June 2008 Archives

I'm very proud of the fact that our kids have good manners (except for their age-appropriate amusement at bodily noises at the not so appropriate time of dinner).

Both kids rarely forget a "please" or "thank you", and in most situations they remember to say "excuse me" and wait to be invited to speak rather than interrupting a conversation.  (They also use "excuse me" for the bodily noises mentioned above, but tend to follow it up with a hearty laugh, a mischievous giggle, or fake bodily noises so that they can continue to amuse themselves, especially at dinner.)

The one thing the never forget to do, however, is say "bless you" for a sneeze, or "thank you" when they are blessed.  In fact, if we forget we are often corrected by our children.  And this is what I have come to regret.

Allow me to illustrate with this scenario:

Chris sneezes and I am in another room, so I do not hear it.
Karenna: Bless you.
Jude: Bless you.
Karenna (after waiting for my cue and not hearing me): Mom, Daddy sneezed and you did not say "bless you".
Me: Bless you.
Chris: Thank you.
Karenna: You didn't say "thank you" to all of us. You only said one "thank you".
Chris: That was a blanket "thank you".  It covers everyone.
Karenna: No we said "bless you" three times.  You have to say "thank you" three times.
Chris: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Karenna: Now you said it four times.  That's too many.
Me: Can't someone say "bless you" again?
Karenna: No, we each already said it. We'll just have to make Daddy sneeze again...

A conversation I overheard...

Jude: Then I will use my telekinesis (pronounced tel-wa-kinesis)!
Karenna: No, you don't have telekinesis, only Darth Vader and I do.

We went for family haircuts today.  Karenna and Jude had their usual sib fights.  At one point, Karenna must have talked back, so Chris put her in time out, which is when I heard this:

Jude: Don't you talk to my sister like that! She's my best friend and I love her.
Chris: You don't talk back to me, either! I appreciate that you love your sister, but now you are in time out for talking back too.

Karenna likes being at the school-aged daycare center and is eager to start Kindergarten.  I'm not quite ready for her to grow up.

Yesterday Karenna told me she liked a little boy going int first grade.  Today, when I picked Karenna up, "Mommy, I'm getting a phone call tonight.  I gave him my number and he said he'd call me."

Just last year she learned to dial her own telephone number.  I'm not sure we're ready for little boys to use it to call her...

Forgive me once again if this one goes political...

Jude recently got a new action figure.  It's Darth Vader from Return of the Jedi, where his helmet comes off and you see his real face before he dies.  He's easily a favorite.

"What's his name?" Jude asked.
"Darth Vader," I answered.
"No, what's his real name?" he insisted.
"Anakin Skywalker."
"No! This is Anakin Skywalker," he said, gesteruing to a younger-looking action figure.
"So is Darth Vader," I said. "Anakin grows up to be him. He grows up and turns into a bad guy."
"He grows into an old guy?" Jude asked.
"Yep, that's what happens to young guys."
"They turn into Darth Vader?" he asks with his eyes wide.
"Well, I said, unable to resist, with Chris and Karenna in the car nearby, "Some grow up to be Dick Cheney."
"They don't all grow up to be bad guys," Chris added, probably afraid the poor little guy would be afraid he'd be doomed to such a limited set of role models.
"Yeah," I added. "Some grow up to be Barack Obama."
"Ahem," Chris added. "What about me?"
"Oh yeah," I said, embarrassed I didn't go for the obvious right away. (Of course in my defense, I was hitting the oldest men first...)  "Some of them grow up to be Daddy!"

Yesterday Jude got a boo-boo on his right knee.  It was beyond placebo. It more than passed the tissue test.  In fact, it was initially too big for a band-aid and I had to use a square of gauze.

Today, I picked Karenna up from daycare and had to sign an accident report about a long cut on--of all things--her right knee.  Yet another wound to pass the tissue test.  Sympathy wound?  Eerie sib connection?

So I put both kids in the tub and had to clean them up as a time saver since they were outside late in the nice summer weather.  Jude was the first to flinch as I tried to clean his right leg.

"Ouch! You're hurting my boo-boo!" he said.
"I'm sorry. I don't mean to.  It's an accident," I told him.
"No," he said. "It's not an accident. You're cleaning me and hurting me on purpose!"

He cried.  I felt bad.  I tried to explain that we had to clean around the wound or he'd get a Staph infection.  Karenna tried to be "half-a-Mommy" and chime in too.

