It's not easy being green.

Leah, yesterday while I was cleaning the kitchen: "When you run the water while you're doing something else, I'm pretty sure that's called wasting water."

Leah, today while eating corndogs for lunch: "I recently liked this inside part. I mean, I exactly like this inside part." Just now I had to go and ask her what she said, and she said, "I definitely like it?"

It's so refreshing having a serious conversation with Leah. For instance, she brought up this big topic today:
Leah: "Do you WANT to have another kid?"
Aaron: "What do you think, Leah, should we have another kid?"
Leah: "Yeah! I'd like to have a brother and sister."
Me: "What if we have another boy? Would you like to have two brothers?"
Leah: "Yeah! And what if we had THREE boys, and one girl? That would be silly."
Me: "Yep, that would be silly."
Leah: "What if we had 10 boys and 10 girls!"
I tried to explain the logistics of this being highly unlikely. Obviously Leah understood, because her next comment was: "What if we had ONE HUNDRED kids?"


Ben is talking a lot more, although not all the words are there. He especially chatters while in the van, and when that kid does get words, we're going to have to invest in earplugs. These are the things we are compelled to identify on a typical drive:

bicycles
trucks
cars
motorcycles
watertowers (BALL! - Anything round is automatically a ball. Especially those big red concrete things outside of Target.)
dogs
tractors

Also, on the drive back home from touring a neighborhood yesterday, he was fed up with his carseat and tried every trick in the book, all while holding a foot in the air with each hand. Of course, the enunciation is not quite there yet, but you get the drift:
"ALL DONE!"
"MA! MA"
"DA! DA!"
"UP! UP!"
"APPLE!"

Ben seems to be a lightening rod for negativity. If Aaron and I are arguing about something, no matter how benign, this is what happens, for instance:
Me: "Aaron, you're wrong!"
Aaron: "No, YOU are!"
Ben: Comes up and smacks one of us with his fist.
Me: "Ben, we've got it. You don't need to hit."

This is true no matter who the conflict is between - Ben just feels the need to express his own feelings about the situation, and the impulse control part of his brain is still pretty undeveloped.

Leah has impulse control issues as well, but as a typical female, hers appear to be more verbally focused.