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We’ve had a good many more opportunities to chuckle (and outright laugh!) since a similar post just over a month ago. Our resident 4-year-old talker keeps us laughing; he just loves words!

When he’s truly thankful, he doesn’t simply say: “Thank-you!” Instead, he says: “I really appreciate that!”

Recently, wanting to draw, he asked: “Is this paper available?”

And one evening at supper, he exclaimed: “Oh no! I think I had too much to drink; my bladder is full!”

As we laugh (and as I try to jot these down so we won’t forget them – and so we can share them with grandparents, of course!), I recall some of E’s cute comments and conversations at about this same stage and remember the importance of pausing to cherish these precious, fleeting, humorous moments! (So this blog is a “journal” for our Little People.)

He looks so grown up here...

We’ve worked on memorizing Bible verses, reviewing before falling asleep at night. Since singing is a great way to aid memorization, I introduced the first part of Psalm 63, sung in Spanish:

Dios, Dios mío eres tú;

De madrugada te buscaré.

Mi alma tiene sed de ti;

Mi carne te anhela

En tierra seca y árida donde aguas no hay…

I had to explain that carne (flesh) means body in this context, referring to our physical being. Consequently, I gave a brief (It’s nighttime, remember?!) explanation of the soul, etc. After singing the song again (which, incidentally, he had memorized by the next evening), he asked:

“Does the real person inside have teeth, or does only the pretend person have teeth?”

“Uh… Let’s talk more about that tomorrow…”

At the beginning of May, his favorite words included:

Photosynthesis:

They do a lot with plants at his kindergarten, so we’ve watched a couple related videos via YouTube at home.

Hemorrhoids:

Poor little guy!

Gravity:

This one is especially fascinating to him, as he has demonstrated (multiple times!) by asking the following question when already in bed and supposed to be falling asleep:

“If an airplane’s motors aren’t really stronger than gravity, how does the airplane stay up in the sky?”

“Uh… Let’s talk more about that tomorrow…”

(Yep! That’s becoming my go-to phrase at night…)

Just a few days ago, after running into a wooden chair, he exclaimed between sobs: “I hit my eyebrow, not my eyeglass!”

And starting to tell me a story a couple mornings ago, he said: “Last night – I mean the day before today’s night – I saw you…”

Recently, over lunch, we were talking about reading good books and how the book is always better than the movie, and how we imagine what we’re reading. Of course, the conversation included Narnia and Middle Earth.

And DJ said: “The biggest world is the real world.”

And then with a little, pleased smile: “It’s the world that God made!”

Reviewing logical fallacies in the Research Writing Course that JM and I co-teach has led to any number of lunch conversations on such topics. DJ demonstrated just how much he’s been listening; he came up with the following syllogism (obviously inspired by JM’s reading The Hobbit aloud) and told it to us – with a tell-tale twinkle in his eye:

Gandalf has a beard.

The dwarfs have beards.

So, Gandalf is a dwarf!

Admittedly, he switched the preferred order of the premises, but we were impressed nonetheless that, on his own, he came up with what he referred to as a “logical fallacy” when he told it to us!

In my limited “wisdom” and perspective, I wouldn’t have chosen to enroll this Little Man in “school” (“away from home”) (at least not yet). Because of residency requirements, however, we’ve had to embrace choices we didn’t prefer. Due to resulting challenges, I’ve been doing research on the bilingual brain – and it’s fascinating! I’m concluding that immersion in two languages is causing all receptors in DJ’s brain to be wide open right now; his learning capacity (in general) is therefore in overdrive. (For those who pray for us: A primary challenge for our family right now is ensuring that he gets enough “down time” and/or rest...)

I’ll end on this note: A disadvantage of teaching Little People to think is that, when they do, they also start catching you when you slip!

Yesterday, E said: “You used a logical fallacy the other day, Mommy.”

“I did?!”

“Yes, you did! You said: ‘The [neighbor’s] cat is scratching itself; it must have fleas!’”