Then it was on to helping Karenna get cleaned up.  I started washing her right leg.

"Ouch!" This did not come from Karenna. "You are hurting my sister now! Stop it!"

Jude and I went shopping on a Mommy-Jude bonding day.  We don't keep soda around the house and it was a hot day, so I bought two cream sodas as a special treat.

Not used to drinking soda, Jude burped quite a bit.  It made him giggle.

"Excuse me," he said.  Being a toddler boy, he had to follow the real burps up with fake ones. "Excuse me again. He-he-he!"

I smiled and continued drinking my soda.  He drank more of his.  Then—I am embarassed to admit—I slipped out a rather loud burp myself.

"Excuse me!" I said. But it was too late.  jude has laughed so hard mid-sip of soda that his drink had sprayed all over his clothes.

"Mommy!" he chided, "Don't burp when I'm drinking my soda!"

I've now watched two kids go through what I call the Toddler Packrat Phase.  This is where they gather up some treasured belongings, or what the like at the time, or what happens to be handy, and place it in a purse, a bag, a bucket, or other such container.

For Jude, this stage is about carrying around his action figures. The container is his "Pack-Pack", or backpack, or rather, a messenger style bag he has rigged to wear like a backpack so that he can be like his sister (who wears a backpack to Kindergarten camp).

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know that Jude's a fan of superheroes.  This came in handy when potty training him.

It's hard to try to teach a little guy what he should be doing when he sits potty as opposed to standing potty.  Enter the "Hulk Face"...

Jude imitates Spiderman by shooting webs, and Hulk by scowling and saying, "Hulk mad!"  He even got a tube of Hulk toothpaste with a rather constipated-looking Hulk on it.

When Jude first started sitting potty, I asked him to sing a "make a Hulk Face" so he could focus on the task at hand.  He then decided he needed more props to help him get in character.  Therefore, I was required to move the Hulk toothpaste tube to the sink directly across from him, facing him, exactly in the middle.

Jude and Hulk were locked in a constipated staring contest to see who could get relief first.  Ultimately, his potty training is going well, but Hulk still looks a bit strained...

I've always been in the business of either teaching, technology, or both.

With that in mind, my personal philosophy has been that of openness.  When someone asks a question, I try to avoid shutting them down with a, "You don't need to know that," "It's too complicated too explain," or, "You wouldn't understand."  Nothing is, if you can frame it right. Just take the time and use a little creativity to come up with an answer on the level of your audience.

This is also how I handle parenting.  With two children, one now in the obligatory "Why?" stage and one leaving it and now asking more probing questions, I have my hands full.  About a year ago, I almost had to abandon my philosophy of openness for a really tough question by a girl who was barely four.  Almost.

"Democrats don't lie, do they Mommy?" Karenna asked me, more looking for affirmation than for an answer.  I didn't want her to overgeneralize, even if she was only four.

"That's not true, Bill Clinton got in trouble for a big lie.  Some people think Democrats lost a lot of elections after Bill Clinton's big lie," I answered.

"What did he lie about?" she asked.  Oh-oh, I really stuck my foot in it now... My first thought was to brush it off as complicated.  What would you do?

I waited, then I thought for a second, and pleased with what I came up with, spoke, "He told the worst kind of lie you can tell."

"What kind of lie is that?" she asked.

I replied with confidence, "A lie to try to get yourself out of trouble."

I love listening to what the kids come up with when they are playing and they don't think you're listening in:

Karenna (to Jude): Oh no! That's my Rose of Comedy! If you break it, the whole world's gonna die.

Next week my husband and I were invited to a Reading Picnic at Karenna's kindergarten readiness camp.  We were instructed to bring a blanket and some of Karenna's favorite books.

Jude's alternating between Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and his shorter books.  Karenna, mainly alternates between having chapter books read with a rare shoter book which she helps to read in between.

So I thought I'd take this time to share with my readers my kids' favorite reads and hopefully you will comment and shore yours as well.  If you have kids the same age (or approaching it), maybe we can exchange ideas.  If yours are older, I'm sure we'd all love to hear what great books are out there as our kids get older.

