BANANA MEMORIES
Mommy: “What else do we need?
”Harriet: “Bananas!”
Mommy: “I thought we just got some?!”
Harriet: “No, we don’t even have one little shred of a memory of a banana left!”
HONESTY
Mommy: “What are you building, Wally?”
(long pause)
Mommy: “Are you going to tell me? Or is it a mystery to me?”
Wally: “No, it’s a mystery to ME!”
O MY CHILD, I CANNOT
“Why do I always do the WRONG THINGS? I don’t want to, I know it’s wrong, I think I shouldn’t do it, and then I DO! Can you help me, Mommy?”
–Harriet
CORROBORATIVE DETAIL
Looking at some prints of Rembrandt paintings hung on the playroom walls–
Daddy: Let’s look at these paintings, Wally.
Wally: Mommy and I painted those.
Daddy, laughing: Are you sure about that?
Wally: Be careful, Daddy. They’re still wet!
SCIENCE LESSON
Mommy, at the dinner table: “Harriet, you’re eating that like a lion. Could you eat it more like a little girl?”
Wally, suddenly: “Lions eat with their hands. Lions eat with their claws!”
Mommy: “What do they eat, Wally?”
Wally: “They eat meat. They eat Africa meat! And they like chicken bones.”
HE MEANT RUDOLPH
“Hey, can we watch Nosey the Reindeer?”
–Hugh
THE RELUCTANT SOLDIER
“This guy doesn’t fight. He just picks blueberries.”
–Walter, playing plastic armymen with his daddy
DELAYED INEVITABLE
Mommy: “Could you please get down from there, Wally?”
Wally: “I’m not Wally, I’m Batman.”
Mommy: “Okay, could you get down from there, Batman?”
Wally: “No, I’m Robin, I’m Robin.”
Mommy: “Could you please get down from there, Robin?”
Wally: “No!”
part of the main 
I’ll never forget the first time you had me over to your house in Minneapolis. We hadn’t known each other very long and we sat down at your table eating Franklin Street Bakery pizza and chocolate ganache cupcakes (we were such health nuts, weren’t we?!). I asked you what you wanted to do one day and with a hopeful smile you said, “I want to write!” I believed you that second!
I think you in turn asked me the same question, to which my reply was, “I want to finish this chocolate ganache cupcake!”
If I’m not mistaken, what you’re doing here is writing, isn’t it? And you do it very well too!
Books, dear Juli. Books and books and books.
Well, you have to start somewhere. (I hope you didn’t feel my comment was belittling you, I did realise you meant books. I thought afterwards that maybe it wasn’t the most sensitive comment…) Anyway, I do enjoy reading your blog, whether or not it was the sort of writing you had had in mind 🙂
Not at all, Juli, I was complimented. 🙂