Sweet Honesty and Innocence...from a 3 1/2 year old

On Sunday night Beth, Mikayla and I had a nice family dinner. Beth finished and went upstairs to wake Rowan up. I sat with Mikayla at the table while she finished her food. This is where is gets interesting.

Mikayla was in the middle of an extreme run-on sentence, probably saying something about dogs or princesses, when she let out a healthy mid-word belch. She didn't continue her sentence. She didn't say excuse me. She sat there with a stunned look on her face. A puzzled look. She was absolutely perplexed about something. After staring off into space for a bit, she bowed her head and looked down at the table. Something had obviously troubled my litle girl(even though burps are nothing new to her). She slowly got a hint of a grin which grew. And grew. And grew and grew and grew. She began to snicker, but tried to cover her face while she did. I had to ask, "Mikayla, what is so funny?" She looked up and said, "Dad, when I was talking I burbed...AND tooted!" I am not sure who laughed harder, but to this day I think of her little awe-struck face as she contemplated her newest life discovery and I laugh just as hard as I did when I heard her innocent little confession.

As for honesty, today I sat with Mikayla in the car for a bit. I was in the driver's seat and she crawled up to sit in the front passenger's seat. As we sat there talking, Mikayla began to giggle. Before I could ask that dangerous question ("What is so funny?), she said, "Dad, your tummy is fat!" And she began to laugh. I tried really hard not to laugh. We had a little talk about how even though Dad thinks its kinda funny, we shouldn't tell people that they are fat. She sat and pondered a moment and said, "Dad, your tummy is filled!" I couldn't help it. I just laughed.

Randy