week ending mar 18, 2007

Week ending March 18, 2007: This week the crocus and daffodils bloomed, and then we had another ice storm. Fortunately we DIDN’T lose our power this time around! Also this week, I’ve been noticing how careful I have to be so that I don’t make Alex worry needlessly. He’s quite the worrier. He decided to wash all of his matchbox cars (over 50 of them now) and we set them on a towel to dry. He so enjoyed it that he wanted to wash them again the next day. I said that it took a long time for the cars to dry and we had to be careful not to get them wet too often or they would rust. He didn’t understand why rust is a problem so I explained that if the cars got too rusty they wouldn’t work any more, they’d be broken. Boy was that a mistake! I had a lot of explaining to do to talk Alex out of worrying about his cars. Chloe’s been picking up new words and phrases everywhere she goes, some good, some… not so good. The other day I thanked her for carrying her plate into the kitchen and she said “you’re quite welcome!”. Then today she told Alex to give her the toy back or she would “kill” him. At first I started to raise my voice at her, and then I realized she had no idea what she was saying, she was just trying on a new phrase to see what happened. When I explained to her why she shouldn’t ever say that, she said “but the boy at Chik-Fil-A said it!”. I was both relieved that we hadn’t taught it to her at home, but dismayed that she’s susceptible to bad influences over which I have so little control. Also this week Chloe said “Mom, I wish I was normal”. I was perplexed for a while until I some how figured out that she’d heard this phrase on The Incredibles cartoon. The character says it because he wishes he didn’t have super powers so he could be more like his friends at school. I explained that Alex and Chloe didn’t have super powers and were therefore normal. They said “what are super powers?”. I said “Well, Dash can run faster than a car and you can’t, so you don’t have super powers”. Alex said “I can run faster than a car, watch me!” And off he went!