My sister had called my dad’s cell phone, I answered because dad was taking a nap and being my older sister she might be in need of some calming or information. Sis tends to be the more neurotic one of the family, always predicting doom and gloom and quick to take any news that is not explicitly positive and turn it towards the negative.
After 9/11 she was convinced that the terrorists were going to strike Atlanta on Valentine’s day, which fell on a Friday that year. And she called me endlessly trying to get my to skip school on Friday and come stay with her over the weekend. She lived further out from Atlanta and thus anything that happened would be safely away from us. I declined due to the three tests I had scheduled for that day.
In any case, that gives you an idea about my sister. My niece is absolutely hysterical. She’s one of those whiz kids, but also given my sister’s raising my niece tends to have some very funny things to say.
So when my sis handed the phone off to her daughter, I was immediately greeted “Hi Grandpa… I mean Uncle Pat.” She was known to get my name wrong on purpose, she once spent an entire day calling me “Uncle Gary… Uncle Pat” just because she could. And she knew it elicited a reaction from me.
So after the greeting she launched into this monologue about her and mom getting ready for the Princess Ball (at school I presume.)
“I’m just sitting here getting ready for the ball, I’m in my dress and my hair is done but I haven’t put anything on my nails, no nail polish. It’s in the kitchen which I can’t get because I can’t get the zipper. So I don’t have any nail polish but I don’t really need nail polish, no one is going to be looking at my fingers, and it’s more about what I look like and how I feel with how I’m looked. And I look great Uncle Pat, even without the nail polish I can’t get in the kitchen. So mommy and I are all dressed up and ready to go, it’s going to be lots of fun being a princess and you know most of the girls there won’t have nail polish on so it’s okay I don’t have mine on. I really don’t need the nail polish. Okay, here’s mom, bye Uncle Pat!”
Damn I’m glad I’m not her dad, she’d have me wrapped around her little finger.
The cutest thing I’ve heard a kid say recently was…
Well, understand that my first name is Todd. My GF’s nephew absolutely worships me for some reason. I guess because I’m a male role model who is not his father. And I’m pretty immature myself. So anyway, we were all planning to meet at a well-known resort in southern Massachusetts. This kid could not quite wrap his mind around the concept. Finally he had it worked out that he was going to see Cape Todd.
When my nephew was a few years younger, some relatives came visiting from Scotland, including a little girl about a year younger than my nephew. Being a typical American male, Ivynephew fell for this charming Scottish lass with the lovely accent, and mooned after her quite a bit.
Her father, teasing, told Ivynephew that his daughter would only marry a rich man. Ivynephew appeared to think long and hard about this, then went into his room, and came out…carrying his piggybank.
That reminds me of when my sister was living in Sarasota and was around 4 or 5 and we said we were planning to go to Myakka State Park, she kept complaining earnestly “We always go to Your Akka! I wanna go to myakka!”
Earlier this month my 5-year-old niece and I were sitting on the swings having a fun little conversation. She stopped swinging, looked at me very seriously and said, “auntie Kim, um, 90 um, percent of people wear ugly clothes”. My reply? “Oh, that’s funny” Her retort, “No it’s not, it’s sad”.
I knew I loved that girl (She told me she heard it on tv)
When my daughter was one year old she noticed the moon one night. A big bright full moon. It impressed her. “Moon! Moon!” Well, about a month and a half later she noticed the moon again…except it was crescent. She looked at it. “Moon…broken!” and burst into tears.
When my stepdaughter was small I used to think her giggling sounded just like little tinkling bells.
One day when she was about 5 or 6, she was at the dining room table eating a bowl of fruit cocktail. I could see her from the next room, but she was totally focused on that fruit and apparently struggling to pick out a cherry from the other bits, when I heard her say, “Come on little cherry, Jackie won’t eat you!”
We went out to eat at Applebee’s last night. I asked my 6 year old what she wanted to eat. She said a grilled cheese sandwich. As she was getting out of the van, she said, “Daddy, you can’t have a grilled cheese sandwich.” “Why?”, asked Daddy. “Because it’s not boy cheese, It’s girl cheese.” A girl cheese sandwich, you see.
I have some adorable young cousins. When they were around 5, 7 and 9, I visited them in Costa Rica, and, while driving, we began playing a game of something-like-20-questions. It started with me being “it”, and they eventually guessed me. Then the 7 year old went, and did an OK job. Than the 5 year old, who didn’t quite get the game, wanted to go. So he said he was thinking of something, and just started quivering with unbridled excitement. So we started asking a few random questions. Then we heard him whisper “it’s the fence”. So one of us said “is it the fence?” and he said “YES!!!” with an expression of absolute and total victorious triumph. Then he gave his mom a hug.
This thread is so cute! I have a story from when my cousin was little.
My aunt was attempting to teach him to organize his clothes and toys. I think he was about 4 at the time. Apparently one morning she went to check on his closet to see if he had learned, and found that while everything seemed to be in its place there was a strange smell. She peeked in his frog rain boots and it looked like he had used them instead of the toilet.
So she asked him “Ryan did you pee in your frog boots?” To which he replied, “No mommy, I peed in the oatmeal box. I pooped in my froggy boots.”
Obviously he was very good at putting things away in his closet. He’s 18 and we still laugh.
