Ben the Literalist and other stories

A few quick anecdotes:

The other night at bed time, Ben was looking at a dinosaur book upside down. Seeing a whole page of dinosaurs seeming to stand on their head, I said, "Ben, what's wrong with those dinosaurs?"

He thought for a moment before replying, "They're extinct!"

(And then, the next day, when we told this story to adult friends, Ben was apparently concerned that their vocabularies might not be quite as extensive as his, so he clarified for them at the end: "That means they don't exist anymore.")

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Ellie has been having a tough time sleeping through the night recently. She wakes up in the early morning and then wakes one of us up (usually Nathan) to help her move all her things to the sofa, where she stays--often falling asleep again--until the first light of morning. Then she wakes one of us up (usually Jen) at 5:45 or 6:00. We were struggling with this schedule and trying to get her to just stay in her own bed. She explained that because a light in her room had broken recently, she was having bad dreams because there wasn't enough light. So we got the light fixed and hoped for the best.

The first night with her fixed light she revealed some of her true motivation as she asked me, "Mom, tomorrow morning, can you wake me up--just me and not Ben--as soon as you wake up in the morning so we can have cuddles and read stories together?" How can you say no to a request like that?

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Ben is soooo excited about seeing dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum in Washington when we head back to the U.S. Ellie is less thrilled, as she thinks the dinosaur skeletons they have there are scary. We were trying to reassure them both by saying that Ben could be close and Ellie could stand far away. Ben started to cry, confusing us greatly, until he said, "No, they should be naked!"

Poor guy, close and clothes are not the same thing.