The things that they pick up. It boggles the mind.

Alyssa got me pretty good on her birthday. We gave her a fancy new bike (it's bright purple, sparkly, covered in pictures of Tinkerbell and her fairy friends, and it has streamers on the handlebar and a light up musical, um, thingy, on the front of it), and I took her outside to try it out. She had recently been listening to Laura reading one of Ethan's (many, many, many) books featuring the characters from Cars (including, as Ethan often calls him, Chick Hicks and His Mean Tricks; I think I want to use that as a band name). She thought racing me (while I was on foot, mind you) was a good idea, and a great time to pull out a quote from Ethan's book. She pulled up next to me on the bike and said, "Let's race! Get ready to lose, old man!" It's hard to outrun a five year old on a bike while you're trying not to laugh and trying to tell her that's not a nice way to talk to people at the exact same time.

Ethan popped up with some great stuff a couple of days ago, too. While all of the girls were off doing girly things, Ethan and I went to McDonald's for some guy bonding time. He got some junky Happy Meal Hot Wheels toy with a little plastic dude that popped out of it. He declared that little plastic driver guy was a superhero and said, "His name is Batman Superman! His last name is Krypto!" I said, "What?" I think I was rendered momentarily incoherent by the awesomeness of this from a three year old. He responded, patiently and slowly, almost like one might when explaining something to a three year old, "His name...is Batman Superman...and his last name is Krypto! Batman Superman Krypto to the rescue!" Thank you, Ethan, for making me realize I'm such a superhero geek that my tiny three year old has already picked it up and reflected it back at me. Also, that's awesome.