You miss a lot when you don’t listen to your little kids ruminations. Out of the blue, Wendy started telling us strange characteristics of “English people” that she made up, such as, “English people use brown toothpaste. They don’t wear any nail polish unless it’s purple. English people don’t have any belly buttons and they have two thumbs on each hand. When English babies need a new diaper, they change them twice. They don’t have toys. They don’t sleep or read books. Finally, she said, English people don’t have eyeballs, but on that one she was kidding.” We had English friends, but she didn’t meet them until she was five and we visited them in England.
A few weeks after her thoughts on the English, she asked her Dad if his boss at Steelcase was married?  Bob said, “no.” She replied, “Then he can sleep on both sides of his two person bed, or he could use one side for taking a nap and one side for sleeping at night.” So funny-
My mother lived us when Wendy was little and they would read books together most mornings on Grandma’s bed. One morning after Wendy had learned to write her name, she “wrote” a note to Grandma but it was all scribbles. She gave it to Grandma, then turned it around “because it was upside down.” Grandma said, “Read it to me” Wendy said in an exasperated way, “I can’t read.” ha Like her siblings,  she is very entertaining.
As an adult, twice Wendy has made me “a heart attack” such as the one pictured above. She cuts out and decorates paper hearts, glues them to popsicle sticks and plants them in the ground to surprise me. I love it!
