siena dictates for cat named pig

Siena has been in kindergarten for five weeks now. I usually pick her up after school three days per week, along with a friend who lives a block from us. The 10-minute car ride gives us time to chat about what happened that day. Last week, I asked the standard question, “How was the day?”

Siena: Daddy, we had a sub today.
Matt: Oh yeah? A sub, huh? Was it a he or a she? Was he or she young or old?
Siena: The sub was a girl…I think she was kinda young. She was like a mom.
Matt: Uhhh, a mom, huh?
Siena: Other subs have been like grandmas.

The girls then started talking about grandmas in the back seat and all the things they do for them.

You may have read Laura’s account of how obsessed the kids are with the song “Battlefield” by Jordin Sparks. Saturday afternoon, we were playing it over and over on YouTube, so Siena could show Grandma Nana how she can sing most of it and dance to all of it. I had a bright idea and asked Siena to follow me to the basement.

Matt: Siena, I have a great idea. Come with me to the basement.
Siena: What is it, Daddy?
Matt: I have an idea for props for you to use.
Siena: (following me excitedly, but then reaching the bottom step and stopping when she sees me pulling out the tub of dress-up items) Daddy, are you getting the boy battle stuff? I’m not going to dance using boy battle stuff. I’ll look like a boy.
Matt: But sweety, they’re props for your dancing. You can swing the sword around like a warrior.
Siena: What’s a warrior? (pause) I’M NOT WEARING BOY BATTLE STUFF!
Matt: (swinging the sword and holding the shield, as she disappears up the stairs) But it’s armor, and…uh…for a battlefield…

(sigh)

I’ve mentioned before that the kids are absolutely in love with this song, the theme from the first few seasons of Weeds. They both request it as a bedtime song from time to time, so tonight I was singing it to Siena. She stopped me towards the end to ask what a lawyer was.

“Um, well, that’s what Grandpa Tom does for a job. He’s a lawyer who helps people.” [My dad is a public defender.] “He makes sure that people get treated fairly if they’ve been arrested for something.”

“And he makes sure the police give them enough to eat and drink while they’re in jail?”

“Well, yeah, that wouldn’t be fair at all if they didn’t get enough to eat and drink. And sometimes the wrong person is arrested, so Grandpa Tom helps people get a fair trial so they don’t go to jail for something they didn’t do.”

“Yeah, he makes sure the police only arrest the bad guys. The ones wearing masks.”

Tonight at bedtime, Siena was coughing quite a bit. She seemed really tired, too, and I closed the door hopeful for a peaceful evening with the computer and without her usual routine of tip-toeing up the stairs and peering around the railing before telling us she just can’t sleep. (Note: this “just can’t sleep” business usually takes place approximately six seconds after we tuck her in, sometimes even sooner.)

Tonight I had not even gotten upstairs and settled in with the laptop before I heard her door bang open.

“Mama, I just came out to tell you that the proper way to get better when you have a bad cough is to drink lots of water, eat cough drops, get lots and lots of sleep, and wear warm pajamas to bed.”

I assured her that no one would get in the way of her following any of that excellent advice, particularly the part about sleeping.

Siena hasn’t stopped dictating, but bear with us as we update her blog page.

Her unique observations of the world will be back in a day or two. Here’s one to get you by until then.

Siena and Elliot were in the living room playing while Matt made dinner Monday night. We’re not sure of the context, but Siena asked Elliot, “Can you run to the couch and then run back to me, Mr. Marshmallow?”

Siena later asked about marshmallows, and whether we had them, so for some reason, she had s’mores or something on her brain (what else does one do with marshmallows?)

We, unfortunately, had part of our front sidewalk overrun with ants Tuesday afternoon. Not just a few ants scurrying here and there. No. Mounds and mounds of ants crawling over each other to get at something. This was going on in two or three places. Siena and Elliot thought it was pretty cool that there were so many in one place and discussed why they were all there.

Matt: You guys. Come look at all these ants.
Elliot: Whoooaa. Anties.
Siena: There must be hundreds of them.
Matt: Maybe thousands.
Siena: Maybe one of the them found a little cracker or something and called all his friends for a picnic.
Elliot: A cacker. Yeah. Or a chip.
Siena: I wonder if they need something to drink.
Elliot:Yeah. Someting to dink (sic).
Siena: Elliot, let’s fill up the buckets and give them some water. They’ll have a full picnic.

The ant picnic soon ended when a torrential downpour from buckets ruined their perfect afternoon. Multiple buckets of water. The wading pool needed emptying anyway.

Siena’s usually pretty geared up after her bath. Flying all over the place, shaking her body, spinning the towel as if she were a matador (matadoress?). It’s also the time when she gets most potty-mouthed. Tonight was a little twist on her usual “butt-butt, bado-booty” talk we’ve come to just try to ignore, unless we’re out in public. This isn’t really a conversation we had, but try to picture this:

Siena had just played a game with Elliot, still in her towel wrapped around herself. I asked her to get pajamas on. She walked away to her room walking/dancing in a sort of chicken strut with the wings flapping, towel thrown to the side, singing, “It’s a butt dance. It’s a butt-butt. It’s a butt-dance.

I could only position my body so Elliot didn’t see and started singing “Humpty Dumpty” to him, so that we didn’t have two chickens strutting in our house singing about dances involving butts. I then made sure Sir Mix-a-Lot was not on the iPod.

I put Elliot down for his nap, while Siena turned on the tv and picked out a movie to watch. I went downstairs to find Siena watching an informercial. And scene:

Matt: Ready, sweety? What movie did you choose?
Siena: Daddy, this thing is amazing. The Redi-Set-Go can make anything.
Matt: I’ve watched some of this before. Looks like it makes cooking easy, doesn’t it?
Siena: Yeah. Maybe I could do it, if it wasn’t hot. It can make any pizza…and it can make a chocolate thing with bars of other chocolate stuffed inside of it.
Matt: So it’s chocolate stuffed chocolate?
Siena: And I saw them making a chicken that you could eat.

We watched another five minutes of the infomercial, as they showed this little device making upside-down pineapple cake, steak with mushrooms and wine reduction, pancake balls, not-fried fried chicken, an omelette, and more. If we would have called in the next 18 minutes they would have taken one payment off and given us an extra cooking insert. Almost had us, but we watched Madeline, instead, satisfied with the two microwaves we already own.

In the car, we heard some guys talking about the tornado that touched down in a town west of the Twin Cities, leading to this exchange:

Man on radio: People on the ground say a tornado touched down in Spicer not that long ago.
Siena: Spicy? A tornado?
Matt: Spicer. It’s near where our friends were married a few years ago.
Siena: But why would it be a Spicer tornado?
Siena: The tornado wasn’t spicy, sweety. That’s where it touched ground.
Siena: Oh. (and then whispering, as she looks out the window, as she realizes her mistake) Spicy tornado…

Of course, Elliot then had to chime in with “Spicy? Spicy? Todando?” The next three minutes explaining it to a two-year-old were great.

Siena was singing as she waited for me to sit next to her and read at bedtime Sunday night after her 5th birthday party:

(singing loudly) Somebody call 9-1-1, shorty fire is burning on the dance floor…whoa-ohhh…somebody call 9-1-1, and tell me where is my koala…whoa-ohhh.

She sang it perfectly. We may or may not have been listening to KDWB and singing it as we were driving around earlier in the day running errands. Here’s the song by Sean Kingston, if you aren’t familiar. She also nailed “The Climb” by “the girl who sings during the closing credits of Bolt” (Miley Cyrus).