Our four year old told my wife the other day, “I want a little brother.”

Getting a little sister into the world was an unexpected and physically hard 9 months.

I don’t think that Nate is going to have a little brother anytime soon…or ever.

Unless we adopt.

Hmmmmmmm.

Nahhhhh….I say, “Enough kids around here.”

Enough of that.

When Jenny heard him say that, she decided to kid around with him.

She told him that when his Aunt’s baby was born (they might be expecting a boy), that we could take Sparrow up with us and swap the babies out.

Problem fixed….Nate would have an instant baby brother.

He was quiet for a millisecond and then he burst into frantic tears….

“I DON’T WANT TO GIVE SPARROW AWAY!!!!!!! I LOVE MY SISTER!!!!! I LOVE HER ALREADY!!!!  WE CAN’T GIVE HER AWAY!!!!”

Jenny got him calmed back down fairly quickly, but I think it really bothered him that we could be so cavalier about swapping the babies out.

I think that there must be a fine line between “reality” and “ridiculous” for a child.

He really thought that trading babies might be some weird “adult possibility”.

Thinking about it now, that was like some kind of sick Solomon escapade…like the one where he suggested that the women cut the baby in half so that both could be the “mother” when that was in dispute.

We don’t test our children’s love with sick mind games.

But it’s interesting and gratifying to see how distraught Nate got when he thought we might be willing at the drop of a hat to make a weird trade like that.

“I LOVE MY SISTER!!!!….I LOVE HER ALREADY!!!!”

That’s some pretty heavy and cool information for an early morning revelation.

Nate and his little sister went to Costco yesterday with us.

His big brother went, too.

Sparrow was crying, so Jenny sat out in the car with Nate and Sparrow while my son Isaac and I went in to do a little shopping.

When we came out, the car wouldn’t start.

When you have a four-year-old tell you, “I want to go” while you’re frantically going through the list of possible problems and fixes, it doesn’t help the situation.

“I want to go home, too…” I thought.

I called AAA finally and had a tow truck coming in two hours…and then Jenny said, “Maybe it’s the battery? That’s what it did the last time the battery went bad…”.

I was pretty sure that it couldn’t be the battery.  Why would it work and then not work so quickly? The horn still blew pretty strong…why would it be the battery?

But I listened to her….went back into Costco….stood in line…bought a battery, forgot my PIN for the debit card, started to run back outside to get Jenny’s PIN number, remembered it, went back and finished the transaction, took the new battery out to the car, installed it….and the car started right up.

It was the battery.

So I called AAA and canceled the tow.

Nate loves his sister…and the car won’t run with a bad battery.

I learn something new again every day.