Grace (age 4 1/2) has a good friend, Emily Siler, who just recently turned 4. This was an overheard conversation:
Grace: Santa's going to bring me lots of presents for Christmas.
Emily: I don't really like Santa.
Grace: Do you know who Satan is? Because if you say you don't like Santa, that's like following Satan!
Then tonight, Grace was melting down because Emily (her 11 year old sister) had broken her shell. Grace was screaming and crying about this as I took her up to her room to discover what shell she was talking about. Turns out, her shell was her blanket which she had folded a certain way, and Emily had moved it. I decide I just need to get Grace settled down and in bed, so I tell her a story and then she says her prayer, which includes "Please bless that my shell will turn into a real shell while I'm sleeping, a nice hard shiny long one. And please bless that I will turn all yucky and sluggy in my new shell." At which point I can not control myself and I burst out laughing. In fact, I start laughing so hard I'm crying. It's all to my demise, though, because then she starts crying uncontrollably again saying that it's not nice to laugh at people, etc. etc. But how can I explain to a 4 year old that I'm actually not laughing at her, I'm just laughing at the idea of someone praying to be turned into a snail?
I turned her bedtime over to Sarah, who Grace always says tells way better stories than me, and finally Grace went to sleep, snuggled into her shell.
