Three snippets of conversation with the kids earlier this evening:

#1:

Little A: “Muime, look at this!” (Shows me a drawing she did, of what looks like a pipe with a sprinkler-ish thing on the end dripping water into something that look vaguely like a test tube full of pebbles and flowers)

Me: “Nice! Is it watering the flowers?”

Little A: (giving me her best grownups-are-stupid look) “NO, it’s making glowing purple potions, each one of which can increase the strength, speed and knowledge of a human being by 100%. I’m only going to make 5 prototypes, and I’m going to drink them ALL. So then I’ll be… (she pauses to think) …four times as strong, fast and smart as a normal human.”

All of this was said in an isn’t-it-OBVIOUS tone. And also goes to show that while her mad science is very promising, her mad math needs a bit of work…

#2:

Little D, telling me about the search-and-rescue dog book I checked out for him from the library last visit, and read to him three times: “…So if you ever get lost in the woods, the dog will climb up a tree until it sees you, and then jump down out of the tree and take you home!”

Me: “Er… I don’t think the book went quite exactly like that, honey. Dogs don’t actually climb trees.”

Little D: “SOME dogs do!”

Me: “No, they –”

Little D (interrupting): “But I SAW a little puppy climb a HUGE tree! All by himself!”

Me: “You did? When was that?”

Little D (thoughtfully): “Either today or not-today. Sometime when I was wearing these clothes.”

#3:

Scene: we are watching a Scooby-Doo cartoon, in which Fred has been replaced by an imposter, and is trying to send his friends a secret message to let them know this, using the initial letters of various places, which together spell “FAKE”.

Me: “F – A – K – E. Do you know what that spells?”

Little A (nodding confidently): “FUCK!”

Now, a proper parent would, I’m sure, have given her a stern-but-kindly lecture on both the inappropriateness of that word and the fact that that was NOT what those letters spelled. So let’s just pretend that’s what I did. Instead of, say, laughing so hard that I couldn’t actually make any words at all and nearly fell out of my chair. Under NO circumstances did that happen. *crossing fingers behind back*