The thought processes of kids

Here are some of the things we've seen and heard 'round here lately....

Strider's thoughts on names:
He recently came up to me and said, "When* we have our next kid, I think we should call him William Robert." I thought this was actually pretty acceptable -- certainly better than a lot of the suggestions he's had in the past. But when I asked him WHY, he said, "So we can call him Billy Bob." So we will officially NOT be naming any future babies William Robert.

He also recently read some things about Shaquille O'Neal and learned about what a great basketball player he's been. So, using this information along with the fact that his favorite (high scorer) player on the UNC-Charlotte b-ball team is Leemire Goldwire, Strider has concluded that people who have rhyming first and last names have a better shot at being good players. Now he wants us to change his name to "Hank."

Sweet Guile (if there is such a thing):
Rayna still has not mastered the skill of good lying -- though not for lack of effort. (And of course we are certainly glad about this fact.) On numerous occasions we'll yell to her in another room, "Rayna, what are you doing?" And she'll yell back, "I'm NOT dumping out all the puzzle pieces from the box," or some other obvious lie. The other day, though, my favorite was when she came into the kitchen behind me and I asked her what she was doing. She said, "I'm NOT playing with THIS." ("this" turned out to be a vacuum cleaner attachment piece that she had taken out of the closet and most certainly was playing with) Good try, girl.

And Colsen is rapidly following in her footsteps. He is sneaky enough to get into things he knows he's not supposed to.... but he still thinks he should tell me about it while it's happening. (Again, I'm extremely grateful for this) Yesterday he got into a bag of potato chips (well, Flat Earth chips -- so they have vegetables in them- - could have been worse), but he came to find me right away as he was putting one into his mouth. Then he kept pointing at the bag after I took it away, until he could finally get me to name what it was, as if he wanted to know for future reference. Something tells me "chips" will be added to his working vocabulary quite soon.

One last thought:
Strider was trying to stand on top of a huge pile of couch cushions yesterday (yes, our house was in its usual looks-like-a-tornado-struck condition) and he was nervous he was going to fall off. His comment was, "I'm glad I'm not Yao Ming! It would be scary to be this tall all the time!"

*I was surprised to hear that it was a definite assumption there would be another kid. I was not aware that Pete and I had made that decision yet.