So on Monday I stopped by to visit one of my favorite families from my church. Melissa, who is 8 years older than I, has four beautiful children and a very great husband. She and I get along very, very well and have a lot in common, except those noticible things like she's got four beautiful children and is married and was not raised with any Biblical context at all.

Her beautiful children are, in order of oldest to youngest: Morgan, Madison, Ezra, and Nora. Nora is a toddler, Ezra is 4, Madison is 7, and Morgan will be in my jr. high group next year.

When I visit, I think I'm visiting about equally to see Melissa as well as to see her beautiful children.

When I was there on Monday, Ezra came down with a balloon he'd apparently unknowingly swiped from his sister, Madison. Maddy explained to Ezra that she'd like her balloon back and they played a little game of chase 'till I jumped in there and grabbed him, at which point I proceeded to tickle him 'till he let go of the balloon.

When he stood up, he frowned at me and said "You're a meany."

(I wish I could type for you all the "accent" of sorts that Ezra has. Just an adorable way of speaking that sounds at once incredibly intelligent and yet as childish as he ought to be at four years old.)

When I just smiled at him, he then reminded me that I'm also a dummy, and stalked off to "play" by himself in a corner.

When I went into the same room to talk to Melissa, he kept staring at me and chanting, "dummyhead, dummeyhead, dummeyhead."

At which point I was amused at the way that children always seem to think that adding the word "head" to another word makes it all that much more insulting.

Within the next ten minutes, Ezra had travelled three rooms over into what serves as an office, where he found Nora running around in circles or some such.

He attempted to pick her up, which made her scream and sent Melissa and I both running in to see if she was hurt. Ezra had this look on his face that I wouldn't dare try to describe, as if he suddenly realized that he was misbehaving. (Under normal circumstances, it would've been ok for him to attempt picking her up. It was under his bad-attitude circumstances that it was not ok, because he was not considering whether or not she wanted to be picked up.)

He then stalked off again while Nora ran to Melissa for love and comfort.

I then caught him out of the corner of my eye leaning up against the back of the couch and mumbling to himself "I feel bad, so I'm trying to make Nora feel bad."

Fasinating, I thought to myself. This boy not only *DOES* what normal people, especially older kids and adults, do on a regular basis .. He actually VERBALIZES it.

How many people have you known that did not have to be told "You're only insulting that person to make yourself feel better" but instead knew exactly what they were doing, spoke such out loud, and went right on with life like this kind of extremely astute observation was normal for a four year old?

So later, Melissa pointed out to Ezra that since he didn't have a nap that day and was behaving the way he was behaving, perhaps they should go back to him having an afternoon nap.

He was adamently against this idea, yet verbalized another statement I don't think I'd ever heard 'from the lips of babes':

"I don't like being big."

"I like being little," he continued, noting that Nora gets a lot more attention and favoritism because she's the littlest, and yet he's not old enough to do the things his big sisters do.

This kid amazed me.

Ezra, by the way, also equates height with age. So that he realizes I'm younger than his mother, but he also thinks that one of his father's friends who is actually a couple of years younger than Joe must be older than Joe, because he's at least half a foot taller.

When I was a wee little girl, I used to say that my twin brother was 4 inches taller than me because he was 4 minutes older.

Hmm..