Jun 30, 2008

Bedtime talkies

Graham and Annie share a room and a bunk bed. Often, I lay down next to Annie on the bottom bunk and help coax the children to sleep. These moments - after prayers, teeth brushing, snacks, but before actual slumber - yield some pretty fun conversations. When the kids are tired, the conversations tend to go negative ("I never want to go to school again", "Fine, I'll never have any friends for the rest of my life"), but when they're sleepy but happy, I chuckle in the bed.

Tonight's convo yielded two funny moments for me.

This afternoon, Graham and Annie got to play with Gwendolyn, Linus & Baby Casper. Graham was SO excited that Linus had an Arizona T-shirt with a scorpion on it. Not only a scorpion, actually: "A scorpion, Mom, and a tarantula and a horned toad."

For those of you who know Graham, you know that he has several intense interests at any given time. He wants to talk about those interests A LOT. He wants to learn about them. He wants to talk about them again, often saying the same thing. So right now, one of those interests is bugs (insects, arachnids, arthropods, crustaceans - see my earlier post). {FYI: his other interests, as of Right Now, are baseball and chess.}

So tonight (at 9:30 p.m.) he was in his Super Graham mode, talking faster than his tongue can move, raving to me from his top bunk about the t-shirt. (You'll just have to imagine Graham's vocal inflections.)

"Mom, I loved Linus' shirt. It had a scorpion, a tarantula and a horned toad. I mean, I know that the horned toad isn't a bug or an insect, and I'm into bugs. But I'm also into any of these crazy, cool, out-of-their-mind desert creatures."

I'm not kidding nor exaggerating. Those were his words. I almost got up right then to write them down. Because I'm also into crazy, cool, out-of-their-mind creatures, including my own son.

Somehow, the conversation then veered to hot dogs. Hot dogs, hot dogs. Even before I was a vegetarian, I didn't like hot dogs.

"I don't know why they call them hot dogs," wondered Graham. "They aren't made of dog."

"They really should called them killed pig," chirped Annie sweetly from her flowery pillow.

Nighty night, everyone.

6 comments:

Becca said...

Ha! I love those funny kid things--that Graham is such a hoot. And these are easily my favorite types of blog posts.

And, even though I know the origins of hot dogs, I still LOVE 'em! "Each morsel is a joy!" as Mo Willems writes, " . . . a taste sensation, a celebration on a bun!"

Jennifer said...

Don't tell Graham, but the scorpion, tarantula and horned toad on the shirt also GLOW IN THE DARK. If my sister still lived in Arizona, I'd have her pick one up for him.

Graham was so sweet with Linus and Linus so excited to have Graham here. I know Linus said, more than once, "I love you, Graham."

colleenky said...

Love the night time / bedtime conversations! Your cute kids picked up a lot of YOUR creative, love of words. How delicious to have a whole pack of you!! xx co

Courtney said...

I can TOTALLY hear Graham saying that - brilliant boy! And Annies comment is well creepy but spot on!

Susan Ramsey said...

HAHAHAHahahahah HA AH AHha H aH AHA HAHAHHHHHHHHHHhaaaaaaaaa i can't stop laughing!!!!!!!!!! that's so clever.

J and M said...

I love the killed pig. This is hilarious.......... I love super child mode.

I remember Graham and Annie when they were younger whomping their heads back against a futon and laughing their heads off and wondered about my kids doing the same. We are there now, and I remember G/A with fondness each time E/M go cuckoo for cocoa puffs at night.