We’ve been staying with my cousin Amy, her husband, Sam The Army Man, and their kids, Sadie and Seth, plus one bun in the oven.

Sadie is 5, and just starting to master reading and writing.  As a result, she’s paying closer attention to what people say, the words that are on signs, etc.  This makes for some entertaining moments.

Yesterday my Aunt Karen (dad’s sister, Amy’s mom) and I were in the backseat of the suburban with Sadie when Sadie started talking about names.  “My name is Sadie,” she said, “and your name is Sarah.  Sadie comes from Sarah and Sarah means princess!”  I was all, “Wow, I didn’t know that Sadie was a derivative of Sarah.” And Sadie said, “what’s derivative mean?”

How do you explain what ‘derivative’ means to a 5 year-old?  Karen and I blubbered around for the next 10 minutes trying to come up with an understandable, accurate description of the word ‘derivative’.  After that situation, we have made a pretty solid effort to make sure that the words that we say out loud will be words that she’ll be able to understand, if for nothing else, to avoid the 10 minutes of bumbling around trying to figure out a more apt way to communicate.

We were doing pretty well until this morning when Zack and Sam snuck into the ‘grown-up’ living room to watch some Discovery Chanel.  They were watching Bear Grylls’s Man vs. Wild when Aunt Karen and I meandered into the room just in time to watch Bear bite the head off of a live frog and swallow it.  As I was dry heaving into Zack’s lap, Karen said out loud, “This show is just TMI.”  Sadie the Sponge quickly asked, “What’s TMI spell?” Le Sigh. That one, thankfully was easier to explain.

But the question that easily reigns supreme as the best Sadie question came this morning when Sam turned off the TV during a commercial to watch a video on his lap top.  Sadie asked Sam if he would turn on the TV, and he said no, that he needed to watch this video really quick because (he’s about to be deployed to Afganistan and) he’s going to be working with the Canadians.  To which Sadie quickly replied, “What’s a Canadian?”