Lisy-isms

Lisy at the tide pools in June.

Elisa just cracks me up sometimes. To begin with, at least once a day she begs me to take a picture of her. She won't be doing anything interesting, just sitting on the couch watching t.v. I don't want a ton of random pictures, but I will let her jump into a picture I'm about to take.

When it's time to get out of her car seat, she asks to "buckle me out." It makes sense, since we buckle her in.

Along a similar line, she slept late the other day. I told her that she slept in. "No," she said, "I slept out."

Yesterday Lisy pulled the dish drainer out from under the sink. She then started strumming it like a guitar and singing "Iron Man." Only 3 and already a rocker.

This morning Lisy pointed a gun and proclaimed in her toughest voice, "I a p'incess."
Dominic needed to clarify her statement. "You're a princess?"
"With a gun," she continued in her tough voice.
She may be all girl, but her brothers have been a big influence on her imagination.

Lisy, the ballerina princess, napping on the stairs.

Parenting fail, gaming win

For those of you not involved in the gaming world, StarCraft II just came out last week. StarCraft is an exciting real-time strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment, and it's sequel was highly anticipated for a decade. Dominic bought StarCraft II the day it came out. He has played it in all his free time (fortunately he still goes to work and does his homework). The children love watching the game.

A couple of days ago Samuel asked if he could play StarCraft II. Dominic thought sure, why not? Let's see how it goes.

Samuel played the game. He grasped the basic concepts: he knew the controls to use, the sequence of events and basically what to do. He said he learned from watching Dad. Well, he lost spectacularly. The computer thoroughly tromped him. Dominic was sure Samuel would feel discouraged and not want to play again. Quite the opposite happened. Samuel was excited just to play. Instead of feeling discouraged at his loss, he was thrilled to get as far as he did. Not only that, but now he's eager to play again.

Oops.

A Fair Conversation

We take our children to the county or state fair every summer. Yes, it's always hot. And yes, it's maddening when our kids act like quails. Overall we enjoy the fair and think it's a good experience for them, so we keep going.

While we were enjoying the county fair experience yesterday, we were passing through the cow pens when Samuel said that we need a cow.

"Oh really? What would we do with a cow?" I asked, thinking of how we have no room for barnyard animals.

"It's simple," he said. "Feed it, then butcher it."

Dominic commented, "I think we've lived in Idaho too long."

When we asked Samuel if he even knew what "butcher" means, he answered correctly. "Kill it and prepare it to eat for food. I want a cow drumstick."