The Things Little Kids Know

[5-year-old] Anna's playing "Harvest Moon" on the crappy old PC. There's a stork character that dances - rather doofily, as it happens. She insists that the animal is called a "dork."

You cannot correct her. "Stork," you tell her. "It's called a stork."

"No!" she says. "It's a dork!"

When Eric was four years old or so, he had a toy monster truck with the word "Predator" stenciled on the side. He used to drive it around making vroom-vroom noises and shouting, "Creditor's coming to get you!!"

Katie didn't talk much when she was little, poor baby, what with all her elders constantly yakking away. Pretty much all the cute stories I have to tell on her just show up what a bad mom I am. I'm still laughing at the Tagged! profile she set up a few months ago with a sultry little picture of her and the tagline, "I know I'm sluty."

I was much more outraged that a child of mine can't even spell "slutty" properly than at the message inherent in her page. I'm assuming she's corrected it. Still, the word "sluty" has now entered our family lexicon. You have to admit, it is a pretty good word.

Anna's the only one who's fully inherited my taste for the surreal, I think. A few weeks ago she walked into the living room with her inflatable tube for the pool around her waist and announced, "Dressing like a giant doughnut sure is confident!"

Yep.