Karenna

• Harry Potter series - She's about to finish Prisoner of Azkaban and is starting to notice differences between the books and movies, as well as get outraged with authority fugures like Cornelius Fudge.  I can't wait to she gets further in the series!)
• Matilda - Smart little girl who finally stands up for herself and others.  Need I say more?
• Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great - Smart girl, wild imagination. Are you sensing a pattern in Karenna's favorite heroines?
• Charlotte's Web - Two appealing things: Smart female spider.  Pet pig, like her beloved Aunt Cathie.
• Ameilia Bedelia books - She loves to she how Amelia Bedelia will get something wrong, there is plenty of potential for us to do character voices, plus lots of words she can read too.
• Harold and the Purple Crayon - A little boy uses his purple crayon and his imagination to draw his reality.  What kid who spends all day at the art table wouldn't love this idea?
• Dr. Seuss books - Her favorites include Green Eggs and Ham and Fox in Socks.

Jude

• Harry Potter series - after Karenna finished The Sorcerer's Stone and moved on to Chamber of Secrets, Jude felt left out and actually requested we start reading the series to him.  I doubted a two-year-old would sit through a half-chapter, but here we are almost ready to move on to the next book.
• Matilda - Jude loved the movie, and the book version was illustrated, so he loved sitting through this one.  In fact he carried it around as a security item for a while!
• Yummy Yucky - Leslie Patricelli's book of opposites that provides an example of what you should eat one one page, and what you shouldn't on the opposite page.  The examples (burgers v. boogers, fish sticks v. fish food, blueberries v. blue crayons, eggs v. earwax, etc.) make Jude chuckle every time!
• The Monster at the End of this Book - a classic where Sesame Street's Grover attempts the young reeader from turning pages (he ties them, nails them, mortars them, etc.) to prevent him/her from getting them any closer to the mosnter at the end, which turns out to be... Grover.  Jude likes defying Grover.
• Dr. Suess books and P.D. Eastman books - his favorites were already discussed in "So To Children's Book Writers and a Sith Were Eating Cookies..."

I picked Jude up from preschool today.  It was the usual routine.  Were you a good boy?  Were you nice to your teachers?  You didn't hit, spit, or kick anyone did you?

Jude: No, I didn't. I said I was sorry.

At dinner tonight, Karenna asked for a second helping of green beans.  "When I was a little girl I used to eat a lot of junk food," she said, "but now I eat healthy food."

"Um, let me get this straight," I stopped her, "so on Saturday, when you were price-gouging pretzels for your little friends, you were still a little girl.  But today you're all grown up?"

"No," she said, dismissively, like a mini-teenager, acting as if I was nearing senility and needed to be explained things far too slowly than she had patience for, "on Saturday I had lots of snacks that my friend wanted: Rice Crispies Treats. Animal Crackers. Pretzels. And she wanted it all. So she was going to have to pay me. Like a lot of money, like 900-million-billion-fifty-hundred dollars."

She continued, still tired of trying to explain things to her simpleton parent, "But I am not a little girl, I am a big girl. I still eat healthy food. I just need to make a lot of money."

Jude: Girls, come see my poop.  (...after some time—enough for me to worry where said “poop” is located…) Hurry, before I flush it!

On our way to the recital my parents called to tell Karenna to wish her luck and tell her they'd be there.

Karenna: Pop Pop and Judoo said they bought me flowers already.  I haven't even had my recital yet. What if I don't do a good job?

(No worries: after each of their performances, Karenna's group would not leave the stage because they enjoyed getting the applause. As if we ever had any doubts...)

Karenna had a stay-over the night before her rectial.  Karenna and her ballet friend had a full dinner and followed it with a bowl full of grapes, a bag of popcorn and some Gouda.  They stayed up and watched movies in the living room in a tent made out of bed sheets.

The following morning they woke up early and didn't want to wait for Chris to cook breakfast.  I gave both girls a bowl of cereal, but Chris continued to make breakfast for him and I anyway.  As we were eating, two sets of blue eyes stared at us as the little girls begged for pancakes and sausage, as if they had not been fed in days.

"Didn't you already have cereal for breakfast?" Chris asked.
"Yes," I answered on their behalf.
"You cooked it. We smelled it. We want it." Karenna said.

Later, for lunch I made pizza.  Karenna was used to my pizza-making, but the other girl was fascinated with how pizza is made.  When the pizza was done, the girls had four slices a piece.

"Where do you put it?" I asked.
"There's a hole in our tummies where it leaks out," Karenna answered. (Perhaps they were storing all their energy for their recital...)

Backstage, Karenna and her friend were still snacking.

