Say what?

This morning Rachel requested oatmeal for breakfast again—we had oatmeal yesterday.

“Sure, I just have to boil some water first,” I told her.

“But, Mom!” whined Rachel, “You did that yesterday! Can’t we just use that water?”

She’s certainly beginning to throw her opinion about what’s happening in the kitchen a lot more, always wanting to help do things and putting in input about what should (and more commonly what should not) be included in our meals.

Yesterday we made runza for dinner. I had the flour out so that I could shape the dough. I also had a pot over the flame with the filling inside.

“Can I have a taste?” Rachel asked.

“No. It’s really hot. See? It’s right over the fire.”

“What fire?”

“That one. Right there. Under the pot. It’s too hot for us to eat right now.”

I turned my back on her and started chopping some vegetables to add to the pot.

“But this isn’t hot,” I heard her say.

I turned back around quickly to see what she was talking about. She had reached up and grabbed the lid to the flour container. And was licking it. I guess she just had to taste something.

“Hmmmm,” she contemplated, “This kind of tastes like power sugar…only it’s not sweet.”

Power sugar, eh? So cute.

Rachel gets into moods where she’s absolutely bouncing off the walls—you’d think we fed her powdered sugar when those moods kick in, but we don’t. The other day she was somersaulting all over the house and both Andrew and I were cautioning her to look where she was going, slow down, be careful, etc.

Miriam happened to be on the floor playing as well. This was a bad idea. In retrospect, I should have just picked Miriam up when Rachel started getting crazy but for some reason I didn’t.

Rachel somersaulted right onto Miriam’s head. She sat there, on her head, kind of stunned until Andrew said, “Rachel, get off of her!”

Oddly enough, Rachel cried and Miriam didn’t.

I came in the room to see what had happened and to comfort/reprimand Rachel, whichever needed to be done. In this case, both.

“Come here, baby. Tell me what happened.”

“I…I…I…” she sniffed.

“She somersaulted onto Miriam,” Andrew said for her.

“Yeah, I somersaulted onto Miriam,” she agreed.

“Rachel!” I said, “You rolled on your sister? You can’t do that! You have to roll responsibly!”

I finished my short lecture with reiterating our previous warnings of looking where you are going, making sure you aren’t going to crash into furniture or other people, etc. Then I thought back to what I had said. Did I really tell my two-year-old to roll responsibly?

Yes. Yes, I did.

There are so many things I’ve said as a parent that I never pictured myself saying. Ever. This is one of them.