The Kids' Take on the Giants

On Sunday, my brother told my niece, Maddie, that we were having a Super Bowl party (apparently using the term "party" very loosely). He explained to her that we'd have chips and dip for the super bowl. Later that day, she asked "Daddy, what did you tell me about tonight?" He replied, "I said we were having a Super Bowl party." Eventually he put out two bowls of chips for the girls and turned the game on. I sat there watching (shocking, I know) as Maddie and Livi ate chips. Maddie starts talking and says, "Is this the Super Bowl?" and she's repeating it several times (I think kids just like to hear themselves). I finally say, "yes," and she keeps saying "Is this the Super Bowl?" Finally, I look over at her and notice that she's cradling the bowl of Sun Chips and pointing to it. "Oh...no, that's not the super bowl, that's a regular bowl, this game is the Super Bowl." Unfortunately, I could only explain to her that some games are called bowls, like the Rose Bowl and the Orange Bowl - and between me and Mike, that's all we could come up with. Then we explained to her that in this family the super bowl was a game that had very good commercials. Although, this year, obviously, the game proved to be much more interesting than the commercials. (As an aside, this caused us a slight problem - we paused at half time so they could put the kids to bed. By the time he came back, we watched half time, but the game picked up afterwards that we couldn't fast forward through that and we obviously couldn't fast forward through the commercials. So the ultimate dilemma was reached when running on tivo time. We managed to catch up to just about 5-10 minutes behind the actual game).

Today, I was sitting with Maddie while she was coloring and eating yogurt. Satisfied that she was thoroughly distracted, I turned the tv to the Giants' parade (rather than cartoons). Thinking she's not listening to me at all, I told her that this was the Giants' parade. She doesn't respond for several minutes. Finally, she says, "Are they this big?" as she points to her coloring book. "No, they're a team; they're much bigger than that book," I say. "Are they as big as the house?" she asks. Ah - she heard "giants" not "Giants." I just told her, "yeah, they're huge."