Henry looked up from his copybook the other day and said, “I want to go on an airplane.  I don’t care if anyone touches my pee-pee.”

Well I do, I’d make the national news.

Sometimes I wonder if I am the strangest parent on the planet and maybe I should just stop talking around the children, period.  He’s with me almost 14 hours a day, most of what he picks up is straight from me, so I’m to blame for these weird out-spoutings. The inner struggle between airplanes rides and the blue glove treatment must have been going on for awhile, I don’t recall grousing about the TSA lately. And the indifference to the TSA and the would-be molesters of freedom and otherwise sort of surprises me. Henry, true to his name, is the one I’d expect to bellow “Give me fondle-free airplane rides or…OOOH!!!  Airplane rides!”  Okay, nevermind, he is a six-year-old boy.

I’m still not cool with that, I would still end up appearing as some Adam Kokesh podcast segment. I’m sure the screenshot would not be flattering and it would probably be stock footage of me, played by a frothy-mouthed Rottweiler and the ubiquitous cover of “Home Alone” as Henry, post-TSA “inspection.”

Geesh.  The things you have to put up with just to get to Disneyworld in this country.

Maybe I shouldn’t write that because:

1. We’re not going to Disneyworld.
2. Henry can read.
3. If Henry reads we’re going to Disneyworld he’s going to be really disappointed when we don’t go to Disneyworld because mama hates Disneyworld without ever even having been there.  I have been to Epcot, it was boring.  I am not spending any more money on Disney.  I don’t care if I went back in 1996 and my parents paid for it and I was 19 and a lot has changed since then and it wasn’t even really Disneyworld, it was Epcot.  I’m not wasting my money on not-Disneyworld again.  And Florida is HOT, even in January, except it was cold when I was there, and that wasn’t fun either.  LOGIC, people!
4. Is it Disneyworld or Disney World?
5. Oh, I’m seeing it’s Walt Disney World Resort.  Well!  Pretentious now, aren’t we?  Add that to #3!
6. There is NO pleasing me.  See again #3.

Another Henry-ism, while we’re still on the subject of Henry.  Our nightly routine goes as follows:

Read the daily Bible verse and devotional from “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers.  Yeah, it’s way over their (our collective) heads, but it’s good for them to hear and I hope maybe they get something out of it to mull over.  And if I read it in a librarian voice, I’m thinking this makes it go into the brain better.

Read a chapter or two from the New Testament.  We’re almost done with Matthew so you can tell this is a fairly new routine.  If the chapter ends with Jesus healing a demon possessed person, I usually read the next chapter so that’s not what they’re left clinging to all night.

Read a chapter from a book.  We recently finished Little House in the Big Woods and now we’re on to Farmer Boy, both by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

First, during our Bible reading the other night, Henry stopped me and asked me something like this,

“Mama, why did you tell me that God can only write with his left hand, again?”

WHA?

To which I replied, “Wha?”

He said, “You said He could only use His left hand because He’s sits on His right.”

OH!!

So I explained it wasn’t that God was sitting on His OWN hand, or that He couldn’t write with just one of them, it was that Jesus sits at the right hand of God.  Maybe I’d been saying “Sits on the right hand of God.”  Maybe some translation says that?  Maybe all do?  Believe in/believe on.  There it goes again, even Dave’s mom brought that up or maybe she brought it up because I’d mentioned it and she saw it somewhere and noticed it too.  I don’t remember now.  So now I have two phrases to confuse me.  I’m just not going to say either if I can avoid them, I am just going to do charades.

He (Henry) also saw that “Oswald” the cheerful cephalopod was on Nick Jr.  ”It’s Oswald Chambers!” he cried.  Which is just absurd, there’s no way an octopus could be a missionary in Egypt, it’s too dry.

And happy 18 months to Sarah!  As we were preparing things to move a china hutch into the house, I found myself saying, “Where’s Sarah?”

Oh.  Sitting on the table, sucking left-over icing out of the bag.

Don’t knock off my computer! Oh and don’t get hurt. But I know you’re sure-footed.

We didn’t get you a present, but if I thought about it, I would have wrapped up our newest hole puncher so that in 25 years you could take a picture of the one you got as a present to make me smirk and hiss “Ingrate!”

I will NEVER give you a hole puncher as a gift. I will leave you one in my will.