Way Back Whens-day

I guess I'm on a nostalgia kick. Having a child reach a milestone must do that to ya. First she turns 18, next she graduates high school. Then he turns 16, gets his learner's permit, gets a job. The next one becomes a teenager in a few weeks. One receives First Holy Communion soon. I can't keep up!

This is the only picture I ever took of our animal collection, which is long gone. We used to have buckets of plastic animals of every stripe, and when the oldest two were preschool age, we played with them constantly. This photo shows one of the elaborate zoos they used to build.


But their favorite game was called Animal Cabanimal. Sarah and Scott used to take all their animals and spend hours "setting up" somewhere - usually in a main thoroughfare or on the steps. They wouldn't actually play with the toys. The "setting up" WAS the play. But I digress. They'd huddle together on the steps, setting up all their animals, and then - oops! It would be bedtime and they'd be "too tired" to clean up. You can imagine how this scene usually went.

It was this "setting up" one day that gave me one of my favorite memories. Sarah and Scott, aged 5 and 3, perched on the stairs, playing busily and quietly. Scott coughed. Sarah looked at him skeptically and asked, "Scott, did you fake cough?"

Scott replied, "No, I didn't fake it. I realed it."