“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Sorting my candy,” he replied.

I looked closer and, sure enough, he was sorting his candy

If you look closely at the picture, you can probably figure out his organizational system

Personally, when I sort candy, I tend to sort it by kind — I group gum in a pile, suckers in a pile, chocolate in a pile, a pile of stuff I don’t want to keep, etc.

Adam’s organizational scheme is a little different, but extremely logical. This fits perfectly with his personality — he’s always been a logical, ordered, sorting and organizing kind of person.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, he sorted his candy by color (either the color of the wrapper or the color of the candy if the wrapper is transparent). He had a brown pile, an orange pile, a red pile, a rainbow pile (for multi-colored candy like smarties), etc.

Sarah decided to join in the fun, and organize her candy too:

• Kelli (to Brian): “You need to eat more healthy foods. Do you know what that means?”
• Kelli (continuing): “That means foods like fruits and vegetables…”
• Brian (interjecting): “I eat fruit snacks…”

She was just using the camera to take a picture of Adam. As luck would have it, the camera chose to say to Adam:

You’re as pretty as a princess!

Adam apparently didn’t approve, because he replied in a growly voice:

I’m not pretty! I’m cool.

• Kelli asked Sarah if she wanted to watch a movie. Sarah said, “Yes, I want ‘Charlie hash browns’.” We had to ask her to repeat it before we figured out that she wanted the Charlie Brown Christmas movie.
• After supper, Sarah came running up to us saying “I found Mickey Mouse!” I followed her into her bedroom, where she started reaching under her dresser to try to pull out some toys that had gotten pushed underneath. After a bit of adventure (in which my hand got stuck under the dresser and Kelli had to come rescue me) we got all the toys out from under the dresser, including a toy ring, a toy cell phone, and more. Sarah seemed to be looking around for something else, and we told her that we’d gotten everything out from under the dresser. “There wasn’t any Mickey Mouse,” I said. Pointing to the “bathtub” part from the game “Mouse Trap,” I said “That was the thing that I saw when I first looked under the dresser—that was the thing you were pointing at.” “Oh yeah! That’s it!” she said, grabbing the tub and walking out. Kelli and I just looked at each other, puzzled for a moment, before Kelli finally figured it out. “Mickey Mouse—Mouse Trap.” I just shook my head at that one.

• Brian (from his room): “Adam, I’m going to tell on you!”
• (At that point I anticipated that Brian would be coming to me, and I started anticipating the complaint that was surely coming. However, since nobody was screaming, I knew it probably wasn’t too serious.)
• Brian (comes into the living room): “Da-ad, Adam ate a Hershey’s Kiss.”
• Paul: “Was it yours?” (I already knew it wasn’t, or Brian would have been upset rather than calm.)
• Brian: “No.”
• Paul: “Okay, well, it’s probably fine. Just don’t eat a lot — maybe just have one.”
• Brian: “Okay.” (returns to his room)
• Brian (from his room): “Adam, you can come out — it’s okay to eat one…”

Conversation 1

• Kelli (to Sarah): Aunt Terra is flying to California tomorrow!
• (brief pause while Sarah thinks about what she just heard)
• Sarah (with a confused look on her face): She doesn’t have wings!

Conversation 2

• Sarah: I just ate something yummy
• Paul: Really? What did you eat?
• Sarah (after thinking for a couple of seconds): The thing that I ate!

• Sarah: Can I have some more jello?
• Paul: Remember I told you that you couldn’t have any more after the last bowl?
• Sarah: (pointing to the 9x13 dish, still half full of jello) There’s still more jello!
• Paul: We’re going to save that for later. We’ll have some more tomorrow.
• Sarah: I’ll have jello for breakfast tomorrow.

As a side note, Sarah really loves to say “jello”. For that matter, she really likes to say any word that starts with the “dj” sound (the sound made by the “j” in words like “jello” as well as most other words that start with “j” and some words that start with “g” as well. The linguist in me can’t help but chuckle because she likes to pronounce that sound as a fricative rather than a stop, so she ends up pronouncing it like “zhello” rather than “djello”. I actually suspect that’s part of the reason why she likes those words so much — I’m guessing that she enjoys that sound.

Interestingly, when I was in Argentina and I was teaching English pronunciation to some native Spanish speakers, they did exactly the same thing. For them, of course, it was because the “dj” sound isn’t used in Spanish so they never really learned to hear and pronounce that sound distinctly from the “zh” sound, which is used as the pronunciation for the character that’s written as “ll” (double-“l”). (At least, that’s how it’s pronounced in parts of Argentina, most notably among “porteños” — people from the area around Buenos Aires).

Sarah headed off on her errand, and Kelli noted that all the lights were out in the bedrooms and hall, so she didn’t think Sarah would be able to complete her task (Sarah is a little afraid of the dark, like most children, and she’s not tall enough to reach the light switches in our house.

After a short delay Sarah came back down the hall towards the family room. When Kelli saw her, she asked, “was it too dark to get my blanket?” Just then I noticed that Sarah was dragging a large blanket behind her—one that’s usually on her (Sarah’s) bed. “It was too dark, so I got this blankie. It’s very soft,” she said. It was too dark to get mom’s blanket, so instead Sarah had gotten her own (making sure to get the onethat would be long enough to cover mommy). She brought it over and laid it over Kelli. She’s so sweet!

The real problem with her calling it a tiger was that she was doing so before Adam had opened his presents. You’d think this would spoil the surprise, but fortunately, even when she told him it was a tiger right before he opened it his response was “maybe…”

Then he started opening it. Interestingly, he happened to be opening it from the tail end. He had it about half open so you could see the tail, hind legs, and part of the torso. It was pretty obvious that it was a leopard—the spots were plainly visible. Sarah was watching the process excitedly (after all, the present was from her) and this interchange happened:

• Sarah: “see, it is a tiger”
• Adam: “No, it’s a hippopotamus!”

We really can’t imagine where that one came from, or whether he somehow actually thought it was a hippopotamus. Once he got it all the way open, he said “it is a leopard,” so we couldn’t be completely sure whether he was joking about it being a hippopotamus, or not.

Later on, while he was eating his cake, out of the blue Adam announced:

• My name is “Sweet Potato”

I really can’t imagine where he comes up with this stuff.

Sarah woke up from her nap and came in to visit, so Kelli asked her:

• Kelli: “Sarah, where should we live? In Lafayette, or Sunnyvale, or Novato?”
• Sarah: “In Yesvato”