cake ever."
Laura: "That's one."
Jack: "And I didn't take another cherry-white-chocolate-chip cookie from the cookie jar."
Laura: "That's two."
Jack: "And at dinner I didn't get a second helping of the best flan I ever tasted."
Laura: "That's three."
Jack: "And in the afternoon, I didn't eat a second free ice cream sandwich."
Laura: "That's four."
Jack: "And then at council tonight Pietie made a wonderful Dutch dessert that I can't pronounce and I didn't help myself to another piece."
Laura: "You had five desserts today? Are you even a little bit ashamed?"
Jack (deciding it best not to mention the bananas and caramel dessert): "I thought you were counting the desserts that I didn't eat."
Laura (patting my belly): "Pretty soon Belly Bob here is going to be so big you won't be able to turn around in a China store without knocking things over. You'll hear something and go 'huh?' and turn and then WHAM! belly knocks something on the floor and then you'll turn back and WHAM! belly knocks something else on the floor. Hee hee hee!"
Jack: "The expression is 'bull in a China closet' not 'belly in a China store'. And it refers to someone who is reckless or careless, not someone who is chubby and clueless."
Laura: "I thought you were trying to lose weight."
Jack: "They were small desserts. Google always serves small helpings."
Laura: "But you had FIVE of them!"
Jack (holding his thumb and finger about a millimeter apart): "Teeny tiny helpings."
Laura: "I'm gonna tell your momma."

Parent-teacher Sessions

[Brianna is only in "Junior Kindergarten" but we, as her parents, still have a parent-teacher meeting to discuss how she is doing.]

Laura: "I signed up for a parent-teacher conference today, but they only allow 20 minutes to talk!"
Jack: "Well, how much can there be to talk about? 'Plays nicely with others...needs to work on paying attention...'?"
Laura: "But I've got issues! I want a whole hour on the couch!"
Jack: "This is a parent-teacher conference, not a shrink session. There's no couch. And you're supposed to talk about Brianna, not your 'issues'."
Laura: "And speaking of Brianna, I think she's doing way too much socializing. We've been invited to 10 birthday parties in 9 weeks! And every time we get a birthday invitation from someone Brianna always says she is 'best friends' with them. I think she goes around asking each kid, 'So...when's your birthday?' and then making 'best friends' with everyone just before their birthday!"