Five on Friday: Almost 10-year-olds Say the Darndest Things

It’s almost the baby’s birthday.

She’ll be turning ten.

I don’t really refer to her as “the baby” anymore but it worked for a long time. My oldest two kids are referred to as "the bigs" and the next two kids are "the boys." (One of "the bigs" is also a boy so whenever I say "the boys" should do something, he always asks, “Am I a boy?” Sometimes he is, sometimes he isn’t, depending on what I was talking about.)

Anyway.

That leaves us with “the baby.”  She’s about to leave single digits and grade school behind. She recently graduated to a later bedtime. And before quarantine started, it seemed as though some of her younger-kid interests were starting to wane.

Enter unexpected benefit of lockdown #27: with nothing else to do and none of her friends to play with, her interest in baby dolls, the playhouse and just good old-fashioned imaginative play has been renewed.

“I have three babies, I have five kids. What a mistake I’ve made!”

She’s also been hitting it out of the park with hysterical mispronunciations and observations lately, and those suddenly feel more precious. With her being our last child and now a rising middle-schooler, I know hearing these sorts of things soon will be a sweet memories. So for today's Five on Friday, I'll be sharing some of them for posterity and enjoyment:

1. "Mom! I was watching that animal show and the poor whale had allergy ALL over him. And did you know that a girl lion is called a lion-sis?"

2. She climbed a tree and found ants higher up than she expected to. She shouted down to us, "There's something I've been wondering and I think y'all should wonder it, too: how do ants get up so high?"

3.  "What's it called when a book is half real and half not? Is it fake-tion?"

4. The kids were trying to establish who they all agreed upon as being cool. She offered up "Simon" as her suggestion.
"Simon? Simon who?"
"Garfunkel."

5.  Over the past three months, she has been asking if the Governor has said if it's safe yet to do things like go to school or the park. But she doesn't actually refer to him as the Governor, instead she calls him "Government Murphy."

She's going to outgrow that soon enough; I refuse to correct her.