Years ago, a high school friend of mine was playing charades with her family at Christmas time. Everything they were acting out had a seasonal/holiday theme. Her then 5 (I think) year old sister gets up to do her clue, and she gets down on her knees and curls up into a ball with her hands on her head and just stays there. No other motion, no other clues. So her family starts guessing “hill? mountain?” whatever, and just can’t figure it out. They tried to get her to give more clues, but she just sat there, like a lump. Finally, they asked her what she was acting out, and her reply was:
My 8 year old daughter is an expert at the set up and “psych”, though she doesn’t realize it.
She and I were alone together in a bagel shop eating breakfast one day. We were sharing stories and laughing and having a really nice time when this conversation took place:
Daughter: “Mom, were you ever *so happy * that you wanted to scream, but knew it wasn’t an appropriate place to do that”
Me (beaming with joy): “I suppose so… Why, is that how you feel now…?”
Daughter (earnestly): “No.”
Apparrently that was how she felt *the day before * when she received her first stripe on her yellow belt, sigh.
When WhyKid was about 3 or 4, a neighbor gave him a treat which he wasn’t supposed to have. I found out because WhyKid came tearing into the house, up the stairs, into his room and slammed the door. This was weird, because we’re an “open door” family. What was weirder was when I opened the door and he was nowhere to be seen.
“Sweetie?” I asked.
“Yes?” came a muffled voice from the closet.
“Watcha doin’?”
“Nothing.” Uh huh. Riiiiiight.
Silence. I decided to wait him out. Took about 5 seconds.
“I’m not eating gum!”
:smack:
I confiscated half a pack of Wrigley’s and only had to freeze a little bit out of his hair.
My boyfriend’s father was a radiographer, now he sells the machines and he told me about a time when my boyfriend, Jeremy, was about 5 years old and at that time, his father was working at the local hospital as a … radiographer.
He had taken Jeremy in because he needed to take an x-ray or something of a patient. They wheeled the patient in, took the pictures, Jeremy’s dad fiddled with this enormous machine (way back when you had to twiddle knobs in order to focus and all that sort of thing) and then wheeled the patient back out again. He was gone and back again in about five minutes. In that time, Jeremy had managed to use the knobs and ball mouse to draw a nice smiley face on the screen of this multimillion dollar piece of equipment.
My twin cousins are approaching three and we’ve had some good ones with Olivia - you can teach her so many tricks because she loves attention. We taught her ‘Where’s your bellybutton?’ and she’ll lift up her shirt and point to it. We get her sometimes when she’s wearing a onesie underneath. The best one ever though was when my brother said “Where’s Mummy’s bellybutton?” and Olivia yanks up her mother’s top, who promptly squeals and pushes it back down again. The gales of laughter from the rest of the family suited Olivia though, who hooted and giggled too.
My friend has a 3-year-old who loves to play hide-and-seek… her way.
Last time I was visiting, we were all sitting around in her bedroom, and she wanted to play hide-and-seek with Daddy. So she tugged him over to the closet, telling him to hide there. Creative little creature that she is, she even pulled a blanket over him to hide him better. She ran off to the hallway and counted to twenty with as much energy as she could find (skipping seventeen, she always skips seventeen). When she came back to the closet and “found” Daddy, out came the most adorable giggles of delight. After doing this maybe five times, Daddy was getting bored and decided to try something new. When she left to count, he snuck quietly from the closet and sat on her bed with the blanket draped over his head.
Well, she came running in, without a second glance at the giant Daddy-shaped lump on her bed, and pulled open the closet door. She was utterly confused, so I went to her and showed her how to look for Daddy. Under the bed, in the drawers, maybe behind the rocking chair? She was loving the adventure, pulling socks from drawers to make sure Daddy wasn’t there. When she finally discovered the blob on the bed and pullet the blanket off him, her face broke out in an expression of triumph… for about a half second, because then she dissolved into shrieking tears because Daddy wasn’t where she put him!
My friend and I went outside to laugh while Daddy consoled her.
We’ve recently developed a family tradition of working our way thru the West Wing DVD’s on a Sunday night. My son is interested, my wife and I like them, my 6 year old daughter watches them,gets some of the humour, and generally falls asleep during the last one.
Sunday before last, she routinely falls asleep. Before she does, she announces “Jed Bartlett is really nice”. I’m carrying her up to bed, and she stirs a bit and wakes up somewhat. “Daddy”, she opines, “you’re pretty nice too”.
I’m told I did this when I was young, I don’t remember it though.
I was plaing in a sandbox with a superman shirt on. Some neighborhood woman asks me who I am. “I’m Superman!” “no, what’s your real name?” “Clark Kent, Duh!”
I have a similar story. I was staying with some family friends in Montana and I brought over a child’s version of pictionary. It had adult, child-reader, and child-prereader cards (with pictures on them instead of words).
There were two boys, 7 and 10, who did very well with the words and did cute little drawings. The little girl (4), however, had a bit more difficulty. You see, the problem was that she didn’t want to draw, she wanted to play Charades.
And since the cards were limited to little cartoon-images that preschoolers would know most of them were animals. And in Haley’s mind, all animals do basically the same thing - run around on all fours and eat stuff off the ground.
So we had to sit there guessing every animal from Aardvark to Zebra while her mom collapsed in tears of laughter.
(She told me she heard it on tv)