Cecilia the Inquisitive

Lately, Cecilia is asking some recurring questions:

"What liss?" (words that begin with "th" come out with the "l" sound for her)

"What lat?"

"What ___ mean?"(with the blank being whatever word she just heard in a book that she doesn't know)

"Where airplane, Mommy?" (on overcast days when they are heard but not seen)

"Where Care-line?" (on Wednesday mornings when Caroline is at MMO)

"Bank, Mommy? Look like bank." (while driving around town today. She's also pretty accurate on restaurants. Today she also said, "Bank for money." How she knew that, I have no idea.)

Over and over during Father's funeral Mass on Saturday, she kept pointing to each of the metal doohickies on the back of the large picture frame in the vestibule asking, "What liss for, Mommy?" "It holds the picture frame together." And that one does, too. And that one. And that one as well. Yes, even "lat" one. It was a big picture frame, ha ha.

Today she asked me why I chased the cat out of our yard. I told her that cats scared the chickens. "Cat bite us?" No, cat won't bite us. "Cat scare chickens?" Yes, it might scare them. "Cat bite chickens?" Yeah, maybe so... best to not find out!

A chicken tangent... This cat walked right up to the free-ranging chickens, calmly as could be. I was holding their waterer in one hand and quickly went toward the cat and scooped him up with my free arm. He was the sweetest thing, which may be unfortunate, actually, in that he was not scared of me and kept coming back into the yard. I carried him off the first time, then chased him off, clapping and yelling, "Go home!" twice more. I'd never seen him before today.

The chickens are either curious (read: stupid) or territorial. They didn't run from the cat when he approached... and when I carried him away, they actually FLEW after me! They NEVER follow me, ever! A couple weeks ago, the next door neighbor's cat, Buddy (not an accurate name at all for this mean feline!), came into the yard. I could tell something was up because the chickens had gotten very quiet and alert - they were all looking up and not scratching around like normal. When they all three started heading across the yard, I went to see what they were up to - they were headed straight toward Buddy. I ran ahead of them and yelled at Buddy, and he ran into our crawl space. I shut him in there until we'd gotten the chickens put back in their tractor. Oddly, today's cat was also named Buddy (according to his tag) and seemed to be much more of one. Anyway, apparently the chickens are not afraid of cats - although barking dogs terrify them - and it seems that they'd face off with a cat if they had to! I am trying to prevent that from happening in the first place, though!

Cecilia was a little bummed that she didn't get to pet the cat any more today... too bad, since he was so friendly.

She ceased her questioning this morning when we went to the church so I could go to confession, but she did introduce her bear to Father. "Lis Froster," she said, as she held the stuffed bear up to him. No Tim, not the big Froster at The House. Poor Fr. K would have been quite disturbed if she'd dragged that thing into the confessional, ha ha! Caroline named this white teddy bear after Big Froster. But he's not Froster II. Cecilia also said as we left the church, "Kringy (how she says our priest's name - she doesn't say "Father" for some reason) say no wet-wet in church!" Caroline was telling her that Father wouldn't like us to track a bunch of rain water into the church recently, and Cecilia thinks it is a matter of utmost importance, apparently.

And one last random thing Cecilia has been saying recently... if she wants to talk on the phone when my mom or brother calls, she says, "Self!! Self!!!" As in, I want to talk myself!