Size

Conversation between Arielle and the husband:

They were standing at the head of the stairs (the husband was ready to go down to the basement to start sorting through the clutter to find what to throw out and what to pack and take with us to the new house.) I missed the first part of the conversation, but it caught my attention when Arielle said to the husband, "Your tummy is big!"

The husband (who is, like me, carrying a few extra pounds) said, "Yes, it is. Daddy needs to lose weight."

"Or you will get bigger?"

"Well, not if I exercise," he told her.

"You will get bigger and bigger!" she went on.

Meanwhile I'm practically falling down laughing. "Remember," I told the husband, "in her world, getting bigger is a good thing!"

He grinned and nodded back. Arielle, meanwhile, was looking very concerned.

"If you get bigger and bigger," she said, "you will break the roof!"

I started laughing harder, picturing a Godzilla-sized husband bursting through the top of the house.

"No," he said to her. "I'm as tall as I'm going to get." He touched the top of his head with the flat of his hand, as if to block any further growth.

Arielle held out her hand to touch his stomach with her palm. "You will get bigger this way?" She brought her hand out in short jerks to indicate an expanding belly.

I missed what the husband said next, because I had to wipe the tears of laughter out of my eyes.

"How tall are you?" Arielle asked her father.

"Six feet tall," the husband said.

"You will break your shoes!" Arielle was so amazed by all this that she was running up and down the stairs at this point, pointing to the shoes and boots stored under the coat rack.

"I knew that was going to be a problem," the husband told me. He turned back to Arielle. "Not those kind of feet. A foot measures distance. It's about this long." He held his hands apart so she could see what he meant.

Well. Now that we knew Daddy wasn't going to break the house or grow new feet, there wasn't anything much interesting anymore. The conversation broke up and I decided I had to get it down on paper.

I love the way she thinks!