Other People's Kids are Funny, Too

On Wednesdays I help a neighbor bring her kids home from school because she has been struggling with a seizure disorder and can't drive. My kids go to school within walking distance, but her kids attend the charter school on the other side of town. Today I was just laughing because the kindergartner started singing and sang all the way home. This will give you an idea of how long the drive is:

She started with "Little Bunny Foo Foo." The good fairy came down all three times and gave Little Bunny Foo Foo three full chances before we had even left the parking lot. Then she started on "The Ants Go Marching" but couldn't remember what the rhymes were for some of the numbers, so I had to help her come up with them. By the time we got to "Nine" I couldn't think of the rhyme. It was ok, though, because her brother supplied "Look at the Sky." She said, "Yeah, I think that's it" and kept right on, never even noticing that sky and nine don't rhyme. I thought for sure that ten was the end, but she kept going right on through eleven, twelve, and so on.

Right in the middle of fifteen she paused to say, "we're almost to 100." Seventeen sounded suspiciously like "seventy" and rhymed with Chimney. At nineteen her brother chimed in and tried to jump to 101. She stopped with a big sigh and said, "Now I have to start all over. 'The ants go marching one by one...."

I had spent the past few numbers just laughing to myself because it was better than screaming hysterically out the window, but I did break in at this point to reassure her that we could stay right there on nineteen or ninety or whatever it was.

It is a good thing I have kids of my own to break me in, because even then it was a looonnnggg drive home!