A glimpse into Carinne's little world

Carinne just turned 4 on Sunday. As you may know, four-year-olds love to talk. They tell all kinds of stories and make endless observations about the world around them. I love it! Yesterday, a couple of Carinne's observations had me laughing so hard, I just had to write them down.

Let me preface this first story with a little background. My parents had to put down their geriatric dog, Nikki, a few months ago. She had become mean and ornery, but she was a dog, so Carinne automatically adored her. She still misses her and often comments when we're at their house, "Nikki's not here. She died." So yesterday, we were at their house getting Legos for Kenneth's class project, and Carinne found a rectangular rabbit pelt in the closet (not sure where it came from, but I remember using it as a Barbie rug--those were the days before Barbie adopted her current, P.C. anti-fur stance). She hoisted it in the air, and with her eyes wide with excitement, exclaimed, "Mommy! Look! A PIECE OF NIKKI!!!" She was so excited my parents had kept a memento!

The second story takes place a little later, when I took her to the doctor for her annual check-up. Our doctor's office is upstairs from a physical therapy office. As we came down the stairs, she saw a wheelchair parked next to the P.T. office. She went to examine it and said, "Mommy, what's this? Is this for the lazy people?" I kind of chuckled and thought that was kind of a strange way to think about wheelchair-bound people. I was glad for this little teaching moment, and explained that people who use wheelchairs aren't lazy, but maybe their legs don't work very well. That night I was telling Devin about what she'd said, and he wondered, "Is it because she's been watching WALL-E?" Maybe I was overly tired and more than a little slap-happy, but I started laughing so hard I cried and had to run to the bathroom (5 pregnancies haven't exactly strengthened my bladder). If you haven't seen WALL-E yet, it takes place in the future on a starship where all the people are obese because they no longer walk--they just ride around in these hoverchairs, which look a lot like--you guessed it--wheelchairs! I'm sure this image completely overshadows what I told her in our tender little teaching moment, and wheelchairs will continue to represent morbidly obese, lazy people for quite a while in her little brain.

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*Just as a side note: I was sitting with a group of young-ish (around my age--I'm still young-ish, right?) moms at our Relief Society Christmas dinner last night and shared these stories. I knew they were an I-guess-you-had-to-be-there kind of story, but, for some reason, I could NOT for the life of me even get to the punch line because I was laughing so hard. I was gasping for air and just hopelessly hysterical. I'm sure all those poor ladies thought I was high on something, and at a church function, no less! What the Helsinki? What makes a person laugh like a mental patient at something so mildly amusing? I'm a little embarrassed. I think sleep deprivation is really getting to me...