Day 621 - Dirty Dirty!

Someone mentioned to me that Crazy Grandma and Lazy Grandpa Ichikawa probably spend more time with the kids than I do. So I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my trusty abacus. After a couple of quick flicks of the beads, I figured out that my parents probably spend about 5-6 hours more time with the kids than I do.

Inevitably after babysitting the kids for the past three months, you figure the kids must have picked up some habits and nuances from Crazy and Lazy. And you're right! Just like Lazy Grandpa Ichikawa, Andrew enjoys lying down in front of the television with the remote control and yell at Crazy Grandma for another bowl of corned beef hash. As for Emma, she has actually picked up Crazy Grandma's germaphobe proclivities!

We have noticed over the past month that Emma has become increasingly clean and neat. If there are small pieces of food in her high chair, Emma will point to it and say "dirr-tee." If Emma's clothes gets dirty with crayons, she will point to the mark and say "dirr-tee." If Emma looks inside Lisa's handbag, she will say "verrry dirr-tee annn ex-treem-lee un-orr-gan-nize."

Today was our friend's kid's second birthday. It was outside, and they had a plastic ball pool and a tented house with some books inside. Emma was inside the house reading a book, and decided to come out. As she crawled out the door of the tent, her hands got on the grass. When she stood up, she looked a little horrified at how her hands looked like with the mixture of grass, dirt, water, and fecal matter from a variety of animals. While looking at her hands, she uttered the words, "Dir-tee. Dir-tee."

No joke! Look at the picture!


I told my Dad how Emma has become this clean freak because of Crazy Grandma. He responded, "Better clean than dirty, and pass me the remote control." I suppose there is some truth to his answer that it could be a good thing that Emma likes to be clean. Of course you don't want her to become this anal retentive anomaly, but there isn't anything inherently wrong with being spic and span. And as long as she continues to poke her poop with her finger, I don't think we have to worry about her going overboard.