According to Athena

.... they don't do many pirouettes or arabeckses (yes, indeed) in her ballet class, but those are her favorite things to do. We had a lovely discussion about ballet while I was eating dinner and she was twirling around the kitchen in her tiny ballet slippers. After dinner, she informed me that she was supposed to help with dishes sometimes, but doesn't often do it, and asked if she could help as I washed up.  I replied that she most certainly could, and she scampered upstairs to get her tiny pink stool that would help her be tall enough to reach the sink.

We stood there together and of course, instead of 2 minutes, it took 10, and instead of me cleaning the five or so dishes that needed to be cleaned, I had to mop up the soap on the floor, the counter, and the excess water on the other table where she had taken the dishes to dry them off (needing to put them down on a surface to do so - I forget how much use I make of my hands. It's pretty incredible how dextrous we are). In the end, she was drying a cutting board off in the sunroom next to the kitchen and looked at me and said, "Hm. It's kind of like I'm your servant." To which I responded, "Ohho? Even though every day, your mom makes your lunch, washes your dishes, picks up your clothes - does that make her your servant?" And she got this crooked smile that she's terribly good at, and then responded that no, of course, her mom wasn't her servant. But she didn't HAVE to help me with the dishes, which is what made what was happening tonight an act of servitude. There was no arguing with her.

After that, we were discussing a pile of pennies that she was offering to me as "my change", though my change from what purchase I could not tell you. I didn't wish to take them from her, but she wouldn't simply take them back, so I decided and proposed that I ask her a series of questions, and for each correct question, she would get a coin back. These questions included:

1. What is 2+5? --- "4." "Are you sure?" "Uh... 5."
 2. Who's the president? "Obama. That's an easy one."
3. If you are eating eggs (as she likes to do), how does your mom make them? "She needs raw eggs. "
"yes, and what does she do with them?" "She cooks them." "But how?" "With.... a pan." "Yes, and?" "And...water!"
4. Where were we when you met my sister and my dad a few weeks ago? "Santa Cruz!"
And finally, finally, this became clear:
5. Alright, last question. Your Grandpa Bob and my Grandma Barbara - your Aunt Barbara - how do they know each other? "They---they're sister and brother!"

After that, I read a fairy tale, then Samuel made up one ("Once upon a time, in a big city, bigger than New York, Tokyo, and Earth, there was a school called Banana Lana, and a llama came to Banana Lana,...." - it got increasingly difficult to understand), and when his story started to ramble, we had a countdown to the ending. It ended with a chess game and people getting to sleep in until noon. The plot was - perhaps we can call it postmodern. Then Athena took a turn, and there was very little content to her story (a princess, a ginormous kingdom, some peasants) and then there was a man named Mr. Wiener and I lost both of the children to positive peals of laughter for a while just at the sound of his name, and then when Samuel and I had the 10-second countdown to the end of her story, it went like this: "And -- and then -- and  AND HAPPILY EVER AFTER!" And we all giggled at the incompleteness of everyone's stories before going up to bed.