On human relationships

Alice has been full of big words and interesting thoughts. Many of them seem related to the life journey and relationships between people.

Asking when a scheduled playdate will occur and told it will happen right after daycare pick-up: "Good, that sounds reasonable." (Reasonable? Could it be we're entering the age of reason?!)

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"Mom, what does slavery look like?"

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Edith began to sob when Edith was packing for a week at Camp Delaware (aka Mom-mom and Pop-pop's house). "I will miss Edie!" she wailed. Very sweet.

The next morning she woke up more philosophical. "I am too young to go to Camp Delaware. But when I am Edith's age and she is an old lady, then I will go to Camp Delaware and she will be too old to go. And then I will be an old lady and I won't go either."

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We were mentioning our fun visit with Aunt Pam and her pets in Iowa this summer. I reminded Alice that she is Mor-mor's sister. "But how can grown-ups still have sisters?" she wanted to know. I told her that once sisters, always sisters. She and Edith will be sisters all their lives, until they are old.

"Is Aunt Pam old?" she asked.

No, I said, Aunt Pam is only XY.

"Oh," said Alice, that isn't old. "But if she was XY and XZ take those two numbers and put them together next to each other, then that would be very old. Probably close to dying." Probably.

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Steering the conversation: "Speaking of brothers," Alice began suddenly. "Well, speaking not of brothers, but now, speaking of brothers..."

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"Hey! Will you be the grandparent to my kids? Is that always how it works when kids grow up? [Laughs.] That's cool!"

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Alice informs us that she's going to be a single mother. "Because when you get big and you want kids, then you go out looking for a husband or another woman, but I'm not going to do that, because 'married' is gross."

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Alice has been missing "Codoralo." She finally put together that she won't be near enough for hugs when her friend Ellen returns from half a year in Finland at Christmas. So now she has a plan: After we get tired of being in Pennsylvania for awhile, we'll have Ellen's dad Steve, an engineer, help build us a new house in Colorado next door to Ellen. Alice is counting on it.

Edith meanwhile has mapped out the trail of BFFs she's left behind her in her moves:

As a new colleague said yesterday, sometimes you have to smile so you don't cry.