From the Mouth of Babes...

If you don't have children, perhaps you haven't realized how much trouble they can get you into through no fault of your own. When they put their foot in their mouth, they are simultaneously sticking their other foot into YOURS. Or at least that is how it feels as you do the proverbial "backpedaling" trying to take the edge off whatever off-color comment just popped out of their adorably innocent little mouth. Geez! Take dinner tonight for instance. Alan, the girls and I went to deliver a fruit basket that I had put together for some friends of ours. We had never actually been to their home before, and when we arrived, Dan and his wife, Reese showed us around. They ended up inviting us to stay for dinner. It's about 5:30 in the evening and we've had the girls out all day shopping and running errands. Which means that they haven't had their regularly scheduled all-important afternoon nap. So I'm hesitant to accept, knowing what kind of mood the girls will be in if they aren't already. But we hated to just drop the basket off and run, so we courageously accepted the kind invitation. Dan and Reese are an older couple with no children living at home, so there were no toys around and we were unprepared for such a lengthy visit. Luckily, Reese's sister had some of her childhood toys stored in the garage and they were able to find a few things to bring in that would keep the girls entertained for a while. Everything went fine. We eventually sat around the dinner table and were eating our lasagna, salad and bread and making small talk. Out of the blue...Cat starts counting out loud. So Reese asks her to count how many of us there were at the table. (*Hint - there were seven of us - Dan, Reese, Reese's sister, Alan, myself, and our two girls.) So Cat starts pointing to each of us and counting... "ONE...TWO...THREE...FOUR..." until she got to "EIGHT." Dan, who is a larger than average fellow...gently corrects her. "No doll, there are only seven of us...see?" and he points to each of us in turn as he counts aloud again, starting with Reese to his right and ending with himself. "....SIX...SEVEN." he counts. "No..." Cat argues... "You are Seven AND Eight!" Dan's wife and sister-in-law crack up laughing and Alan and I embarrassedly chuckle along with them. Ah the joys of parenthood!