Coriel is just sometimes funny.

So, I have to preface the second story by admitting that I’m a little bit (a lot) mortified by Coriel’s increasing tendency to quote from movies or shows we’ve seen. Especially when she doesn’t really understand what she’s quoting. I have a regular internal battle on the subject of how to learn from the shows we watch and also not watch too much. So don’t judge me too harshly. With that said, here we go…

Story #1: Sneaky

Last night at dinner, I was sitting next to Coriel, eating my salad (it should be noted here that Coriel doesn’t like salad unless all the pieces are separate, and then she’ll usually eat them). Suddenly Coriel pops up from her chair and starts mincing toward me, with her fingers up and her eyes squinted—the way you do when you’re being fake-sneaky. She came hoveringly close to me and my bowl of salad.

“What are you doing?” I asked in confusion.

“Sneaking up on your food!” she declared. Then she crept around me and tried to sneak up on my food from the other direction. It wasn’t that she wanted to eat it. She just apparently didn’t want it to see her coming.*

*Happily, later on when I was trying to convince her to try a meatball, some of her food just sneaked up on her and jumped in her mouth. It worked remarkably well and she ate a fair amount of sneaky food that way.

Story #2: Not Quite What I Intended

I was in the kitchen yesterday, putting groceries away in the fridge, when Coriel walked in and stood kind of strangely in front of me. One foot was raised onto her toes so that her hip was shifted upward.

She looked down and behind her and said, “Does this dress make my butt look fat?”

“Where did you get that from?” I asked, perhaps not as calmly as I could have. I was appalled that she could have picked this up at such a young age (and also… she wasn’t wearing a dress).

“Sokka said it,” she explained, and went on to describe where it had happened in a show that we like to watch. Sokka is a boy who was trying to disguise himself from the bad guys, and he’s the comic relief—hence disguising himself as a girl and worrying about his butt.

“Oh, okay,” I said. “No, that dress does not make your butt look fat.”

She left the room and I continued loading the fridge. A minute later I heard sobs emerging from the living room. I ran in to check on my daughter and found her sitting on the couch looking tragic and bereft.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You said something mean to me,” she said amid her tears.

“Oh, what did I say? I didn’t mean to say anything mean to you.” I hate when I make my tender daughter sad.

“You said my butt didn’t look fat!” she sobbed.

I just looked at her for a moment. My lips twitched. I tried to hide a smile. I tried to cover a titter. But I just couldn’t—in mere moments, I was in the midst of a full-fledged belly laugh. Fortunately, she delights in making me and her daddy laugh, so instead of being incensed that I would laugh at her after saying something so mean, she too joined in the laughter.

“Well, I’m sorry for saying something mean,” I told her. “And yes, that dress does make your butt look fat.”