Thursday, November 26, 2015

Out of the mouth of my babe

Today is Thanksgiving, and I'm thankful that my son amuses me on a daily basis. Here are a few things he's said recently:


Using his math: Biscuit has discovered the scales in the produce department at the grocery store, and he wants to weigh every single thing I get, even if it's something that's priced per item.

I figure it's math, so I take the time and let him do it.

Yesterday, I needed a couple of Red Delicious apples, and they were on sale for 99 cents a pound. I got two pretty big apples, and of course, Biscuit needed to see how much they weighed.

I walked over, and we looked at the scale together. 

"Okay, the needle is halfway between 1 and 2 pounds," I told him. "So how much do my apples weigh?"

"Oh, uh ..." Biscuit said, and he was stumped.

"It's HALFway between the numbers," I said.

"Oh!" Biscuit said, and there might as well have been a light bulb over his head. "That's 1 and a half pounds of apples."

"Good job," I said. "Now let's figure out how much they cost."

I rounded up and told him that they were $1 a pound.

"If the apples are $1 for each pound, and we have one pound and half of another pound, how much would that be?" I asked him.

"It would be $1 and ..." then Biscuit just sort of looked at me.

"What's half of one dollar?" I asked. "And remember that a dollar is the same as 100 cents. So what's half of 100 cents?"

"50 cents," he said.

"Right." I said. "So our apples are $1 and 50 cents."

We took a couple of steps away, and I said, "By the way, THAT is why you need to learn math. For the grocery store."

I happen to glance up, and saw a man standing near us laughing. I caught his eye, and he just nodded his head and went on about his shopping.

We'll take lessons wherever we can find them!


A big kurfuffle: Biscuit stages all kinds of intricate battles with his action figures and little Lego men. One evening when we were all three in the living room, and I said, "What's going on?"

"Okay, guys," he said. "Here's the deal. There's an odd conniption going on at the base."

Before he could go any further, Jeff asked, "Wait, what is a conniption?"


Biscuit thought for a second and said, "I don't really know. I just heard that word and just kind of made it up for what we're playing."


Good behavior: I know lots of people are upset that stores are open today, but we don't have our Thanksgiving until Saturday. So it's kind of like a regular day for us.

Mama and I went shopping, and Jeff, Daddy and Biscuit decided they would go with us. We sort of dreaded it because they tend to get impatient and are ready to go before us, but we also knew that it would be time spent together, which is always good.

Daddy and Jeff went to the men's department, and Biscuit stayed with Mama and me.

I'm not sure what happened, but Mama called down Biscuit. I heard her say something about how if he wanted to stay with us, he couldn't be doing whatever it was he was doing.

Then Biscuit said, "I'm sorry, Grandmama. I've only been in this store once before, and I just didn't know the expectations."

I could see Mama trying not to laugh.

"The expectations are just for you to be good and patient so your Mom and I can shop some," Mama said.

"Got it," Biscuit said. And he was really good the rest of the time.

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