Our little Addison (age two and a half) caught a low-grade stomach bug earlier this week. She wasn’t notably ill or uncomfortable, just sleeping more than usual and not wanting to eat much of anything. That it was, in fact, a stomach bug became clear on Wednesday morning when she threw up. Still, she was running around like normal, and talked more and faster than an overcaffeinated chipmunk for the first ten minutes after I got home from work.
Later on Wednesday, with church activities canceled due to other folks being sick, we decided to go drive through Culver’s and bring some burgers home. (Oh, and some cheese curds… yum yum.) Addie wanted to eat, so we went ahead and gave her a quarter of a cheeseburger and a few fries. And I tell you: that girl went to town.
She ate the first few fries in no time flat. She asked for more. What the heck, we said. If she’s hungry and wants to eat, she can have all the fries she wants. So she ate a couple more fries, then started in on the burger. She had eaten probably half the burger, and had the rest of it half-chewed when I saw her make a gagging face. I warned Becky and she grabbed Addie’s plate (by now empty except for a few fries) and up came the burger. After a couple more heaves she was done, and her determination was remarkable. Without even sparing a second, two words came out of her mouth.
“More ketchup.”
See, it didn’t matter that she’d just thrown up her entire dinner back on to her plate. What mattered was that there were three unscathed french fries left on that plate, and there wasn’t enough ketchup left for those fries. That, my friends, is focus.
While she didn’t get the rest of those fries, she did start managing to keep food down Wednesday night, and by Thursday afternoon she was eating another cheeseburger, and more french fries, and feeling fine.
[Disclaimer so I don't feel like a bad parent: yes, we regularly feed our kids stuff healthier than cheeseburgers. The end.]
Lately I’ve had a quote from Chuck (a rather fun TV show on NBC Mondays) set as my IM status message. (Oh, it’s also at the top of my blog header.) In the show, Chuck complains that it’d never work to have a relationship with his hot love interest Sarah, because she’s a CIA agent, and he says he’d try calling her, and she wouldn’t be available because she’d be “off somewhere in Paraguay quelling revolution with a fork…” I loved it. What a great line.
So it’s been my IM status for a week or so now. And every time Ryan starts a chat, he starts it out this way: “viva! viva! viva!”. (The first time he followed up with “fork that!” 
)
For Ryan, I have but three words, and I’ll even make ‘em Spanish: ¡Si se puede!
OK, so a lot of you have probably seen this already, but it’s too funny not to post.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
SARAH PALIN: Before it got to the other side, I shot the chicken, cleaned and dressed it, and had chicken burgers for lunch.
BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change!
JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.
HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn’t about me.
GEORGE W. BUSH: We don’t really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.
DICK CHENEY: Where’s my gun?
COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.
BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of chicken?
AL GORE: I invented the chicken.
JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken’s intentions. I am not for it now and will remain against it.
AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.
DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken doesn’t realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he’s acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.
OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I’m going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed access to the other side of the road.
NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he’s guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.
PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.
MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer’s Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.
DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I’ve not been told.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.
GRANDPA: In my day we didn’t ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.
BARBARA WALTERS: Isn’t that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart- warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.
ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.
JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.
BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken 2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken 2008. This new platform is much more stable and will never crash or need to be rebooted.
ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?
COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?
One of the things that just fascinates me is observing the girls’ learning – not just what they learn but how they learn. Sure, I’m a nerd, but thinking not just that “hey, she used a funny word” but realizing how that particular word reflects the fact that she’s learning about verb tenses (without even knowing it!) just blows me away.
Recent highlight: Laura, looking at a book of nursery rhymes in the van yesterday on our way home from the mall. It’s not a book we’ve read to her very many times. And she’s not reading yet, so what she does is look at the pictures in the book, recite from memory as much as she can, and then improvise based on what she understands from the pictures. So Becky and I are sitting in the front seat talking, and soon we hear this:
“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker man, bake me a cake as fast as you can. Pat it, and roll it, and mark it… um… with some frosting…”
Hilarity ensued.