Apple. Tree. Not far.

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Last night, the Critter convinced us to play one of her games with her. I'm not even sure where she gets these kids games from. (If it was up to me, she'd be content with playing poker, like any normal 5 year old). This one's called "Traffic Jam", and consists of putting a bunch of cards with roads and roadblocks onto the table to create, well, a traffic jam. Because the game creators, they're creative like that. Except that there's virtually no way to win the game. There are way too many road cards, and not enough road blocks. Which I guess is supposed to be ok for a kid's game. But seriously. It gets old after playing it seven times in a row. The only good thing about the game is that the rules state you have to yell "Traffic Jam!" when you place a roadblock card down (which can be flooding, cows on the road, or roadworks: very British). Before we played the game, the Critter had hastily drawn up something in preparation for game playing time. To keep track of who was playing. And who was winning. And stuff. Uh-huh. Remember this?
Sometimes the Critter is frighteningly my child. But sometimes, you can clearly see my Bride's genes coming out. Now let me show you what the Critter came up with:
Look... her very first Excel workbook. My Bride didn't understand why I was laughing uncontrollably for the next half hour.
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Get thee to a nunnery

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My Bride and I were arguing last night because, you know, when you've been married for 13 years, and one of you is 35 weeks pregnant, the occasional argument happens. The bad thing about almost every argument you have past your first year of marriage is that you're just re-hashing old arguments. The good thing is you can pretty much predict how they're going to end before you even start, and shortcut the process. "Argument #4" "Oh yeah? Rebuttal #2!" "Well, you never Counter-Rebuttal #7" "I knew you were going to say that. You always use #7. Fine. But we're still not going to your mother's this weekend." Somehow, even though we never argue about anything new, I have still never managed to win one in 13 years of marriage. I think it's mostly because I am the possessor of the Y chromosone. At the end of this latest re-hash of old territory, when we were down to grumbling under our breath about laundry and doing dishes, our just-turned-five-year-old Critter piped up. "Now you and Mommy are going to have sex!!" My Bride looked at me with a vicious gleam in her eye and said smugly, "You get to handle this one." Because, as I mentioned before, I have never won an argument. With all the collected calmness I could muster, I sat down with my daughter and explained that this was a grown-up word, and involved grown-up things, and is not to be used by little girls. Because I don't care what Dr. Phil says - repression was good enough for my parents, and it's good enough for my daughter. And then I explained to her that she would be moving to a special place we call a "convent" before her next birthday, and taking what we call "orders" so that daddy didn't have another heart attack at hearing such talk. She took the news well.
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