Quarterback Princess, etc.

Went outside yesterday afternoon to play football with Jack. It was bitterly cold, but it was clear, and it was a football Sunday, so we bundled up and went out. Kate was inside playing, and I didn't think she'd be interested, but within a few minutes of us going out, I heard the door opening.

She was dressed in her winter jacket, comfy zebra hat, pink gloves, leggings, sparkly pink boots, and her pink princess dress. And she wanted to play football.

For 20 minutes or so, we drew up plays that involved one of us snapping the ball, then handing it to another, pitching it to the third, and then throwing it downfield to Jack. That was the usual rule, anyway, since Jack could catch the long passes, and I could throw them, and I was glad to let him do the running.

But Kate, also, ran downfield earnestly for passes, unmindful of the fact that she wore a dress, and perhaps didn't quite look the part. Strangely, she looked completely ready to catch the football and run through a wall.

At one point, of course, I tossed her one, it glanced off her chest and hit her in the mouth. She blinked for a minute, then dissolved into tears. But we talked her down, and then cheered her up by me hitting myself in the face with it, and then we practiced field goals, which is always a crowd pleaser.

Cold and happy and footballed out, we headed inside for dinner.

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Emily had the suggestion that it would be funny to do a blog on the random, hilarious things they say each day. I tried, but the truth is that even while trying to do that, I forget stuff, or I don't have a pen or paper handy. But here's what I came up with over a few days last week. In general, these were statements that didn't really follow from anything, they'd just come completely out of the blue.

KATE: "Guess what? For buying lunch at school, there's not a fork or a spoon. There's a SPORK!"

KATE: "We aren't allowed to scribble-scrabble at school." What, I asked, is scribble-scrabble? She said, "It's THIS:" And then she made wild scribbling gestures in the air with her hands.


JACK: (In reference to a picture he'd drawn at school of a tree, with a bird's nest in it, and a guy approaching with an axe) "He's a Nature-Killer." Jack's nature-killer, by the way, was wearing an iPod, I guess because you've got to listen to music while you're cutting down trees with birds in them.

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it's been pretty cold lately, and it's weighing on everyone's mind. Putting Kate to bed the other night, she sang me a song.

"I like it better,
when it's warmer.

When we don't....
have to wear.....
 JACK-ETSSSSSSS!"

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Jack had a baseball lesson on Saturday. It went pretty well, and afterward he was pretty tired but still chattering away happily.

"I learned a baseball secret that I can't tell you," he said. OK, I said. Pause a beat. "OK, I'll tell you. You know how when you catch the ball sometimes it hurts your hand? Well, I learned that if you put these two fingers into the same pocket in your glove, it doesn't hurt!" Pause. "But you can't tell anyone else that secret. OK, you can tell Mommy and Kate. It's a family baseball secret." OK, Jack.