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Let's call this series of episodes from this evening "Toddler v. Grandpa".

Episode 1: Dessert

My father has been recovering from a cold. I inquired into how his throat was feeling and asked whether something cold might make it feel better. He replied with the initials of a local ice cream shop in the NATO phonetic alphabet. DS2.9 nearby perked up his ears and asked, "Are we getting ice cream!?"

Episode 2: Dinner

DS, having eaten a late lunch and nursed recently wasn't hungry at dinner. This was compounded by his eating a piece of hot food, which burned his mouth and left him uninterested in more dinner. Grandpa attempted to cajole him into eating, not realizing what he was up against.

Grandpa: DS, what if I take your zucchini and eat it? (Said teasingly as he pretends to steal DS' food)

DS, blasé: Go ahead.

Grandpa, undeterred: What if I stole your corn on the cob, too? (He mimes eating the corn.)

DS: No Grandpa, actually eat it!

Grandpa pantomimes again and DS repeats his exhortation. Grandpa complies to see how DS responds. When he gets no reaction, he repeats the process with the zucchini. DS urges him to eat the zucchini, Grandpa does, and DS revels in having tricked his Grandpa into having eaten the dinner that he was being encouraged to eat.

I was proud. It was well executed subterfuge.

Episode 3: Gazebo

DS manages to wrest a tent-like peg securing one of four legs of an iron gazebo from the stone patio. (No easy feat for little hands.) This was the result of several minutes' labour, concerted focus, and persistence.

Grandpa: DS, do you think it's a good idea to remove the peg?

DS: Yes I do, Grandpa.

Grandpa: But what if a strong wind blows? The gazebo could be blown away or damaged.

DS: There are still three legs holding it in place.

Me: If the peg can be removed by a small child, it isn't terribly secure and would have probably been ineffective anyway.

Grandpa: DS, could you please put the peg back in the ground.

DS wedges the peg back in, only to quickly remove it again and resume playing with it.

Grandpa: DS, why aren't you listening to me?

DS: I did listen.You said to put it in, which I did.

Grandpa couldn't argue with this reasoning. By that point, my mum and I were howling with laughter. I love my dad, but the poor guy just couldn't win today!

When your 3.5 year-old is talking a mile a minute and the words you catch are "heliophysics... Hydrogen, Neon... and winds of 52,000 miles an hour.". You have no idea what he is talking about until your spouse later mentions a book they read aloud over a month ago that was targeted toward college students. (I know what heliophysics is, but it is so far outside my area of expertise that I was baffled to hear my son explaining his new passion.). You do not find it strange that they chose that to read...

Later in the morning, this child is counting by 15s for fun...

You feel woefully inadequate to homeschool but realize that the local preschool may not be the best fit...

At the pre-talk before watching "King Lear" at a Shakespeare in the park performance DD9, wearing an "American Girl" hat and a dress covered in musical notes, asked the actor playing the title role "What makes him a hero?" The dumbfounded looks exchanged between the members of the cast, the artistic director of the company and director of the arts alliance sponsoring the production were priceless.

The actor, a theater professor, said Lear becomes a hero at the end when he accepts responsibility for his actions and apologizes for doing the wrong thing. DD didn't buy it. As far as she's concerned King Lear doesn't qualify as a tragic hero. This morning I've been googling the topic so I can be prepared in case she wants to continue the conversation...

Pemberley-- we've discussed that very thing at our house. As far as we're concerned, Lear is no more heroic than... well, than Romeo is. Or Ophelia.

Julius Caesar-- now he's heroic. Macbeth, or Othello.... not so much. Hamlet? Perhaps.

(And yeah, we've been having this kind of conversation at our house since DD was pretty young, too... ) One of our favorite portrayals in all of Shakespeare's canon is of Achilles in Troilus and Cressida, fwiw-- because it is such an jarring and peculiar reading of "heroic." It's very human.

LOL Romeo was *exactly* the comparison DD made... complete with eye roll for emphasis...

I think that my 9yo DD called Romeo (and I quote) "a complete tool."

LOL!!

At 15, of course, she's just now starting to see that play a bit differently.

My DD said almost the same thing at 9! She wasn't kind to Juliet, either.

...when DD7 has given up on fantasy novel bedtime stories and has you read The Number Devil...
...then writes him a note asking him to teach her too, by appearing in her dreams...
...when she loses a tooth before getting a reply, leaves a note for the tooth fairy asking her to have a talk with the Number Devil because "I expect a response"...
...at the Number Devil's direction, is now working through the Penrose the Cat books at night. The rest of us read before we sleep, she takes a whiteboard to bed and works out math concepts. She is seeing patterns I never noticed, and articulating them clearly. But she still thinks she's not a 'math girl' in the classroom - apparently that means whizzing through the most worksheets.

DS2.9 declared himself the "Ba-King" while baking cookies yesterday.

This morning, we were looking at a pair of earrings and a carved wood box that we bought as gifts for my aunt. DS put the earrings inside the box and closed the lid saying, "We should include a note telling Aunt that these are disapp-earrings."

He has a wry, conspiratorial twinkle in his eyes when he delivers these lines, and he usually returns to his activity with a studied deadpan. I love my little man. He cracks me up.

Too cute! I love when they find new permutations of word play. I can remember my oldest discovering the joys of bilingual puns around this age.