Josie Funnies

A number of you have told me that your favorite posts on this blog have been the ones about my kids, for example, Night-time Thoughts. So I've collected a few funny stories about Josie and Toby from the past several months. Here are some stories about Josie. Next Friday, I'll post stories about Toby.

One night, I was hugging Josie as we were saying good night. I buried my face in her neck and hair and squeezed her tight and smelled her smell for a long time. After several minutes she said, "Mommy, you should come up for air."

I haven't been able to swim laps since February, when the cancer in my lungs started to make breathing difficult. Lately, I've been feeling back to normal, so I got in the pool with Josie. I challenged her to a race across the pool and I told her, "I know you're a good swimmer now, so I'm not going to let you win on purpose!" And off we went. Much to my dismay, I wasn't as back to normal as I'd thought, and I was struggling to keep up with my five-year-old daughter! But just before we got to the finish, Josie suddenly slowed down and I reached the other side of the pool first. She shouted out, "You WON, Mommy! Good job!" She was beaming with pride because she had let me win.

Earlier this year, when we were trying to raise money for a boy with cancer, Josie overheard me telling someone about my friend's daughter who offered her piggy bank to help the boy. Josie heard me say how impressed and touched I was by this little girl's gesture. Then Josie offered, "Mommy, if you give me a hundred dollars, I'll give it to the boy."

We were at the beach and showing the kids how to hold a seashell to their ears to hear the ocean. Josie was impressed. I was about to tell her that it wasn't really the ocean she was hearing, but I stopped myself and asked, "Josie, do you want to think it's magic, or do you want to know the truth?" She wanted to know the truth so I told her. She was as fascinated as she was when she thought it was magic.

I once told Josie that she had a wonderful imagination. I said, "I hope you never lose your imagination, because as kids grow up into adults, they tend to lose their imaginations." The very next day, Josie came running into the house from the terrace, where the kids had been playing with Play-Doh (and mixing all the colors until there was just one big blob of brown dough). Her eyes were big and sparkly and she was hopping from excitement as she announced, "Mommy! Daddy still has his imagination! He just said the Play-Doh looked like poop!"

Josie was saying her bedtime prayer one night and she ended it with "Please bless..." followed by a list of each member of our family, our extended family, her friends, her friends' families, our family's friends, and so on for several minutes without pause. She finally ran out of breath and ended with, "And everybody else in the whole world." The next night, she went straight for the shortcut and simply said, "Please bless everybody in the whole world." Then she added, "Especially the poor people and the bad people." I don't know why she included bad people. She's more generous of heart than I am, I guess.

Hope you enjoyed these stories. Have a great weekend!