Yesterday morning started like any other day.

4:30am, Greg awoke to a mysterious light flashing in the hallway. My immediate reaction would have been–home invasion with flashlight. That is of course, if I had been awake. He thought it must have been a sensor running out of batteries and flashing a warning light. That or laser beams laying a smack down on intruders.

We were both wrong. It was Hanna, sporting her miner’s flashlight headband as she stared down the hall claiming to have heard someone opening the kitchen cupboard and repeating the following, “Someone keeps opening the cupboard and I don’t like it.”

I snuck into the girl’s room to wake Ellie at 7:00am, the miner was miles ahead of her already eating breakfast, so she would have enough time to get ready for school.

She opened her eyes and bolted to the bathroom. I still can’t figure out how someone who has to pee that badly can sleep so soundly at the same time. She gathered her clothes and tucked them under her pajamas in an effort to change in the bathroom, yell “Surprise” and be one step closer to being ready for school. Except, as is often the case, her brilliant plan backfired and shortly after peeing, she emerged in the frame of the door to inform me she had dropped her socks in the toilet.

Chloe had found one of her sister’s Christmas Lipsmackers chapsticks in the corner of the hall and removed the lid.

I was busy reaching into the toilet for socks, not paying attention to wax addicted baby.

“Sure Chloe can put that on.”

When I turned around, she was gnawing on a stick of chapstick with at least ¼ inch of wax swirling around in her mouth.

I motioned with my dry hand for her to hand me the stick and she retreated. I pretended to move slowly so as not to alarm her (think When Animals Attack) but my secret plan was to lunge and grab it before she had time to react.

I think we all know how secret plans usually work out.

Off she ran screaming, “Wittle bit Mommy? Wittle bit wip chap for Chloe?”

When she realized she had outrun me but I wasn’t giving up, she continued to run while tossing the lip chap (an empty tube at this point) towards me down the hall. I guess she hoped it would trip me up and make me slide right out the side door like a cartoon battle.

Our conversation on the way home from school was, as usual, a series of random thoughts and questions.

Ellie: Darby says she knows who she’s going to kiss under the mistletoe when she’s a teenager.

Hanna: Mom, do you know what toe jam is?

Ellie: You know how people get attracted to smoking and they can’t stop? That’s how I am. I’m so attracted to Lego. I’m bad to the bone.

Before dinner, we spent some time talking to the girls about Wizards while they asked the obvious, “Are you and Daddy Wizards?” No. “Is anyone in your family a Wizard?” No. “Who won the Wizard competition in your family?” See earlier responses.

Ellie then decided to try a spell on her vegetables in an effort to get out of eating them.

“Round again, round again, don’t look at moccoli,

Pass my broccoli to my mother.”

Needs some tweaking.