I've started blog entries about Tess more than once, and I just don't know where to go with it. Without spending time with her, and getting her to talk with you, it's hard to convey just how bizarre a mind she has.

Firstly, Tess has little to no concept of time at all. She'll ask in the evening if it is morning, and whether it is morning in the evening. Despite our best (?) efforts, she has difficulty counting to 10 or reciting her ABCs. She's improving on this one. She writes pages on nonsensical glyphs and then asks us to tell her what it all means. But mostly, it's the things she says.

Yesterday we went out to dinner. While waiting for our food, Tess asked the group, "do you like to die?" We just stared, and she turned to Marie. "Mom, do you like to die?" "No, Tess." Next Garron. "Garron, do you like to die?" Garron: "Yes." Tess, surprised: "Really? You like to die? Mom, Garron likes to die."

Later that meal, a larger man enters the restaurant. "Whoa!" exclaims Tess. "That man has a lot of food in him!" At another random moment, she told her mom, "you can still hear with hair over your ears, right mom? Because hair isn't very strong." On the drive home, "Dad, are animals born when people are born? Do they die when people die?" Often, there is no response possible. She doesn't understand the meaning of "when" I think, which may go to the temporally challenged part. She refers to adults as "people", and regularly inquires as to their collective opinion on matters. When told that it is important to such-and-such, she typically asks, "people say that?" A few days ago she told a friend of her grandfather that she was from China. And that Marie and I had gone to China to get her, evidently confusing herself with her recently adopted cousin. When the friend tried to dissuade her, she became insistent. "I've been to China!"

There is a strain of unique intelligence and decent observation in some things she says, at least for a 5-year-old. Out of the blue she once said to me, "Dad when people say they are asleep, it's because they don't want to talk to you. Right?" Another time, "people can't trade their moms and dads." And, "black people can't have white kids."

There are hundreds of things she has said that don't come to me immediately. I need to get out a recorder and just let her talk. It's a real trip.