What happened today?

"What did you do at day care today?" Normally when I ask that question, I get a stock answer that I supplied to Biscuit a long time ago.

Not long after he started talking, I asked him that question. He looked at me, sort of confused, and said, "Don't know." So I said, "Did you play with your friends?" And he said, "I pway wif fwiends."

And that's the answer I've gotten ever since then. Until today.

Today, Biscuit and I were on the way home from day care, and I asked, "What did you do at day care today?"

"MOM!" Biscuit yelled. "Home living was a mess. It was all mixed up. Somebody put the dishes in the same place as the food, and the dishes and the food don't go together."

"Oh, wow," I said. "How did that happen?"

"Joe, John and Jack (not their real names) put them that way," he said, clearly astonished that any one human could be so irresponsible. "And then Miss Nicole had to help them put everything back. Home living was just all mixed up."


"Were you in home living when it happened?" I asked.

"No," he said. "Jimmy and me, we were in blocks, but then Joe, John and Jack had to go sit on the rug because they were not listening, and Jimmy and me, we went to home living."

In Biscuit's classroom, they have "play centers" -- the blocks center, the science center (with plastic dinosaurs, insects and other animals), the art center (with pencils, crayons, paper, etc.), the transportation center (with cars, trucks, trains, etc.), the books center, the sand table (which looks like a big dishpan on a stand with sand and sand toys), the water center (another big dishpan on a stand, but this one has water, measuring cups, funnels, etc.) and home living (which has dress-up clothes, plastic dishes, fake food, a play kitchen and other household things). 

Biscuit loves home living the best because that's where you'll find the firefighter helmet and jacket. So when I asked what he did when he got to the home living center, I wasn't surprised at all by his answer.

"Jimmy and me, we went to home living, and I dressed up like a firefighter. And Jimmy dressed up like a jack-in-the-box, and Jimmy was a mean jack-in-the-box, and he had a sword, so I got a sword, and I chinged him, and he chinged me back, and then he went down, and he didn't get back up. But he wasn't hurt. We were just pretending. And then Jimmy, he jumped out of his box, and he scared everybody."

"He scared everybody?" I asked.

"Yep," Biscuit said. "But I chinged him with my sword, and he won't scare anybody anymore."

Even though I didn't quite follow his story, it was a way better answer than "I played with me friends."