The Mouths of Babes

When the kids went back to school after holidays, and the teacher asked what they had done on their winter break, Meimei volunteered that the family had gone to The Cloisters.
"The toy store," said the teacher. "How nice."
I hope Davyn did not stamp her foot at school as she did at home when she loudly reenacted correcting the teacher. "I SAID The CLOISTERS!"
"That's a very nice museum," the teacher said.

Meimei tells us that Martin Luther King did not want black people to play baseball (?)

She also has some questions about how people lived in "those Egypt houses that look like triangles."

TJ assured us vociferously at breakfast that there is no dog in the Chinese zodiac. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that dog-loving Meimei was born in the year of the dog and she and TJ (born in the year of the horse) have been at odds lately. Mommy showed him a zodiac chart, which he pronounced erroneous, citing his teacher. Meimei cried into her cereal.

TJ's rapidly expanding vocabulary has lately included the word "stupid." Repeatedly. Always accompanied by a gleeful cackle. He was having way more fun with the word than it's worth. He called me stupid. "Well, that's not very nice," I said lamely, but "why is it so funny? Let me try. 'I'm stupid, I'm stupid!'" TJ was doubled over with laughter.
"Mama," he said, "is a bra."
"What?!"
TJ explained that Jiejie told him that "stupid" meant "breast." When Jiejie got home, I asked her.
"That's not what I said," she told me. "I told him a boob was a stupid person."

TJ is really catching on to sounding out words. He performed admirably in a game of Scrabble Slam and read me the labels of some special cat food we got for our ailing 21-year-old pet Sluggo, but has expressed some concern about a sheet of paper in his school folder that mentions Grade 2. He likes first grade and wants to stay there.  Perhaps the little bites of academic triumph he is experiencing have an unexpected taste.