From Yucky to Icky

Last Friday night, Shaling & I drove down to St. Louis to meet Grandma & Aunt Ann at a Cardinal game. We absolutely sang our dear hearts out to quite a variety of songs, "Kung Fu Fighting" by Cee Lo Green, "Party in the U.S.A." by Miley Cyrus, "Dive" by Steven Curtis Chapman, and several more. She broke my heart when she reached up to skip Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", telling me, "I no like this one."

When we took a break from the music, she tattled on her dad. The preface to this is that she picked out her outfit for the Friday game on WEDNESDAY...all of the way down to her socks. She even inquired about Cardinal underwear. Apparently, Dad (who, remember, is a Chicago Cubs fan) couldn't keep his mouth shut about her attire.

Shaling tells it like this:

"Mom, in the morning, Dad not nice."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. I come downstairs & say 'good morning, Dad'; Dad say, 'good morning, Shaling; you are going to see the yucky Cardinals."

"You're right. That is not nice."

"Yeah. We should start telling Dad, 'you go see the yucky Cubs.'"

"Or, we could show Dad how to be nice."

"Yeah!!! Boys yucky. Girls NOT yucky."

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On Sunday, we attended a family reunion in Carlinville. On our way into town, we passed the distinct odor of skunk. It was a bit faint, as if it had been there a few days, but most of us still knew exactly what it was. Not Shaling, however, who gave a couple of extra sniffs and said, "smells good".

Dad replied, "No, Shaling, it doesn't smell good. That's a skunk. It smells icky."

Preston, who craves every opportunity he can get to teach Shaling something new, jumped all over this. Quite matter-of-factly, he said, "Yeah, Shaling. A skunk is an animal that farts when it gets scared so that people won't come close."

Here are some pictures from that Cardinal game Friday night:

Shaling poses between Grandma & Aunt Ann.


Shaling & Grandma


Though she barely understands what she's doing, Shaling keeps score based on what we tell her to do.


Shaling makes it up on the large scoreboard, thanks to a new fan-friendly option -- you can send a picture to Twitter and have it posted on the scoreboard.