Kids come up the funniest stuff, and Payton, well, she's ahead of the crowd in this area. Here are a few recent conversations to prove my point.

To set the stage for this one you must know that Payton rarely gets genuinely frustrated with her sister, maybe at us, but not so much at Parker. But being sick for a couple weeks must have been wearing on her. We were driving down the street and both girls we buckled in their seats behind me. Both yapping away, Payton pro baby telling me some great fable and Parker repeating her favorite word, Dacky, as she's talking to her stuffed animal. Suddenly Payton whips her head around to Parker and yells, It's not Dacky, it's a DUCK!

A few weeks ago I may have set a bit of a bad example, shame on mommy. I was driving the girls home from Naples through a nasty storm, one of those where you can't see the highway in front of you. I don't recall what happened, but I mumbled "Shit" under my breath. of course, as kids will, Payton somehow caught it and started repeating it over and over and over. Being the witty woman that I am, I quickly corrected her and told her that I thought we needed a SHIP to get home in all of this rain! She went right along with it, and for the next 20 minutes wanted to talk about the ship that we needed to get home. Now any time it starts raining (every day in Florida) and she and I are in the car she tells me "Mommy, we need a SHIP!" She's so proud of herself.


And here's a picture of my not so adventurous little girl, screaming NOOOOO...... Last weekend we took the girls out to dinner for some BBQ, their favorite. Afterwards we were wandering around the mall and I thought that maybe Payton would enjoy the big bouncing swing thingy that is set up there. We watched a few other kids do it, and she seemed like it was an OK idea. I handed over my $10 and my big girl to the attendant. As soon as he started strapping her in I realized this wasn't going to go well. But, I pushed her and kept talking her up, reminding her how much she LOVES to jump on the bed, and how she's always walking around the house showing us how high she can jump. This apparatus would help her jump REALLY high. She was not buying it. We got her to jump once or twice, but then she was done. And begging to get down. She is so my offspring - she was wearing a skirt and whining about how it hurt her legs. I knew exactly how she felt, but wanted so much for her to get over it and just enjoy the trampoline!