She's not stubborn, she's my daughter

Well, the Boy is pretty much back to normal ("I need more tetcherp. Karpetch. What is this stuff?" "Ketchup." "Yeah, ketchup. I kept trying to say ketchup, but it was not working."), and the Girl is pretty much--very much--TWO.

We went to the park on Saturday--The Dinosaur Park, which is not what it's really called but it's what we call it, this fantastic melee of children and fake fossil-filled climbing walls and a giant stone mammoth right in the middle--and this lovely little 7-year old adopted the Girl. "Can I play with her?" she asked, and of course I said "Hell yes!" Okay, I just said yes, and then sort of followed them around at a safe distance. This girl helped my Girl slide and spin and play hide-and-seek and get into one of the little rocking dinosaurs, then she must have needed a break and ran off to climb the mammoth while the Girl occupied herself. After a few minutes, the Girl realized her idol wasn't attending her anymore, and started to get frustrated trying to climb out of the dinosaur, so I went to help. Boy, good thing toddlers aren't allowed to handle daggers.

"Wheah my guhl?" the Girl demanded. "She's climbing. Do you want some help getting out?" "DON TUSH ME!" Her Majesty spat out, then: "GO HOEM, MOMMY. GOOO HOEM!"

She and the Boy have a new evening game. It's called--I am not making this up--Lick My Face. In which the involved parties chase each other, with the intention of--you guessed it--licking each other's faces. I am either way too cool or way too beaten down because my take on this is, Hey. They're happy, I have 10 minutes to make dinner, no harm no foul. I usually manage to get nearly all the way through the food prep before I hear the game end, and here's how it ends: Someone yells "HEY! LICK MY BOTTOM!" Oh yes, we have rules in this house, people, and the number one rule is that only the cat is allowed to perform any sort of bottom licking and then only on himself. It still ain't pretty, but it's legal.

What else, what else? I went mad with exotic spending and bought a crapload of aromatherapy shite to replace those nasty chemically plugin things, and also a hutch. A hutch! It's cheap, and it's modestly sized, and it will hold all my kitchen appliances. Hallelujah.

List of Things We Didn't Have When I Was Your Age, as explained by me, to the Boy, at dinner:

• VCRs
• DVDs
• CDs
• Microwaves
• Push-button phones
• Home computers
• Gameboys
• IPods

"Oh!" he interjected, really getting into this game, "and HAMBURGERS! You didn't have meat, right?"

Nope, no meat. The dinosaurs kept getting to it first.