Last night I had Micaela, Nathaniel, Gabriel, and Asher sleep over. I use the term sleep loosely, but that's not the point today. The point is the funny things you hear when you listen to children speak to one another.

Example:

Nathaniel: "Nana, I like California. We rode and rode and ...."(the next words were unintelligible . When he lingers on his sentences he sometimes begins to speak gibberish until he picks up his next train of thought.)

I was fully prepared to simply wait for him to find his thought again. But Micaela wasn't.

Micaela: "Nathaniel," she says in a bossy tone, "that's not real words." She turns to me, "He does that sometimes," waving her hand as if that explained it.

Nathaniel :  I believe he was offended at her dismissive gesture of the hand. He exploded back at her, "Yes, it is!"

Micaela: For a millisecond, his anger silenced her, but then she recovered: "Well, it's not good English anyway," she yells back.

Nathaniel: Gave her back a dismissive wave of his hand.

I left the room to keep them from hearing me laugh.