Snippets for the Memory Box

I decided to poke through my archives to see what I’d written about Labor Day in years past. Got as far as this entry from September, 2005—I missed Labor Day that year; it seems we recovering from one of baby Wonderboy’s surgeries—and am now grinning over this tidbit about then-four-year-old Beanie:

The other day she was stuck in a loop of “The Old Gray Mare.” After about forty repetitions, she turned to me and said, “What’s ain’t?”

I explained. She experimented with the synonym: “The old gray mare just isn’t what she used to be, isn’t what she used to be…nope, ain’t sounds better.”

This, my friends, THIS is why I blog. I would never remember this stuff otherwise.

In that spirit, a few recent moments I want to hold on to (some tweeted and/or Facebooked, but they’ve already scrolled away into oblivion there):

* the way Huck can be swung right out of a cranky mood by the magical words, “Where’s the big rig?”

* I love that when my kids play school, it involves each “student” telling the “teacher” what he or she wants to learn, and the teacher runs around the house gathering stuff to make it happen.

* Rilla: “Mommy, how did you get to be so good at blowing up balloons? I thought you were a writer, not a balloon-blower-upper.”

* Today’s morning glory blossom-count: twenty-five. Or, if you ask the two-year-old: “One, two, fee, TEN!”