Braaaaiins!

Clara came home from the library yesterday with a copy of The Brain, by Seymour Simon. Last night she and I sat on the couch as she flipped through the book, showing me what the brain looks like dissected, in MRI, in models. I pointed out different parts of the brain. Karen quizzed her on the cerebrum and the cerebellum.

Then Clara stopped on one page and just started reading. She read a sentence and a half almost entirely by herself, then finished the second sentence with only a little prompting from me (on words like “nerve,” “impulse,” and “response”). This is as much as I’ve ever seen her read at one go, and I was amazed and impressed.

Then she stopped. “Daddy, can I taste a brain some day?”

No, honey, I hope not.

“Zombies eat brains.”

Why yes, yes they do.

“BRAAAAAINS!” she moaned, coming at me like a zombie. She put her hand on my head. “My hand is an octopus! It’s eating your brain!”

Uh oh! Now I’m a zombie! Let’s get Mommy!

“BRAAAAAINS!” we both moaned as we lurched over to KJ to eat her brain.

Then I chased Clara upstairs to get into her jammies, moaning “Braaaaains!” the whole way.

Where do kids get this stuff, I wonder?