Last night we attended a ceremony for my grandfather's portrait hanging at the Medina County Court of Common Pleas. It was a lovely event. Grandpa's law partner, Bob Bux, presented the portrait with some lovely words. At one point, he retold the story of Grandpa's showing up in his office and reciting, from memory, Kublai Khan, which he correctly identified as a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. BC, who was sitting on the table of the grand jury room facing her grandpa (my dad), immediately perked up and said, "He wrote Rime of the Ancient Mariner!"

She then went on to enjoy rather a large meal with her grandpa at an Italian restaurant, where they enjoyed lasagne and spumoni, two of BC's favorites.

This morning, BC has been up to her usual tricks, and has kept me hopping. She's had a head cold. I could hear her froggy little voice in her room when she woke up, saying, "Mom? Mommy? Are you there?" And then, poor thing, she started coughing. So I trotted into her room to get her up and get her moving, and she announced, "I was choking like a bat."

I was ignorant of bats' tendencies to choke.

So we changed pants, had some cuddles and then headed into the house for the day. But her brother was being naughty. Her solution was to move in, Commando style, and fix the problem. I hauled her off of him and explained that she was not in charge. "If he is doing something he's not supposed to be doing, you let Mommy discipline him."

He kept being naughty. There was a pause.

"Mommy, will you discipline him please?"

I was talking to my mom on the phone at the time and told her what BC had said. Then I heard her pipe up: "But you're not disciplining him!"