Brother:  What does “suffer” mean?

Me:  Well, if someone was going to “make you suffer” then they would make you hurt or maybe regret a decision.  Like if they held your arm behind your back until you couldn’t feel your fingers then you would be suffering.”

Brother:  Ok

***

Overheard moments later:

Sister:  So, what does it mean?

Brother: It’s when you can’t feel your fingers.

Forevermore (at least in our home) known as Chicken Flakes.

Me to the kids:  After you guys get dressed, come back downstairs: we are going to make cookies.

Sister: Okay. What are we making cookies for?

Me: Because I feel like a cookie.

Sister: Really?  What does a cookie feel like?

Me: Round and slightly chunky, I suppose.

Sister: I bet you do feel that way.

*As a side note, these are the cookies we made.  Delicious!

Brother:  I can’t eat the rest of my ice cream.

Me:  Give it to the cats, then.  They’ll like it.

Sister:  NO!  Don’t give it to the cats.  It will make them sick.

   Discussion ensues on cat health and cream during which Brother sits his remaining ice cream outside.  Just as Sister is about to make her final point ….

Brother:  Look!  They’re eating it and they’re not dying.

Case Closed.

Brother says - You know, Mom.  Pineapple is a kind of boy food.  It’s dusty and dirty on the outside but not on the inside.

Later talking about the cousin’s secret clubhouse~

Brother:  Where is it?

Sister: In the woods behind their house

Brother:  If I had a hideout I’d make it inside behind the couch.

Sister: Well, then it wouldn’t be a hide OUT.  It would be a hide IN.

*this post backdated for chronological reasons

Brother:  Where are you going, Mama?  Are you going to Target? (ie my favorite store in the whole world because I totally associate it with Lego’s and the getting of Lego’s which is my very favorite thing in the whole world.)

Me:  I don’t know where I’m going.  I just need a little mommy time.

(beat)

Brother:  Well, I could use a little Brother time.

*Brother opens the mailbox to find his much anticipated Lego magazine and comments in a deadpan way, “Now there’s something you don’t see everyday.”

*At the museum looking at a room re-created from the Old West Sister exclaims, “Oh look, they had a hidden air vent … *pause* … well, they probably didn’t have those.

Out for our evening walk we pass by a vacant house.  Unaware of it’s emptiness, some phone company employee has left a hefty directory sitting on the mailbox.

Sister asks, “What’s on that mailbox?”

“Hmm, it looks like a phone book.”

(pause)

“What’s a phone book?”

Brother asks, “What’s a metaphor?”

At this age aren’t they supposed to be wondering why the sky is blue?

P.S  Though I’d love to claim that his question came from some high falutin’ source it actually stemmed from a quote in this movie.

P.P. S  A metaphor is “a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity.”  Not that that definition even remotely helps one explain the concept to a four year old.

Brother’s Picture:

Brother’s Comment:

“Here’s what happened.  The steam went up and the laba and by my comutations it went into the river and got all the fish dead.”

Perhaps the idea came from this recent library book???