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Does anyone else have children who assign names to dinner prayers? Names other than just the first line of the prayer?

At our house, we used to let AJ select which prayer we would say at mealtime: God is great, Thank you for the world so sweet, or Come Lord Jesus. The latter was known for a long time as Addie's prayer, in honor of our friend Addie from whom he first heard it.

Now, Sydney wants to get in on the action.

She doesn't know many of the words. But she's good at closing her eyes. (Never mind that she often interrupts the last line of the prayer to announce, "I close my EYES.") She's starting to fold her hands. And she loves alternating with her brother on selecting which prayer to say.

So for the last couple months, we start each meal with, "Who's turn is it to pick?" Two arms shoot up in the air in hopeful anticipation. (Thank you to AJ's preschool for teaching the good manners, which were then passed along to Sydney.) For the longest time, it was pretty predictable. AJ always chose Come Lord Jesus. Sydney picked God is great.

Not too long ago, AJ pointed out that this was getting boring. We gave him a chance that night to say his own prayer. I wish I'd written down what he said. As I recall, the future preacher had lots to be thankful for besides just the food. The next night, I reminded him of Thank you for the world so sweet, so we said that a few nights in a row until he seemed to get the hang of it again.

This is where the "I don't get it" part comes in. When it's Sydney's turn to pick, she now always chooses "Jesus." Don't make the mistaken assumption as we did that this means Come Lord Jesus. She will interrupt in protest. The Jesus prayer, to her, is Thank you for the World so sweet. Huh? Let's review the words:

Thank you for the world so sweet.

Thank you for the food we eat.

Thank you for the birds that sing.

Thank you God for everything. Amen.

The name Jesus is never mentioned. Perhaps I should just be thrilled that she's making the connection of the various names for our Savior.

What a relief!

Forget the school of hard knocks. For AJ, it's been the preschool of hard flushes.

In his first six weeks at preschool and the Cool Kids daycare program, AJ has been fairly positive and upbeat about his experiences there. He's not so wild about the hot lunches, but he likes his teachers and he loves that he no longer has to take a nap.

So it came as a bit of a surprise late last week when he suddenly announced he didn't like Cool Kids at all and didn't want to go back. He pleaded with us to just send him to preschool and then come pick him up.

Figuring that something must up, Mommy drew on her former reporter skills to question why the sudden change in attitude. No, he wasn't having problems with any of the other kids. Yes, he still liked all his teachers. No, he hadn't gotten in trouble for anything. By this point, tears were streaming down AJ's face as he sobbed that he just didn't want to go back. But still we pressed on until finally we got to the heart of the matter. More accurately, it was about his ears and his bladder.

The reason AJ no longer wanted to go to Cool Kids was because he didn't like going to the bathroom there. Why? Because the toilet was so loud when it flushed that it scared him.

Seriously.

It was so loud he thought a monster was coming to get him. A vivid imagination is not always a good thing.

With Daddy assuring him that no monsters were hiding in the bathroom, and Mommy promising to ask the teacher if there was a different bathroom he could use, we finally succeeded in calming him down. And so, Tuesday morning when I dropped him off, I spoke with the teachers and explained what AJ had told us. I said, "I don't know if there's anything you can do to accomodate this, but you should be aware..."

The teacher told me they'd been wondering if something was up because lately AJ would come tearing out of the bathroom when he was done. (It's just a single stall bathroom connected to the classroom.) She acknowledged that something was wrong with the toilet that made it so loud. And then she suggested the perfect solution for my very scared little boy.

"AJ," she said, "Just don't flush when you're done. Tell us, and we'll go in and flush it for you."

You should have seen the smile that spread across AJ's face. Such a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders! He nodded happily and ran off to play.

I'd hesitated whether to fight this battle for AJ. Obviously at some point he's going to have to toughen up, or he'll become the butt of jokes from his classmates. But at four years old, I think the far more important lesson is that he can talk to his parents about absolutely anything that's bothering him.

And it turns out I needn't have worried about his friends teasing him. His true friends were more than happy to come to his aid.

In the evening, I asked AJ if everything had gone all right at Cool Kids. Yes, he nodded.

"Did the teacher flush the toilet for you?" I asked.

"No," answered AJ. "I just told Gino and he flushed it for me."

To borrow from the late Charles Schultz: Happiness is... a best friend who will flush the scary toilet for you.

Need a little help there?

Perhaps now she'll appreciate some of what we do for her. But probably not.

