Wilted lettuce

I know I write about my kids a lot, but I'm a stay-at-home mom, so it should be no surprise that much of my life, and my blogging, revolves around them. No exception today.

My kids continue to blow me away with their ability to describe their feelings (usually their negative ones, but, hey, creativity is creativity). Last night, my daughter and I were having a pre-bedtime chat. She was talking about cliques and other stuff related to friends-- this social maneuvering seems to start earlier and earlier, by the way--and she was trying to describe the way she felt when one of her friends stopped in the middle of their game and joined some other kids instead. "Sad," I suggested? No. "Angry?" No. "It's hard to describe," she said, going silent. After a few minutes' pause, during which she had clearly been thinking hard, she said "Wilted lettuce. I feel like wilted lettuce when that happens." She's so far ahead of me in her use of simile; no way I could've described it any better.

Tonight, my son and I got into an argument--bottom line was that I had to take a toy away from him for the night because he failed to live up to a very clear agreement we had made (an agreement as to what he needed to do, as well as what the consequences would be if he didn't). Needless to say, tired as he was (and he hasn't been sleeping very well the past few days) he was extremely upset about this and I had to chase him around a bit before I could get the toy back. He was really feeling wretched, but he came up with a great idea: he was going to draw how he mad and sad he felt on a series of notecards--which he ultimately taped up to the wall by my bed, so I wouldn't forget how he felt! Well, the final notecard held a monochromatic picture of a rainbow, superimposed with the words (spelling his): "I fel like a ded rainbo." Again, I don't think I could have said it any more aptly than he did. (And I felt it like a punch to the gut, which I suppose was it's intended purpose!)

Like I said, sometimes my kids blow me away.