Just after sunset yesterday, I yelled for Scott to come see this neat swarm of tiny ants that I found in the driveway. We noticed one example of the stark difference in our kids’ personalities when Sullivan stood looking from a safe distance while Éa lay right on the blacktop inches from the mess of ants and poked at them with her fingers.
When I followed Éa in her boldness and looked up close myself, I noticed that these little ants weren’t after some food item as we had first assumed, but were actually fighting each other. I described what I had seen to the others, saying, “They’re fighting! It’s an all-out war! They’re in piles on top of each other and some are carrying away the dead.” Scott explained to the kids that this must be two distinct any colonies fighting for territory or something.
Then our kids displayed another fine example of their polar opposite personalities. Sullivan folded his hands and looked up to the sky with his happy bright blue eyes reflecting the clouds and prayed, “Dear God, please help these ants stop fighting each other.” Meanwhile, Ea moved even closer to the ants, with her brown eyes wide open and a big smile on her face, put her forehead right into the swarm and said with joy, ”Bonk heads!”
Scott: Carla, this is called invalidating my feelings. You’re not giving me any space to have this opinion. Carla: Scott, you want to build a spice rack out of Legos.
editor’s note, 11/2/24: I still call this being resourceful.
“Well, I think he can get a pretty intense look on his face when he’s playing something like this, but I don’t think he ever looks like a pirate getting an enema.”
— Scott describing Carla’s imitation of Itzhak Perlman playing the finale of Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D. (Go ahead. Picture it.)
“Mommy and Dada, the other night, when I was asleep, my eyes went ploop! (with hand motions indicating quickly opening eyes) and I looked into my pillow and I saw gray telephone wires. And then I saw a big gray pipe with a gray whistle on the top. When the whistle blew, it was telling us that water was going to come shooting out of the pipe. All that was in my pillow! My PILLOW!”
“The mama butterflies will come and bring their babies to stick them into my ear to eat pollen so they can turn into a flower with wings so they can fly!”
Sullivan (sheet music in hand): Mama, can you read this? Carla: No, honey, it’s music. It’s not words. Sullivan: Oh, well, can you sing it? Carla: No, it’s piano music. Sullivan: Well, WE have pirnano! Carla: But I don’t know how to play the piano. Sullivan: I know how to play the pirnano: You just press the keys! That’s how you do it!
