Gassy Tales

For the longest time, whenever Rachel has passed gas, she's said, "Oh! I gassed!" It is now officially a family term.

We have a few gassy stories to share and, I suppose as some sort of an odd birthday present to me, Andrew gave permission for me to (and even suggested that I) share them on the blog.

The first happened a few months ago. Auntie Sarah was over and Rachel gassed.

"Who did that?" Auntie Sarah asked.

"I did," Rachel offered honestly. "But do you know what?"

"What?" asked Sarah.

"Sometimes in the morning when my daddy's still under the covers..." Rachel began. Then she brought her voice down to a whisper and finished, "...he gasses in the bed!"

This elicited uproarious laughter from Auntie Sarah.

It's true. He does gas in the bed. But who doesn't?
Rachel doesn't.

I know this because I was putting the girls to bed a few nights ago. We'd already done scriptures and prayer with Daddy and now it was time for our ritual of stories and singing and rocking and back tickles. Only I can do that part (and I've yet to figure out why). Anyway, I was nursing Miriam on the floor, leaning against Rachel's bed, when all of a sudden there was a bottom stuck in my face.

Rachel had positioned herself so that her rear end was hanging down in front of my face.

"What are you doing?" I asked, "Lie down, please."

But she didn't lie down. Instead she...gassed.

"Rachel!" I exclaimed, "What did you do that for?!"

"Well, I didn't want to do it on my bed!"


"Well, that was rude and gross! We don't gas in other people's faces!"

Last night at dinner we decided to revisit the topic of why, exactly, she had to gas in my face instead of in her bed (and the related topic about why that was rude). We probably got onto this topic because someone gassed. Not that anyone would ever do that at the dinner table.

"Why couldn't you gas in your bed?" Andrew asked.

"It's hard to gas in my bed," she explained, "Because my bed is hard."

Everyone around the table was completely nonplussed and so instead of saying anything we exchanged quizzical looks.

After a moment of awkward silence passed Rachel announced, "That was a jo-oke!"

It was actually pretty clever of her to think of using two aspects of the same word; she's well on her way to being able to tell a good joke!

Lately we've been suffering through some not-so-funny jokes. It must be a phase or something.