"I'm cutting you off," I said. "No more snacks!" Just as I said that one of the girls in her dance class handed her a handful of pretzels.

A girl from a younger class walked by and wanted Karenna to share the pretzels, "Can I have some?" she asked.

"You want pretzels; I want money."

That's it. She was really cut off this time!

I go a little crazy at birthday parties.

Last year, we had a Wiggly party with:

• Hot Potatoes (Bar-B-Q chips)
• Cold Spaghetti (Pasta Salad with Spaghetti)
• Mashed Banana (Banana Cake)
• Fruit Salad (Yummy Yummy)
  
• Crunchy Munchy Honey Cakes
• Red, Blue, Yellow, and Purple Tees as favors (Even Chris wore won; the kids loved it.)
  

  
  

  We also had a hula party, with:

  
• Shell Pasta Salad
• Hawaiian Onion Chips & Dip
• Tropical Fruit Salad (served in a watermelon carver to look like a pig roast)
  
• Almond Joy Pound Cake  (chocolate pound cake with almond coconut glaze)
• Grass Skirts, Leis, and Beachcomer Hats

This year thus far, we've had a Star Wars party:

• Darth Melon, Dark Lord of the Fruit Salad (watermelon shell carved into Vader's helmet)
• Tie Fighter Pasta Salad (uses bowties--I get a lot of mileage out of the pasta shapes.)
• Ice Cream Floats
• Darth Maul (cherry, to match the light saber)
• Mace Windu (grape, see above)
• Obi-Wan (Blue Cream Soda, ditto)
• Anakin (7-Up with Lime Sherbet)
• Han Solo (Orange, just because)

When I asked Karenna for what party she wanted, I expected something cute and girly like Tinkerbell or something, stay tuned for my update on... Pirates!

Normally I blog about the kids, but today I have something else in mind...

When I was a kid and we'd go to my grandpa's house, we'd always be welcomed with a bunch of treats.  It was hard to refuse them.

"Do you want a root beer?"
"No."
"How about some ice cream?"
"No thanks."
"Do you want a chocolate covered cherry?"
"Nah."
"We have Hydrox cookies..."
"That's alright."
"Louise, get these kids a root beer and some ice cream..."

He told us once about catching a mouse in a trap for my grandma, and "I didn't want to kill the little bastard..." so he freed it on the back porch. The mouse, probably knowing how good he had it with grandpa, made it back inside.

It was the same with all of grandpa's pets over the years, birds, chihuahuas, and cats (once he softened to them).  From the bird whom he fed spoonsful of butter ("He likes it.") to  the animals that (not surprisingly) would become diabetic alongside grandpa.

When Karenna was born, my grandpa ended up in the hospital on the same day. His heart was enlarged and his kidneys failed.  My family was worried about whether or not he would get to see the new baby, so they were hoping to arrange for her and I to go to him or vice versa, whatever was safest.  He came up and we got pictures of the four generations.

My grandpa and grandma were an interesting couple.  She'd nag him for home improvements, like new wallpaper, and he'd tell her, "We're old; our next walls will be dirt."  Everyone knew my grandpa loved my grandma though, and they used to say that if he died first, she would probably live for years; but if the reverse happened, he would have a hard time going on.

Four-and-a-half years after my grandpa went in the hospital and went on dialysis, my grandma passed away.  It was the first time I saw my grandpa cry.  I heard talk at the funeral that this was it: Grandpa would probably quit dialysis. He was starting to forget things.

But at the wake Chris and grandpa talked about grandma.  He remembered the grandchildren's weddings. "You need to buy a new suit at least once a decade," she had ordered him, and he hated wearing that monkey suit.  He felt relieved she never knew her dog had to be put to sleep while she was in the hospital, as she had asked that they take care of it, he said.

He even continued dialysis.  And at a Karenna's ballet rehearsal, I heard that my aunt had called my mom this week: "Dad [my grandpa] escaped from dialysis," she told my mom, knowing my aunt probably matter-of-factly.  Nothing is out of the ordinary on that side of the family.

He was tired of waiting for his dialysis driver and decided to walk home, three miles home.  The driver was out looking for him.  My family was out looking for him.  The police were out looking for him.  He made it to a block from home without his cane before they caught up with him.  He did not get lost.

Someone else who took care of my grandpa was at the rehearsal was listening to the story.  "Oh, I know him," she said. "He is such a nice man. He always offers to buy me a root beer."

