Who's on first? and Who has to potty?

Last night Art had a meeting, so Alex and I were headed to McDonald's. (Win-win, I get really sweet tea and he gets a toy, and, oh, yeah, a Happy Meal.) We'd made it about 10 seconds out of the school parking lot when he announced, "I have to go to the bathroom." "Can you make it to McDonald's?" "Yeah. Krabby and Froggy and Liony have to go, too."

Note: For those of you who don't know, Krabby, Froggy and Liony are some of the invisible menagerie that live with us. Krabby = a crab, Froggy = a frog, and Liony = well, Liony is an invisible robot. I have no idea why.

I thought about it for a second. "Is Mousy with us?" (Also an invisible tenant - a mouse.) From the backseat: "Yeah, but he doesn't have to potty." No word on why Mousy has the iron bladder of the bunch.

A couple of days ago Alex requested a movie from Netflix. "You know, with those two guys who are funny, and there was a mummy." It took a second for Abbott and Costello to dawn on me. I put them in our Netflix queue. I also checked our local library and requested the DVD they had. It contains 8 (!) Abbott and Costello movies on 2 discs. We may just have to buy it.

Alex is a well-known character at our library. In fact, he has his own librarian, Miss Patty. It cracks them up when he comes in asking, "Where is MY librarian?" He knows all of them now and has asked most of them to have dinner with us. So far none have taken us up on it. When we got home today they'd left a message on the answering machine that they had something on hold for us. After dinner we went to see what it was. I told him that it could be the Abbott and Costello movie and he fairly bounced into the library. At the desk he asked the ladies working, "Do-you-have-my-Abbott&Costello-movie-that-Mom-asked-you-to-get?" Very fast and all run together. They looked at me for clarification. "He wants to know if his Abbott and Costello movie is in." Why, yes, it was. "Alex, do you like Abbott and Costello?" they asked. This led to a confusing couple of minutes in which he summarized every movie of theirs he'd ever seen, thankfully without acting them out. They asked if he wanted to look for anything else. Nope, that's all we need. On the way home he sang a new song he'd written. The lyrics were:

Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Coste-eh-eh-lo
(repeat)

We managed to get halfway through "Hold That Ghost" tonight. Tommy Dorsey and his band open up the movie with the Andrews Sisters singing. He was watching the three of them. "Are they twins?" "No, just sisters." "Oh." I got him to go to bed by convincing him that the ghost wasn't real, just a bad guy with cheesecloth over his fedora. Sorry if I have spoiled the plot for any of you. Alex's favorite part so far: Costello trying to get water out of a pump, getting nothing, looking up the pump and getting soaked. My favorite part so far: they serve A & C dinner. "What is it?" "Duck." Costello dives under the table. We are a family of simple tastes. I'll let you know later if the ghost is real or not!

Happy St. Patrick's Day tomorrow!