Happy Heritage: I want to go to work!

8 year old Maria likes to write notes to me rather than asking her questions directly. Mostly the notes are requesting to be excused from a chore or tattling on her sister or begging for a treat. Recently while she was supposed to be unloading the dishwasher she handed me this note:

Dear Mama,
Why do we have to do dishes? We can always just leave them in the dishwasher and pull out the dishes when we need them
your loveing dauter
Maria

I pointed out that then there would be nowhere to put the dirty dishes and sent her back to finish her chore.
.
2 year old Princess seems to understand remarkably well that there is in fact a baby growing in my tummy. She LOVES babies so...she asked me what she should eat to get a baby growing in her tummy also. She points to her mouth every time we talk about the baby, wishing I would explain to her how to eat a baby so she can "own" one of her very own.
.
Both she and Ant are jealous of my husband and sister (who lives with us), who get to go to "work" nearly every day. It must be a fun place since they keep going back again and again. So Princess has told me more than once now that "I want to go to work!" I assured her that when she's a teenager then I will certainly allow her to go to work also. She seems content with that answer for now.
.
I might have figured out where my kids get their antics from. At a retreat recently I had to apologize to the other women I shared a cabin with. My disclaimers: 1) I was just beginning to recover from a bout of the flu and 2) I wasn't really awake. Of course, neither were the other ladies, until I changed that for them. Anyway, about 3 hours before breakfast I suddenly woke up (well, obviously I didn't truly wake up...) to the sound of someone coughing. I immediately thought that 1) the person coughing was my sister who 2) was thoroughly exposed to the flu I and my kids had fallen victim to 3) was coughing because she was getting sick (normal warning from my kids) yet 4) wasn't awake herself and therefore 5) NEEDED me to wake her up and rush her to the bathroom (as if she weren't adult enough to do that herself: remember, none of my kids would be able to if they suddenly succumbed to the flu in the middle of the night. I therefore jumped out of bed and rushed over to her bunk to wake her up. Unfortunately, the woman who groggily woke up wasn't my sister; I'd gotten the bunks mixed up. A second lady heard the commotion and asked me what was wrong, then directed me to the correct bunk. The third woman I woke up was in fact my sister, who had not been coughing, was not sick and did not need my help. By then the lady who was actually coughing (recovering from a cold, nothing serious at all) was also awake. Thoroughly embarrassed, I returned to my own bed and prepared my apologies for everyone whose sleep I had disturbed.
.
The tradition goes back at least one more generation, but I'll let my mom decide who to share her story with from that same retreat weekend. ;-)