Jude and I had dinner tonight, just the two of us, while Chris took Karenna to ballet.  I gave him a drink of water, but forgot he also had a small bottled water as well.  When I turned around, he had already begun his experiment to see what would happen if he filled his cup beyond full.

The effect is the following:

• an angry mother
• wet pants
• a messy kitchen table

I made him take responsibility for actions and wipe the table.  As soon as he cleaned his mess, he said he needed to go do the bathroom.

"Makes sense with all that water," I thought to myself.  And then I hear the water run. And run. And run...

I went back to check on him.  He moved his experiment to the bathroom.  All the decorative candles had been filled with water. and sitting in or around the sink.

I've mentioned several times before how much my kids love They Might Be Giants and their Friday Night Family Podcast.  Well, they have this song, "Nonagon", about polygons at a party, and because of it, Karenna can now tell me the name of every polygon with nine sides or less.

I've been worn out all week, and I'll use that as the excuse for how Karenna outsmarted me:

Karenna: Mom, a nonagon has nine sides.
Me: I know.  It's a polygon.
Karenna: Two shapes are not polygons.

Me (thinking only of circles): Don't you mean just one shape?
Karenna: No, two shapes are not polygons. A circle has no sides, and neither does an oval. See... (She begins to demonstrate for me with her finger.)

The kids are still watching Indiana Jones movies on a regular basis.  Over the weekend, it was Temple of Doom.  Karenna asked me all about the food Indy and company ate in the movie, as well as what acceptable manners would be if offered these dishes.

Me: It's good manners to try something when you are a guest.  You should not say you don't like it or ask for something else.
Karenna: Why doesn't that girl use her good manners?
Me: I don't know.
Karenna: That food is gross to us.  But if I grew up there, I would like it because that's the food I would be used to.

Since about last Halloween my kids have been interested in zombies.  It started with Karenna asking, "What is a zombie?"  From there, the following:

• As a techie, I went to my new favorite place to send newbies for easy explanations: CommonCraft, for Zombies in Plain English.  They watched this several times.
  
• Since CommonCraft's reference to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was clearly lost on two children born two decades after it, it was on to YouTube to be educated.  (I soon regretted this, as Jude made me watch "Mackel Jackson" again and again and again...)
• Later, we used our favorite DRM-free music provider, eMusic to get some Jonathan Coulton.  The kids enjoyed listening repeatedly to "Re:Your Brains" on Daddy's iPod and finding the World of Warcraft-rendered You Tube video.  (And Karenna now knows what the word "impasse" means.)

For a while I thought the interest in zombies had died, but this afternoon over lunch, their interest in zombies had been newly resurrected in a game.

Karenna walked around like a zombie chasing Jude throughout the house, threatening to eat his brains, and Jude would run.  (Karenna actually had the Zombie walk down pretty well, much more like a real zombie walk than a "Thriller" dance move surprisingly.)

Chris and I watched as Karenna chased Jude around the kitchen, tried to bite his head when he hid behind the curtains, and then followed Jude down the hall to his room.  It was then we heard the door slam.

"You know," I said to Chris, "I'm thinking Jude's behaving rather like a stereotypical zombie attack victim."

"You mean running into a corner, hiding, and getting trapped?"  he asked .

Apparently all those repeats of these zombie shows have done nothing to prepare him for the real—or in this case, "the pretend"—thing.

We were watching Star Wars today (again, at Jude's request), and Karenna looked at the strange characters on the screen.

"Are they aliens?" she asked.
"Yes, I answered. Then I added, "Well, technically, all the Star Wars characters are.  Since none of the Star Wars characters are from Earth, they are aliens."
"What does alien mean?"
"It can mean not from Earth or not from our country," I explained. "So they call people born in a country other than the United States aliens."
"We're aliens to them," she said.

I wonder how many adults are capable of seeing things this way.

We hit a milestone this week; Karenna finished pre-K and will be moving on to Kindergarten.  It didn't seem that long ago when she was born...

"Karenna, I don't know how many times I've seen happy tears in your Daddy's eyes," I told Karenna as her Dad and I sat with her,  "Probably only twice.  The first time was the day you were born."

"Why was Daddy crying?" she asked.

"Because he was so happy that he was a Daddy for the first time and it was the first day he met is baby girl," I explained, expecting her to be as happy and as sentimental as we were.

