Out of the mouths of kids...

This year "back to school" was quite a time in our house - Ethan started kindergarten, and Nicholas started preschool.

On Ethan's first day, he was so excited and couldn't wait to meet all his "new friends" and play with all the toys. Since we just moved into the area where we are now, we didn't know anyone at the school, and since Ethan is my oldest, I didn't really know what to expect.

Well, that first day consisted of going to school, staying for about 10 minutes to take attendance, and then leave. Ethan promptly told me after that episode that he would like to go back to preschool and that kindergarten pretty much sucked (well he didn't exactly say that, but it is what he meant).

As the week went on, kindergarten was one hour per day. Just enough time for him to be convinced that school was pretty cool, and as long as he got to play it was all good. One hour wasn't quite long enough for us to go back home though, so when Ethan was at school, Nicholas and I went for long walks to kill time until we had to pick him up. We are lucky that the school is close to a big forest and a good sized lake, so we would walk around those areas and explore.

One morning, we came across a man walking his weiner dog. Nicholas was in love. "Look at that puppy mommy" he yelled at me as he ran towards the poor terrified dog to give him a cuddle (we are working on the whole asking-the-owner-if-we-can-touch-the-dog thing, but Nicholas usually forgets until he is just about on top of the poor terrified animal). Luckily this dog didn't freak out, but she wasn't overly interested in Nicholas and just wanted to get on with her walk. Unfortunately for her, the owner was only too happy to talk to Nicholas.

After a few minutes, Nicholas thanked the man for letting him pet his puppy. The owner then told Nicholas that the dog wasn't a puppy at all, since she was 8 years old she was an "old lady". Nicholas gave the dog a snuggle and we were off.

A few minutes later, a woman was walking towards us with her small dog. Nicholas in his best three-year-old voice (with no volume control) yelled out "hey mom, look at that old lady"! Of course he meant the dog, but she didn't know that. She just gave me a dirty look, muttered something under her breath and stormed past us. Honestly, I was just barely able to keep it all in with out exploding into fits of laughter.