Vignettes from my life

Back in May or so, I was having one of those days. The kids weren't misbehaving, just driving me crazy. Rachel bounced up to me and asked, "Can I play on the computer?"
With a manic gleam in my eye, I replied, "Can you tell me the square root of nine?" [Madeleine is the only one who has done multiplication, and only up to the 5s.]
"Ten!" she guessed.
I went to the Patience Well. "Honey, what times itself makes nine?"
Confused blinks from Rachel. Dale from the kitchen table said, "Three, plus three, plus three."
Uh oh.

* * * *
Louie has taken to storing items down the front of his shirt. This is a variation on having to imitate Napoleon and find and manipulate a nipple or navel. Usually he's wearing a Onesie, so whatever he's stuffed in there doesn't go very far. Items include Hot Wheels cars, handfuls of pea gravel, Goldfish crackers, a two-inch stalk of celery, a bitten Roma tomato, capless markers, and a non-functioning Lightning McQueen Shake-N-Go Racer. Not all at once, but that was just yesterday.
If I just start putting him in regular shirts so his treasures drop through, would it make life better or worse?

* * * *
Last week we attended my beloved's work picnic. The pavilion had been rented, it was close to the bathroom, food was ample and delicious, all was well. In the general vicinity, there was a family not associated with our group. I'd guess they were Filipino; English was not their common language. Yes, that's relevant to my tale.
However, there were kids there roughly Rachel's size. Being the kind of kid she is, they became fast friends. I tried to keep one on eye on her and her pals while also chaperoning the other three during Daddy's softball game. It wasn't too hard; they were at most 30 yards away without much obstruction by trees.
Rachel wandered over to us with a hot dog on a wooden skewer. Ummm... I don't recall seeing that before. "Where did you get that hot dog, Rachel?"
"From my friends," she said, indicating the Filipino family with a wave of her hand.
Close eyes, sigh. "Did you at least say 'thank you'?"
Grin. "Oops."
After she finished that, she wandered away again... back to her friends, of course, because next she had a grilled breast of chicken on a skewer. "Did you say 'thank you' THIS time?"
"Yes, this time I did."
After this, Rachel stuck pretty close to us and no more unfamiliar food appeared. She shared the chicken and it was pretty good.
At the end of the day, when we were all packing up, the mother of the Filipino family came over. My husband started to apologize for Rachel's behavior, but she politely interrupted. She wanted to tell us what a nice, well-mannered, friendly and trusting little girl we were raising; not afraid of people that were different.
Well... we weren't so upset then. It makes me wonder what else she said to them.

* * * *
I think that's enough to push the Moon Landing clip down past my links.