Taking it to the Next Level

Isaac, bless his curious and indefatigable little heart, has effectively no frontal lobe (courtesy of his age, not Madelyn's machinations) and a boundless curiosity.  His favorite phrase - what happened? - comes out about 100 times a day, frequently in bursts of 5 or more since he frequently doesn't get an answer the first nanosecond because he's typically interrupting someone else's conversation.  Did I mention that it's typically used inappropriately, such as:  Isaac points out a silently traveling fire truck, we'll agree - "That's right, Isaac, that is a fire truck, nice observation."  What happened?  What happened? What happened?
After several months of this, Madelyn has, apparently, had about enough.  Not satisfied to ignore him or insist that "nothing happened, Isaac" which she may or may not have heard from an exasperated parent at the end of the day, she looked at him with loathing this afternoon and said, dead serious: Stop saying that Isaac!" Tonight, after her nice requests had been completely ignored (to our great sadness), she took to nasty mimicking, whining the same phrase right back at him.  This was a first. Poor fella, he didn't/doesn't get it, but I'm sure once he does, it'll be about a nanosecond before he cleverly responds by slugging or sitting on her.  In the meantime, it did briefly stop it...
      A bit more endearing - the kids are really fond of taking vehicles other than the van.  Rather than be in the van with an excellent commanding view of the road with a delightful soundtrack of their own CD's and books, they prefer to drive in the prius, fortified with no toys or music and with door sills too high for them to see outside the car.  When it's just one of us with both kids, and we can take either car, we'll typically decline taking the prius, saying that "it hurts our back" since taking both kids in and out of the prius by yourself with multiple stops is about as fun as a trip to the dentist.  Occasionally, Theresa has used this same rationale regarding knees/back as to why she won't carry Madelyn up or down the stairs.  Tonight, while walking up the stairs, and without having heard Theresa use that phrase for days, Madelyn was carrying a stuffed rabbit toy, and spontaneously looked down on it and said: "No, you walk, hurts back."  This worked about as well on the stuffed rabbit as it did on the kids.