Ana doesn't go to church with her parents in the city.

She does, however, attend when she visits her grandma upstate.

This is important for understanding the following conversation:

Me: *sitting on the ground*
Panties: *visible, apparently*
Ana: You draw on your panties?
Me: *checks panties - I have drawn on undergarments in the past, so this makes sense* No, honey, not these.
Ana: Oh. Wait... you write on your panties?
Me: What? No...
Ana: Somebody write on your panties! That not very nice!
Me: *realizes she means the writing on the elastic that says "Hanes"* Oh, no, honey, that's supposed to be there.
Ana: It's posed to be there?
Me: Yeah. It tells me who made my panties.
Ana: God made your panties.
Me: *cracks up laughing* No, honey, God did not make my panties.
Ana: Yes he did. In church, they say God made everything.

After convincing Ana that no, God did not in fact make my panties (and she can ask about it in church if she likes, though I didn't say that, just that she can ask her parents), I've gone a bit overboard in my explanation as to how I know God did not make my panties.

So I explain that some people think God is real (like Grandma does), and some people think God is pretend (like I do), and just because I think something doesn't mean I'm right. And I don't know what Mommy and Daddy think, she'll have to ask them. This is already far too much information, and I've realized that I have to tell her parents to get an official party line here, but at least it's all verifiable fact. (I do tend to let my mouth run away with me, and this is one of those times. Apparently.)

Then we call Nanen. And the first words out of Ana's mouth are "Is God 'tend or real?"

*sighs*

So, instead of waiting to tell her parents, I end up calling them so they can figure out what to tell her tonight. I don't really want to have the responsibility of telling her something that's going to cause serious family problems in the future.

(It already caused problems, with my mom complaining about "indoctrination", like that's not what teaching children your beliefs and values inherantly consists of. If this conversation serves as a warning against anything, it's not indoctrination but "giving children simple answers to questions" - I doubt her grandma intended to give the impression that God personally made my undergarments, but that's the idea Ana came away with, because they didn't explain their concept properly to her but used the simple phrase "God made everything" instead.)

On the rest of today...

We went to the SICM as we are wont to do, so that was all right... but at lunch, Ana threw a massive tantrum, where she even threw lunch on the floor and broke the container it was in. (None of it spilled out, so I ate a hearty portion while Ana had her time-out for this).

When her time-out was over, she threw *another* tantrum because she didn't want to wear a smock to eat messy pasta, she didn't want to put her feet off the chair, and she didn't want that lunch, she wanted some other lunch which we hadn't brought. When I pointed out that her options were limited to "eat lunch or be hungry", she screamed in my ear - and screamed again when I told her we would go home.

So, uh, we did, with Ana screaming all the way to the bus (where she promptly snuggled in my lap and tried to fall asleep). Frankie's mother seemed surprised that we were actually leaving, but she always irritates me the way she tells her kid they'll leave if he doesn't mind, and then doesn't leave. (And then complains that he doesn't listen. I suspect he doesn't listen for the same reason I don't listen - he knows she has no intention of going home because he's running around and wandering off. It's really annoying to me, but I haven't told her, that'd be counterproductive, and anyway, we're not that close. I like her well enough, but that's it.)

And this turned out to be just as well - I had a very nice conversation with an older Chinese women (older Chinese women always seem to love the niecelings. Maybe they just like kids, I don't know) about the mei-tai - she was very impressed that I even knew what one was, she told me she'd had one and that she had characters embroidered on it for luck and health and long life and so on, and that it's good to pass it on to your kids, luckier, and that it's better for the baby (well, I already thought that one!) and all. And then she showed Ana her two goldfish she had swimming around in a shopping bag. Ana was very impressed, as was I.

And then Ana's behaviour other than that one massive tantrum was so overwhelmingly pleasant that we made Jello, with the warning that if her parents decided she shouldn't have any, she wouldn't get any for dessert today - and that I was going to tell her parents all about how she'd behaved today, so they'd be able to decide whether or not she should get a treat. (They did, apparently, so that was good.)

A note about the God Panties story - Ana's *actual* sentence structure varies from what I reported in my post. For example, she said "I told church that God made everything". However, I wrote it down in translation because I figured that it was easier for youse guys to understand that way.

I don't know why Ana does that. She also will say "I told my mommy that I can have the cookie" when she means "My mommy told me that I can have the cookie" and so on. Any ideas?

Another note: I'm getting a lot of attention for that mei-tai lately! Yesterday, in response to somebody asking me about it and then saying that "Well, my kid is 14 months, so she's almost too big for it", I hoisted Ana up and made her demonstrate how she can be carried around that way. Ana wasn't too happy about this, but I made my point better than my usual method of pointing and telling people :)

A page devoted to female pirates

Honestly, sometimes it seems like "dressing up in a man's array" must have seemed like a really good career choice back in the day. Because there sure are a lot of confirmed cases of people doing just that.