Do you play the school bus game in your family? We do. The objective is to be the first one to see a school bus. You get a point for each one you call out first. Yelling “SCHOOL BUS!!!!” at the top of your lungs usually does the trick. Maia is an expert at this. She always wins, except when she and Kent cheat on each other (but they call it “cheesing,” not cheating, as in “You’re cheesing me!” I think it’s supposed to be a cross between cheating and teasing, but sometimes it’s safer not to ask). Almost every night they ask each other how many school buses they saw during the day. Neither one wants to be the first to say. Whoever caves first, the other always saw exactly one more. No matter what. It’s hilarious.

I’m the big loser in this game. Even Noah beats me now at seeing school buses. But I’m not telling this story to gain sympathy for my school bus spotting deficiencies. I’m leading up to a funny story that happened in the car this morning. Maia, as usual, spotted a school bus long before it registered on my aging brain. I told her she had an “eagle eye,” and then explained to her what that meant. So she is very proud of herself for having eagle eyes, and even makes up a little song about it. And she wants to know if her friend, at whose house I am about to drop her, has eagle eyes too. She then goes on to tell me that she uses her left eagle eye to see things on her left side and her right eagle eye to see things on her right, but she doesn’t know which eagle eye she uses to see things in the middle. That just struck me as really funny because I pictured a Cyclops eye in the middle of her forehead. Just my little amusement for the day.