Children are smarter than I am

1) Daisy walks slooowwwwwwly down the street, and I mean REALLY slowly. My mom calls her a "stop and smell the roses kind of gal." Today she was particularly slow because she was walking in these intricate patterns following the markings of the sidewalk, and I was getting a tad impatient because I was cold and wanted to get where we were going.

Me (to Mark, mumbling under my breath, thinking there was no way she could hear me): Daisy is the slowest thing on the planet.

Daisy (clear and articulate): No, I am not the slowest thing on the planet. A snail is the slowest thing on the planet.

2) I did Park Play today at Daisy's preschool, which involves riding with the kids on the schoolbus to a playground. The kids always beg me to tell a story, and today they wanted "The Billy Goats Gruff." So I told the story, but at the end--to try to make it a little more benign--I did not say the troll was killed. Instead, I said "he fell into the river and floated away."

Maren (cute little girl from Daisy's school): No, a shark ate him. Otherwise he would just float away, end up under some other bridge, and bother more billy goats.

I just thought she was awfully clever to point out the flaw in my superficially cheerful ending. It WAS flawed.