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Katie has latched onto a new phrase: if you would be so kind. I'm not exactly sure where she got it from, and she's not exactly sure how to use it, but that just makes it even better. I first heard her say it when we found ourselves (as we so often do) in a toy aisle at the store. She was admiring some Barbie outfits (OK, we both were...), and said "Daddy if you would be so kind to get these for me I would really enjoy playing with them." Too cute. It was almost hard to resist--almost (you know how much they charge for those things?). She had another good one with Angel the other night, telling her "I guess I should have enjoyed and appreciated my time in the tub before the sprayer" (she's not a big fan of the sprayer). Nothing gets past this kid. I remember a long time ago explaining to her why I didn't want her doing something potentially dangerous, even though she promised to be careful, by saying "there's this little thing called an accident..." A week or so later I was stopping her from doing something else dangerous and she says "because there's a little thing called an accident?" What other 4 year old says things like "May I have a word with you?" and "If you would be so kind..." ? She's one smart cookie.

As for the other smart cookie, Miss Margaret now does an adorable hands out, palms up, shoulder shrugging "All gone" when something is--you guessed it--all gone. She adds this to her cute and squeaky "Thank you" and the classic "Uh oh." She's figuring things out at an amazing rate, learning from big sister's example (Yikes!). Even better is her obsession with putting things away, which is, to put it mildly, not something typically demonstrated by Katie. She'll dump out the foam blocks just to get to put them away (if you've never seen our house on a random weekday when we haven't had company in a while, then you'll have no idea what a blessing having a neat child would be--no offense to our wonderful but often disastrous first-born), and the other morning she took her sippy cup into the kitchen and placed it matter-of-factly in the bottom of the dishwasher. It was so cute that I almost didn't point out to her that it actually goes in the top tray--almost (I mean, if she's going to do it, she might as well do it right).