The other day, at the ETC Book Cafe (USED book cafe!), I picked up a little gem for four dollars

A whole book (okay, not that long a book, but still) on "play-party" songs - you know, like Ring Around the Rosie, or The Farmer in the Dell?

This sort of thing is totally irresistible to me, and I'm just so lucky - for Christmas, I got me an annotated Mother Goose there, too, and I also have a book of Australian jump rope rhymes.

Anyway, in my play-party book, I was surprised to note that they list Bingo, but not at all the way I was taught! It's a walk-around-in-a-circle-and-jump song, no clapping. Weird how things change, isn't it?

Similarly, in another book I'm reading right now, they list two ways to play Ring Around the Rosie, and neither one is the way I (or, probably, most of us) heard it growing up. One ends, after "posy" with "fall down and break your nosey!", and the other (also after posy) ends "with a curtsy here and a curtsy there, and a curtsy all together" and the appropriate motions for that instead of just plopping your butt down on the ground.

Oh, I know I've mentioned it before, it just always surprises me, is all. You grow up with one form of a nursery rhyme or song, and you just believe that it's the only one everybody knows! And I even know better, I love this stuff, I shouldn't be surprised anymore.

Took her long enough, but Evangeline has finally hit the argumentative age.

Sorta. She's still a heck of a lot more easygoing than her sister is, was, or most likely ever will be, and she's better at doing things herself, doesn't get frustrated as easily.

So, like, if she wants to get a straw from the drawer (like her sister), she'll yell "I do self!" and run to get a chair. Or she sometimes attempts to put on her own diaper, that sort of thing.

As for arguing - let's just say she's a cranky girl at times and will argue about whether the sun is up. ( Cut for shit )