This king of smiles, this Bolingbroke

This morning Lia looked out the window and saw the ground laced with frost (not an unusual development in January, but it's been unseasonably warm of late). "Oh, it frosted last night," she observed. "There was frosting last night?" Julia misheard eagerly. "No," Lia explained, "it FROSTED last night." Julia still wanted clarification: "It fros-DID, or fros-DIDN'T?"

During dinner Eli abandoned prematurely our ritual of consumption and tried to go listen to a Britekids (c) CD of a little book called, "The Land of Obey." Failing in her efforts, she asked for help by repeatedly calling out just what she wanted. While we're sure she meant to say, "Land of Obey CD," Justin was roused from a pasta-induced stupor to the bellowed refrain of "Land of Obesity! Land of Obesity!"--which he took as an admonitory indication of where the dietary gods might send him if he ate any more pasta. Alarmed, he excused himself from the table without further ado.