Instead, I watched her face get a confused then frustrated look as she began to scold us, "Why was he so happy that he cried when I was a baby but not now that I am big?"

"He still is happy that you are big.  That was just the first day he met you."

"Yeah, well how come he yells at me now, but didn't yell at me when I was a baby?"

Hi there, Readers.  I have a philosophical question of the chicken-and-the-egg sort for you.  Let's start with the context:

Karenna: Mommy, there's a dead bug flying around here!
Karenna (adding a few seconds later): I pulled his wings off...

My guess is that the events as relayed by daughter occurred in the following order:

1. There was a bug flying around.
2. Karenna pulled his wings off.
3. He died.

My philosophical question is this... Which is worse her sequencing and understanding of cause and effect, or this apparent bug torture/killing spree she's been on lately?

Not long ago we established that my kids need to work on tact.  First, Karenna accidentally said her grandmother looked old. Then, Jude called his Daddy old.  Well, I'm sorry to report after Jude's bath tonight that nothing has changed...

I was washing the sandbox sand and dirt out of Jude's hair with a lot of shampoo when Karenna noticed how covered with suds Jude's head was.

"Wow, Jude!" Karenna said, "You have white hair!"

"Wow!" Jude said in imitation as he tried to see his reflection in the tub's faucet.  "I have white hair."

"You look like Daddy," Karenna said.  (For the record, this would be an exaggeration often made by Karenna, especially after her Daddy gets a haircut and the new greys are revealed.)

"I look like the Daddy-man," came Jude parroting his sister, and then he added, "I'm an old man!"

Me: How old are you now, Jude?
Jude (holding up three fingers): Three.
Me: Just like your cousin.
Jude: His mommy is three too.
Me: No, your aunt is twenty-six.
Jude: Why?
Me: Because she's getting older.
Jude: My daddy's old.  I'm getting older too.

This year I'm having a bit of fun in a presentation with three other friends.  We're mixing our presentation content with a "mock fashion show" including music like Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy".

It doesn't take much too push me over the deep end of silliness in the privacy of my own home, and a silly song stuck in my head will do the trick:

• It started out with me answering every affirmative with "Right... said Fred".
• Then it evolved to calling every member of the house Fred.  I explained this silliness as an easy way not to get anyone's name mixed up.  (Karenna's cousin who stayed over recently found this much more amusing than my own children, and still requests to be called Fred when she sees me.)
• Finally, I have reached the ultimate (or low, depending upon your personal take on silliness) in idiosyncratic Fredliness with a performance I'd like to call Kauffman Dinner Theatre...

We rehearsed our presentation today so "I'm Too Sexy" was all too fresh in my mind.  The kids were avoiding their dinner.  Jude brought a Stormtrooper action figure to the table, which I confiscated.

Bored out of my mind policing dinner, I took the action figure, who with out a helmet had a bald head and resembled the guy from the Right Said Fred video, and making him dance as I sang "I'm Too Sexy."

You may expect my kids to think their mom finally lost her mind, but they've some to expect this sort of behavior from me (see bullet points above for proof).  Instead they laughed hysterically, especially when the Stormtrooper got to shake his "tush".

They wanted an encore.  And then I knew I had them where I wanted them.  Instead of fighting with them to eat their dinner, Mr. Right-Said-Fred-Stormtrooper-Man shook his little action figure tush in exchange for bites of dinner.

Did I pimp a dancing action figure out on my kids in exchange for them eating dinner? Yes.  Did it work? Yes.  Did I do any long-term psychological damage?  Maybe, but no more than when I called everyone Fred, right?

I mentioned before that Karenna has proclaimed my sister Cathie her guardian.  Cathie has no kids and often borrows Karenna to do things like play in the snow.

This weekend, my sister Lisa thought it would be nice to take Karenna shopping with her for a "girls' day out" while she shopped for Jude's birthday presents.  Lisa has two sons, so she thought borrowing Karenna might be fun.

Karenna and Lisa were shopping for Jude's clothes in one of Karenna's favorite clothes when Karenna entertained the clothing store staff with the following scene:

Karenna: Aunt Lisa, will you buy me something?
Lisa: When it's your birthday I will.
Karenna: But my mommy buys me things all the time.
Lisa: I'm not your mommy.
Karenna: What if I nag and nag and throw a tantrum until you buy me something.
Lisa: That won't work.  I have two boys at home that do that all the time. If that worked for them every time they wanted something I'd have no money left.