What Happens In Tennessee...

I went with my wife and kids to a week-long family reunion in Tennessee with my in-laws. Great folks. Great time. My two-year-old daughter, Belle, learned a lot on the trip. For example, we’re walking up a path to a waterfall in the Smoky Mountains and Belle sees her Uncle John.

“What are Uncle John and [his girlfriend] Megan doing?” Belle asks.

Fortunately for me, they were just holding hands.

“Do you think they like each other?” Belle asks.

“Sure seems that way,” I say.

“Think they’ll keep holding hands?" she says.

“Probably. Your Uncle John really likes her.”

“I like Megan, too,” she says sweetly, one finger in her mouth and swinging her other arm.

Belle sees an inchworm and we examine it for awhile. The inchworm “stands” up at one point, sticking its body up in the air.

Belle tries to mimic the worm, putting her right leg up in the air, looking more like a dog fertilizing a hydrant. “Look Daddy,” she says. “The inchworm is standing like this.”

Her one-year-old brother, Johnny, giggles. “Is Johnny funny about that?” Belle asks.

The trip from our Wisconsin home to Tennessee is about 14 hours by car. We try to limit their video time, so you can imagine the number of books and toys we hand back to the kids to keep them entertained. Johnny looks at each toy for about 10 minutes then makes like the Swedish Chef.

I open the side door to the minivan to find the largest toy salad ever created, and I run away screaming “Avalanche!”

My wife even resorts to passing back tampons from her purse. Now those fascinate Johnny for quite some time.

We listen to a lot of music in the car. Which is great, until you want the kids to sleep. “Time for night-night,” I tell Belle.

“Can we listen to The Beatles?” Belle asks.

“Nope, it’s sleepy time,” I say.

“Johnny wants to hear The Beatles,” Belle says.

“John’s asleep,” I say, “plus he can’t talk.”

“Johnny wants to hear… Johnny Cash?” she tries.

She’s as bad as the "Land Shark" on Saturday Night Live, the Chevy Chase character who would try anything to get into your house—even claim to deliver a “Candy-gram…”

Belle’s an inquisitive girl to be sure. The other day, Grandma is in the kitchen and Belle asks, “Grandma, do you have privates?”

A few days later, at the library, Belle randomly pulls a book off the nonfiction shelves that says the Spanish equivalent of “Manual for Infant Emergencies.”

"I read this," she says, holding it up. The librarian chuckles. I think it's a wise selection, but unfortunately a couple weeks too late for her brother’s trip to the ER.

All this learning is going to her head, though, I think. Leaving the library, we pass a middle-aged man who says hello. “That was Frank Sinatra, Daddy,” she says definitively, raising her pointer finger into the air and nodding.

The middle-aged man didn't even have blue eyes. My son is exploring, too, in the form of climbing everything. The other day, in about five seconds, he scales Belle’s small chair, goes from there up to her drawing table, to an open kitchen drawer, and onto the kitchen counter with a big smile! Luckily, the sitter turns around to quickly scoop him up.

Turns out that, when my wife was a baby, she crawled onto the stove and kicked on a burner, lighting her diaper on fire and causing the adults to hose her down in the kitchen sink. Luckily, she was unharmed. My brother-in-law told that true story in Tennessee.

Gotta love family vacations.