Photo by Vandalog

Son and I had just dropped Daughter off at school.  In the morning I like to make my kids laugh, so I started to sing something silly.

“I wish I was an Oscar Myer Weiner…” I started, rather loudly and off-key.

“Ewww! That’s gross!”

“What do you mean?  You like hot dogs!”

“But Oscar [the Grouch] likes trash!  That’s gross!”

More profound than he will ever know.

Photo by Macinate

Before you get too far into this story, you need one vital piece of information: my children are allergic to penuts.  We had to teach them about their allergy early so that they wouldn’t accept candy or food from strangers without asking if it had penuts, because “Penuts make me sick.” 

Not too long after we brought my son home from the hospital, Christi changed his diaper while my daughter (3 years at that time) watched.  This was pretty normal except that my daughter noticed that her brother had something she didn’t.

“Mommy, what’s that?” she asked as she wrinkled her nose and pointed at his penis. 

My wife is a science teacher, so she believes in using the correct terminology when talking about these things.  I was completely caught off guard, so she jumped in and replied, “That’s his penis.”

“His penut?” my daughter asked. 

By that time Christi and I just wanted to move on, so Christi quickly replied, “Yes.”

Our daughter frowned,  “Boys have penuts and girls don’t.”  Once again, we affirmed her statement.  Neither of us saw what was coming next,  “Penuts make me sick.”

I couldn’t help myself.  Without missing a beat, the daddy in me looked right at her and said, “Yes, they do.”

I will pay for her therapy later.

Photo by geishaboy500.

Christi (my wife) repainted our kitchen the other day because my son – who knew better – drew on the wall with a sharpie.  As my wife finished, my son piped up,  ”Mommy, you should paint the wall black.”

“Why is that?” she asked.

“They don’t make white sharpies.”

Photo by MorBCN

My daughter has a small children’s Bible.  We read it to her before bed when she was little.  Now that she knows how to read, she’s taken to reading it by herself before bed.  Every once and awhile I ask her a few questions, just to see what is going on inside her little heart.

Yesterday, while we waited for the bell to ring before school, I asked her about it.  The last story she remembered reading was about Noah and the Flood.  I went through the typical questions, “What does that story tell us about God?  What does that story tell us about people?” and so on.

Knowing that the bell was going to ring soon, I asked, “So what are we need  to do because we read this story?”

“We need to pray to God and watch the news.”

Curious, I pressed a little, “Why do we need to watch the news?”

Without skipping a beat she replied, “So we can tell if a flood is coming.”