the order of things

I learn the most interesting things while driving around with my kids.

This morning on the way to swimming lessons, I discovered a strategy that a younger Rooney would use to get little Mr. Morning (age 3 or 4) to shut off the bedroom light at night.  She would go to great lengths to convince him that by leaving the light on, he would destroy the world. 
This is how it went:  If you leave the light on, you'll be using lots of extra electricity.  The electric company will be working so hard to generate the lights at night, that it will produce too much smoke.  Too much smoke will make a hole in the ozone layer.  If the ozone layer gets holes in it, the ice caps will melt, the polar bears will die and the rest of us will drown.
Leaving the light on in your bedroom at night not only annoys older sisters, it puts entire civilizations at risk.  Thank goodness this disaster was averted.


Another little discovery?
When the three girls shared a bedroom, they shared a set of bunk beds with a trundle bed that pulled out from underneath the bottom bunk.  I knew there were many nights of giggling and hushed conversation in that room.  What I didn't know, was that bunking together also necessitated a sweetly disguised pecking order.  The oldest daughter slept in the top bunk, (SWEET Mesquite we call her) and Rooney dubbed her the princess of the clouds.  I had painted a mural on their bedroom wall that depicted a summer scene:  A white picket fence in the grass lined with sunflowers, and above it were blue sky and clouds.  The top bunk hovered in the clouds, thus her title.  Rooney slept in the bottom bunk, which provided a lovely view of the sunflowers.  That made her the sunflower princess.  The youngest?  (And, by the way, I'm flabbergasted that two sweet, supposedly nurturing older sisters would not only agree on the following propaganda, but that Leeli completely bought into it)  She slept in the trundle, and her older sisters convinced her that it was only fitting that she be crowned Princess Dirt.