Little Squirt

As we all know by now, bathing Max is an adventure.  She has now added a pool squirt toy to her arsenal of aquatic mayhem.  She targets wall tiles, the faucet, and occasionally, me.

I had managed to scrub her and her hair clean with the no tears kids wash.  Time to condition.  “Keep your head back, Bethany.  This is grown-up conditioner.  You don’t want it in your eyes,” I advised.

I let her keep squirting bath tiles as I combed it through her tangled locks.  After quite a bit of wrangling a squirmy slippery kid, I managed to get it all rinsed out without incident to her eyes.  Until…

I let her play for a second while I got her towel, at which point she decided to load up her squirt toy one last time.  This time she aimed right for her face and let fly with it.  “OW!  MY EYE!” she yelped grabbing for the towel.

“Honey, I told you that was grown up conditioner.  You shouldn’t have squirted yourself in the eye with that water.”

“I didn’t!” Max protested.  “I squirted it at my face, but then the water went in that crack I keep my eyeball in!”

Beg Your Pardon

It has been the common experience in our house that Max understands what people say in a very unique and usually incorrect way.   Daddy and I have spent countless hours correcting her only to have her insist she heard us her way.  (As a side note, I should add that she learned from the best of them.  Daddy and I are famous for doing this with each other, too.)

This particular car ride was a convoluted mess all the way around.

“I smell Cheez-Its,” declared Max out of left field in the back seat.

“How do you know what Jesus smells like?” asked Daddy.

“Cheez-Its!” said Max loudly and with decided emphasis.

Daddy shook his head.  “I don’t think Jesus smells like Cheez-Its.”

photo credit: Wikipedia

A Little Sass Goes A Long Way

Max has been particularly sassy lately, especially when we ask her about her day at school which is usually fraught with some sort of drama.  On the ride home, she asked Daddy to turn the radio off because she needed some “quiet time”, which she almost instantly broke with a barrage of attitudinal sass.

“You need to drop a little of that sass, Scooter,” Daddy warned her.

To which she replied: “I’ll still have a lot of sass even if I drop a little of it.”

Age Is Relative

Big sister Gracie was tickling Max on the couch.  She noticed a freckle by Max’s bellybutton.  “Look at that freckle right there,” she said tickling it.

Max, not missing a beat, said, “Yeah, it used to be little, but it just had a birthday.  It was teeny, now it’s all grown up.  It’s 10,000 years old.”

Behind Door #1

Kindergarten and Max have not played well together so far.  Both have minds of their own and neither are willing to budge.  For some reason Max cannot understand, things must be done on Mrs. Carter’s terms, not hers.  Yet, Max cannot help but put her foot down about some things.

In the middle of class one morning, Max walked up to Mrs. Carter, pointed at the back door that leads outside and informed her, “I am going out that door.”

To which Mrs Carter informed Max, “No, you are not going out that door.  It’s not safe.”

The battle of wits had begun.  “Yes, I am going out that door because you want me to go out that door,” Max contested pointing squarely in the direction she fully intended to go.

Mrs. Carter parried, “I do not want you to go out that door.  Why on earth would I want you to do that?”

Max went for the win.  “You want me to because I have to poot and you do not want to smell it!”

Mrs. Carter was briefly knocked for a loop and struggled for composure, but quickly recovered long enough to point in the direction of the class restroom and ended the verbal joust with: “If that’s the case, you may go through that door!”

Don’t Forget The Lyrics

Max loves to sing songs she makes up.  Admittedly, we don’t follow most of them.  At first, we attributed this to the fact that she begins singing so softly that you can barely hear her.  As we listened closely, we discovered that we simply have no idea what she’s singing about.  Her songs are like Amateur Night at a def poetry slam in a beatnik coffee shop around 2 am.

She sat in the backseat of Baby’s car happily singing away to herself.  It was a muddle of lyrics including what seemed to be a part of a Blue’s Clues song only with a completely different tune.

“Did you like my song, Baby?” she asked cheerily.

“Yes, it was a lovely song.”

“Sing it to me,” she told Baby.

Now, Baby had done what we all do from time to time.  She had only half-heard anything she had said but went along with it being a lovely song.
“Well, I don’t know the words to the song.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, it’s your song.  I don’t know the words,” Baby answered in an attempt to get out of singing the nonsense she was paying only vague attention to.

“I want to sing it, but I don’t know the words,” Max said.

“But it was your made up song, Bethany.  I don’t know the words either.”  Arguing with Max is mentally exhausting.

“Yes, you do know the words!  I just sang them to you so you could sing them to me!”  Time to turn up the radio.

Mars Vs. Venus

After preschool, I took Max to go potty and noticed that her pants were a little wet.

“Your pants are wet, Sweetie.  Did you have an accident?” I asked her.

“No,” she answered.  “I didn’t have an accident.  They’re just wet.”

“Honey, that makes no sense.  How did your pants get wet if you didn’t have an accident?”

She shrugged, obviously unconcerned.  “Weeeeelllll,” she began.  “I tried to go pee like a boy…..and it didn’t work.”

To my tremendous relief, she didn’t ask me WHY it didn’t work.

Happens To The Best Of Us

As we walked out of the gas station restroom, Max remarked, “I wish I could see the inside of my body.”

“Yuck,” I answered.  “Why would you want to do that?”

“Because I didn’t get to see it when I was made!” she answered simply.

I could have let it go at that, but I know Max well enough to know to keep pressing the point.  “Well, what did you see when you were made?”

“Not much.  Just God,” she shrugged.

Oh, is that all?  “And how was God doing when you saw Him last?  Was He doing alright?” I asked.

She shook her head thoughtfully.   “No.  He was making someone else and He didn’t know where all the right parts went.  He was having a bad day.”

Happens to the best of us.

All Created Equally?

I’ve often said it, riding in the car with Max usually results in interesting conversation.  Riding to preschool, out of left field, Max asked, “Mommy, is it true all animals are different shapes and sizes?’

“Yes,” I answered.

“Why?”

“Well, I suppose that’s just the way God wanted it to be.”

“Why did God make pigs in the shape of a circle?” Max asked.

“I don’t know why he made them round.”

She pondered the issue for a moment, then asked, “Did God just say something weird that day?”

I guess maybe He did.  Probably the same weird thing He said when He said there should be ostriches and aardvarks.

Play Doctor

After telling Max she was going to see her psychologist the next day, she informed me: “She’s not really a doctor.  She just asks a lot of questions.”

How’s that for a job description, Doc?