Come again...?

We were talking about placebos during dinner last night—I can't quite remember why—and after a few minutes of discussion Miriam asked, "Can men even get placebos?"

We were all a little confused by her question because of course men can get placebos. All you have to do is give them one. We realized that she must not know what placebo meant so we began to explain that if you are doing a study to see if a medicine works, for example, you would give a certain number of people in the study the actual medicine but would give the rest of the people a placebo—or a fake—medicine, such as a sugar pill, and then would record the effects both groups of people experience. This way you can determine if the medicine works and...

"Oh!" she said, dissolving into giggles. "I thought placebo and placenta were the same thing!"

******

Grandpa will be arriving in a few days to help take care of things whenever we end up in the hospital. The rules of the hospital are quite confusing; they used to be that I was allowed one person in and that person had to stay the whole time (which is hard to do when you have five other kids at home). But now I think I'm still only allowed one person with me that person is allowed to go and come back (which makes things easier). 

Anyway, the kids are so excited because Grandpa is coming and he'll be bringing airplane snacks!

Last time he came he gave the kids leftover gummy bears and things. 

"I haven't flown in forever!" Rachel said. "But it sounds so awesome to just ask for snacks as you want them. Like, I would keep asking for gummy bears and then not eat them and then ask for more just to collect more and more gummy bears and..."

"You know Grandpa packs his own airplane snacks," Andrew interrupted.

"Wait...what?" Rachel said. 

She was under the impression that airplanes just handed out unlimited snacks. 

And somehow our children didn't realize that you can simply...purchase gummy bears whenever. 

We just...don't...at our house. 

*****

Rachel also came up to me and asked if gibberish was pronounced "ghibberish" or "gibberish."

"Gibberish," I told her.

"Oh," she said in a squeaky voice as she tiptoed away. 

She can never remember if it's gesture or guess-ture either. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I explain the hard vs. soft c/g rules.

*****

Zoë was reading an exciting fact to me from The National Geographic this morning and said, "Also in the archives is..."

But she pronounced it with a /ch/ rather than a /k/ sound, so it was like, "Also in the our-chives..."

And it was adorable because she's just six. But it's really no less adorable when the older kids mispronounce things. So hopefully it's no less adorable when I do it because there are still plenty of words in the English language that stymie me. English is a tricky language!