Crab legs have long been a favorite for the two little seafood lovers at my house. Thankfully, their taste buds aren't overly sophisticated, and we can fool them with imitation crab meat. It's cheaper, and it gives Jeff and me a chance to crack and eat our own crag legs while they're still warm. Otherwise, we're too busy helping the kids.

On Sunday evening, I was rushing to simply get the food on the table. I divided up the crab legs and dished out the rest of the meal, and then carried the plates to the table. I always do the kids plates first because it gives their food an extra minute or so to cool. Jeff meanwhile, loaded Sydney into her high chair. What I forgot to do was add the fake crab meat.


It took Sydney maybe three seconds to make that discovery. There were crab legs on her plate. She knew there was good stuff inside them, but clearly didn't know how to get it out. With a horror stricken look on her face, she held the crab legs high and proclaimed, "Oh no!"

Birthday splash

The water park is called The Edge. Perhaps as in, spend four hours there with 12 children, and it will push you to the edge of insanity.

But that's what we did on Sunday, for a birthday party for AJ's friend Avery (fifth from the right in the pink and yellow life jacket.) Except for an hour when we were eating pizza and cake, and opening gifts, we were in the water pretty much non-stop.

The good news is, the water was relatively warm, which meant Sydney suddenly overcame her fear of water. This picture is fairly misleading. About the only time my little mermaid was willing to get out of the water was when I asked her to sit on the step so that I could take her picture. Otherwise, I was holding her while she held the ball and kicked around.

AJ, meanwhile, had a blast doing "battle" with Hanna's and Avery's dads.

Overall, I was pretty happy with how the afternoon went. It started out rather choppy with neither of the kids wanting to get into the water. AJ suggested we just sit in the hot tub, (That's my boy!) while Sydney was too scared to even put on her swimsuit.

And why was she frightened? Because for some insane reason, the water park's designers thought it would be a cool feature to include a giant bucket of water two stories up that tips over and drenches the kids below. Bigger kids seem to find this cool. Little kids are terrified of it. So where did they put it? Directly over the little kids' play area. What were they thinking?

Sydney saw the bucket dump shortly after we walked in and froze in place. She refused to go in the wading area out of fear. I had to shield her every time we walked by it. That meant there was no wading for her. She would only "swim" with the bigger kids, which meant Mommy had to hold her. Talk about a total body workout!

Go Diego go!

A few days ago, I found an old Diego doll in the bottom of AJ's toy box. AJ was happy to give it to his little sister, and when she saw it, you would have thought it was Christmas morning.

"AJ give me Diego," she tells me, with a nod of her head each time, as if to reaffirm the doll is hers for keeps. Sydney and Diego have been inseparable ever since. She's started calling him her good friend, and tells me, "I make him happy. Not sad. He happy."

Jeff and I continue to wonder if this is a glimpse of what's to come. She threw a fit the other night when we said she couldn't watch another Diego movie. It's as if we were saying, "You're seeing too much of that boy."

But it turns out Sydney's love for Diego is more maternal in nature. Either that or she's going to spoil some man someday, by waiting on him hand and foot.

Sydney reports that Diego likes cheeseburgers, french fries and milk. But he doesn't like waffles.

What a good little mommy/obsessed fan.

Kids!

Grandpa David and Grandma Elouise came for a visit today so that Grandpa could enable us to become even bigger pack rats. (He installed more shelves in our garage.) Grandma forgot her camera, so we had to take at least one shot to prove they were here.

Sit next to each other. Don't move. Look at the camera. Smile.

It shouldn't have been that hard. But when it involves my two children and their fourth child, of course it never quite works out.

The magic trick

I leave the kids home with Daddy for a day and what do I come home to? A dismembered finger.

Because of the Veteran's Day holiday, Jeff was off from work, which meant we could keep the kids home from daycare. Apparently the thought occurred to Daddy that a constructive use of their time would be to learn magic tricks. What he did not teach AJ, however, is that magicians don't like to reveal how their tricks work.

AJ was so excited to show me this great trick. Grandpa David and Grandma Elouise be warned – AJ is looking forward to showing it to you, too, when you visit here tomorrow.

Though he'll have to perform this amazing feat when Sydney is not in the room. His little sister, for some reason, hates the "trick" and goes into crying fits if AJ so much as shows her the box. It took about 15 minutes to calm her down last night. And even an hour later she sought reassurance.

"AJ no do trick."

"Nope, we put the trick away."

"All gone."

"Yes, Sydney, the trick is all gone."