Jack's Umbrella and the Breaking Man

I forgot to tell you about a couple of funny moments we had today. While we were eating lunch, an elderly man came up and offered the kids each a balloon sword. Sweet, right? After each kid excitedly took one, he turned to Jim and said "Money." Nice.

Anyway, the kids were holding their balloon swords for most of the afternoon. Lily was waving hers around like a sword, but Jack was poking his into the ground as he rolled along in his stroller, and chanting "BRE-la. BRE-la. BRE-la." We soon realized he was calling his sword an umbrella. We told him it was a sword, and he said "NOOOO. JACK-ee's BRE-la." He is so odd.

This evening, both kids were watching Scooby Doo. In this particular episode, the main character was an evil snowman. Jack was VERY concerned about the snowman. He referred to the snowman as "BREAK-ing MAAAAAN." He did not like the Breaking Man, and he wanted us to notice the Breaking Man and repeatedly grabbed our arms and pointed at him, saying "UH-ohhhhh. BREAK-ing MAAAN!" We finally figured out that in Jack's world, breaking not only means broken, about to be broken, opened, and taken apart, but it also means "bad." Apparently, since he knows breaking things is bad, a bad snowman is a Breaking Man. At dinner, more than an hour later, he repeatedly assured us the that the Breaking Man was bye-bye.