My son’s favorite toy is an 8 foot long flexible pencil he calls his ‘hooker.’ He uses it to hook things, and at 3 years old, such a term just makes sense to him.

But I just about lost it the other day when he was dressed in his dragon costume and started looking for his hooker. I always thought they preferred maidens.

Maybe it’s a supply and demand thing.

We’re waiting for the plumber right now. It seems that the house we live in, built in the ’60s has iron pipes. The one going to the sewer has rusted shut and must be replaced.

Fortunately, this only seems to be impacting the kitchen, so we can live pretty normally. But my 3 year old son was so cute about it when I told him I couldn’t wash dishes in the kitchen sink (bathroom sinks are miserable for washing dishes, just miserable!).

“Why not wash in dishwasher, why?” he asked. Kind of fun explaining to him that the two are connected. But I love that he understood the function.

For her 6th birthday, my dad sent my daughter a birthday card with dollar bills inside. Being a kid, she just tore the envelope open, and dollar bills went flying everywhere.

Now, she wasn’t all that impressed by the fact that she got money. No, she was impressed by who was on the dollar bills.

“How’d Papa know that’s my favorite president??” she squealed. She was completely and utterly delighted that her grandfather had sent her something with pictures of George Washington. That mattered more than anything else.

My son has been resisting potty training for a long time. But last week he finally decided to start it in earnest. It all started as I changed his diaper before putting him down for a nap. He’d been playing Superman all day, blankie cape flowing behind him. He started to throw a tantrum as I tried to remove his diaper.

“Superman no wear diaper! Superman wear underpants!” he insisted.

As any other sensible mother would do, I took him up on that premise and informed him that in that case he would have to go use the potty. “Superman never wets his underpants,” I told him.

He was immediately agreeable and proceeded to use the potty. I’m probably lucky he didn’t demand Superman underpants. The Thomas the Tank Engine ones we had were perfectly acceptable.

It’s been just about a week now, with relatively few accidents involving pee. Poop… *sigh*… that’s another story. But today he promised me that he’d start pooping on the potty “very soon.” He even gave me two thumbs up with that statement.

And that cape has been on every day so far.

I was walking my daughter to school the other day, and she suddenly announced that she was going to start a church when she grew up. I was of course curious why.

“So that people have to give me money on Sunday,” she said, very seriously.

It didn’t take much discussion to find out that she figured she’d found a way to get rich. I gently explained to her that that’s not a great reason to start a church.

contributed by Kara

My daughter really wanted some candy, but it was her bedtime so I told her no. She begged and begged and begged. Finally my husband offered a deal.

She could have a piece of candy tonight, and have no more the rest of the week, or she could have candy once a day the rest of the week. We’re finishing off Easter candy, so it’s pretty available just now.

She chose one piece tonight. That’s kids for you. They can’t see beyond the immediate most of the time. Should be an interesting week.