the snow globe

When I was here for a meeting in January, I bought my niece Sydney a snow globe for her birthday.  It has a miniature abbreviated downtown with a few landmark buildings, and a ferris wheel representing Navy Pier.  She loved it which made me happy.  That's also when I told them that I might be moving to that place inside the snow globe.

Yesterday I told my sister-in-law, Vickie, that I wanted them to come up and she said Syd was ready to go.  Syd told her that she wanted to go see Aunt Lynn because Aunt Lynn would know where that big ferris wheel is and would take her.  Of course I would, and I would ride it with her (while her dad is on the ground tossing his cookies at the thought of being that up that high).

Syd is a hoot.  She's always been pretty quick with the comeback, even though she's just turned 5.  Vickie was washing her car and Syd said "mama, you're hot!!".  Vickie said why thank you, Syd!  "No mama, not hot like when a boy whistles at you, I mean you're SWEATING!"

I love the way kids brains work - my own two had some good one-liners when growing up.  Come to think of it, they still do.  Some day I need to write down the good ones that we always talk about - just in case someone would forget.  The sad thing is that people lose that ability to be spontaneous and off-the-cuff and just say whatever comes out.  The ones that hang onto it become Robin Williams.  The rest of us have to bite our tongues lest we be thought completely off in the head.  I never quite thought that would be a bad place to be, but we can't all become millionaires by saying whatever comes to mind.  Still, not losing that ability entirely is partly why Syd and I can have so much fun together, and why my kids will never totally lose that kid inside of them.  They really didn't stand an chance anyway; their dad is more off in the head than the rest of us put together.  And not completely in a bad way.