Welcome, September

September is here and summer vacation is in its last few weeks.  If you thought school might be foremost on Julia's mind today as we turn to September 1, you would be wrong.

JULIA: Mommy!  Today is Lilly Mintz's birthday!

Yup.  The Mintz are still around.

Speaking of birthdays, I was spoiled with all sorts of thoughtful gestures on my birthday yesterday, from a beautiful recording and slideshow that Ethan created for me (which caused me to sob all over my computer keyboard) to an Amazon gift card Julia got for me ("I knew you were sad that you didn't get an Amazon gift card from your students this year, so I wanted to get you one!") to several thoughtful and homemade creative gifts from Madeleine.

One of Madeleine's gifts to me was a hand-made book of brain teasers/riddles.  Not only did Madeleine type this up herself, but she thought of each riddle and its answer all on her own!

Sometimes getting into her head space proved to be a bigger brain teaser than the riddle itself.  For example:

ME: (reading a riddle) There are twins, but were born in completely different towns in their state. How is this possible? Hmm.  Was one born before they could make it to the hospital, and the hospital is in the next town over?
MADELEINE: Nooooo.
ME: Are the twins both born from the same mother?
MADELENIE: Yes.
ME: Was one born at home but then they needed to get to the hospital to get the other one out?
MADELENE: Nooooo. Do you want me to just tell you?
ME: No, let me keep asking questions.  Are they humans?
MADELENE: Yes.  So Mommy.  It's like: one is THIS, and one is THIS.
ME: Huh?
MADELEINE: Like, one is THIS, and one is THIS.
ME: Are they both alive?
MADELEINE: Yes!
ME: And it wasn't like, the mom had to give birth to the first twin in the car on the way to the hospital?
MADELEINE: No. Here, Mommy.  Think of the W's.
ME: Uh...okay, where were they born?
MADELEINE: It doesn't matter!
ME: Was one born right before midnight and the other after so they were born on different days?  And the town got re-named overnight?
MADELEINE: No. Think of the W's!
ME: Who, what, when, where, why?
MADELEINE: Yes. Okay. Say one was born at 2:40.  When was the other one born?
ME: Uh, 2:48?
MADELEINE: Okay...do you want me to just tell you the answer?

This one turned out to be too much of a stumper for me, so I finally had to look at the answer.  How could I not have figured this out?!?

Q: There are twins, but were born in completely different towns in their state. How is this possible?
A: One was just later than usual.

ME: Wait, Madeleine, I don't get it. How does that make them born in different towns? 
MADELEINE: I don't know! I was running out of ideas for riddles.  My BRAIN just wasn't really
able to THINK of anything else!

That was riddle #11 of 20.  I'm scared to see how random the answers become as I move along down the rest of the page...