Ten minutes before I took this picture, Kate had on a real outfit, one I had picked out for her and convinced her to wear, which is no small feat. Then she appeared in the kitchen like this. But she was so proud of herself because she put these boots on all by herself that I took the picture anyway. What are you going to do?

I am blogging early today and posting a cheater photo that was taken a couple of days ago because today, the Saturday before Christmas, is filled with various activities and happenings and we are not going to be pausing for breath much. It's that time of year. But Dan has been telling me that I really need to blog about something Kate said the other day, and for some reason, this photo seems to go along with it, so before I go, let me tell you a story.

The first thing you need to know to understand this story is that last Saturday, Dan very graciously loaded Kate up with him and went to run some Christmas errands so that I could get some shopping done without her assistance. Before he went, we had a conversation about stocking stuffer ideas for each other. We're not an exciting bunch, so when Dan and I talk about stocking stuffers, there's a pretty good chance we're mostly talking about picking up the kinds of things one might buy in an average trip to Wal-Mart -- I like certain kinds of pens, for instance, and Dan likes these little chewy Lifesaver candies. We also tend to give each other socks and underwear because you have to replace that stuff, or at least women have to replace it. I have realized in almost seven years of marriage that when a man's wife buys him new underwear, he doesn't think that's any reason to throw out the old ones. Men, or at least my man, will keep underwear until it just disintegrates into thin air and ceases to exist. That's how it leaves the house. But that is another subject. All you need to know for today's story is that we had a conversation about underwear before Dan left to go run top secret Christmas errands.

Fast forward a couple of days. The night that Dan worked late this week, I blogged about how Kate and I went to kill some time at Barnes and Noble. The bookstore is adjacent to one of our large shopping malls, so to get there, you pull into the mall parking lot. Kate was in a pretty chatty mood, and since more and more stores have Christmas lights up, there was a lot to talk about, at least from the perspective of someone who just this year started noticing Christmas lights and thinks they are a-mazing. I was only about halfway listening to her little monologue from the backseat. But when we pulled into the mall parking lot, the one-sided conversation took the following interesting turn. I will translate the toddler jargon for you:

Kate: "OH!!! Pannies for Mama!" (Panties for Mama.) "It a secwet Kisses supise (secret Christmas surprise)."

Me: "Haha, did you buy underwear here? And it's a surprise for Christmas? Wow!"

Kate:"Yeah. Not tell Mama!! Shhhhh!"

Later I told Dan that Kate had not only remembered what errand she was on last time she was at the mall, but had promptly ratted him out, and we laughed. Dan said the remarkable thing is that she basically repeated verbatim what he told her when they were making the purchase, which was. "This is a secret Christmas surprise for Mama, so we don't tell her about it, OK?" I think the lesson for all the dads of two-year-olds out there is that maybe you want to leave the human tape recorder at home when you shop for your wife this holiday season.

All in all, it's not like Kate really ruined any earth-shattering secret, and I might still be in for a bit of a surprise when I open my stocking on Christmas morning. Dan mentioned that Kate helped him with color selection in the umm, underwear store. She is really into hot pink these days. So this could be interesting.