I used to babysit this adorable little tot. Chubby cheeks, rosebud mouth, brown curls. She looked angelic. Her disposition was just the opposite. One day I was going up to the university for some reason, and took her with me. I had to stop and get gas, and this was in the day before you paid with a card at the pump. So I took her in with me when I went to pay, and the attendant commented on how pretty she was. She smiled charmingly at him, then said, in her sweetest tones, “I don’t yikes yoo. Yeeve me yone!”
My daughter’s at that preschool stage where her inflections and word choices are ominous foreshadowings of teenage sass. It’s really, really hard not to encourage it by laughing.
A few days ago, we were in the grocery store. She’s a recently discovered gluten-intolerant, and shopping takes a lot longer now as I have to read every friggin’ label. And, of course, all her favorite foods are wheat based.
“Mama,” pointing to some graham crackers, “Dat have glute’?”
“Yes, that has gluten; it’s made with wheat flour.”
“Oh…Mama,” pointing to the display of Goldfish crackers, “Dat have glute’?”
“Yes, baby, Goldfish have gluten; they’re made with wheat, too.”
“Oh…Mama,” pointing to some granola bars, “Dat have glute’?”
“Hmm…let me check…Yes, those have gluten, too. It’s called “modified food starch”. Could be wheat.”
She sighed loudly, rolled her eyes, threw her arms in the air and exclaimed, “Man, *everything *has glute’!”
Half a dozen shoppers around us burst out laughing. :smack:
I may have told this one before.
When my son was 8 the movie Toy Story was out. He decided he would put on a play for the family with his new Buzz Lightyear and Woody dolls. We all pulled up chairs, he was introduced as playing the part of the little boy and ran out, doll in hand…
“Hey everyone. I got a Woody!”
He was perplexed at the amount of laughter his first line produced.
My cousin is 4 and adorable.
The other day my grandmother bought her a giant activity book with dry-erase markers. She was seated beside the little dear, explaining to her how to perform the first activity in the book, when my cousin turned to me, placed one hand conspiratorially to shield her mouth from my grandmother’s view, and whispered, ‘‘She’s a nut.’’
Then she hastily added, ‘‘Don’t tell her I said that.’’
Unfortunately my hysterical laughter gave her away.
Oh, that reminds me of a long-past one. I had a six year old boy in tow on a summer day, walking somewhere along a fairly high-traffic area. As we waited at a light to cross an intersection, a fragrant garbage truck rattled by.
I looked down at the little guy as his eyes grew wide with surprise and he covered his nose with his hand. Then he declared, indignantly: “It’s a stinky world!”
That was over ten years ago. I still recall that phrase from time-to-time, and it busts my shit up.
That is so funny. I bought a t-shirt for my son this summer that had a picture of an old-fashioned station wagon with surf boards on top of it. It’s super cute, but he has only worn it once, for about 10 minutes. This is because I made the mistake of referring to the car as a “woody,” (because it has those wood panels on the sides). My daughter heard me, and started laughing and saying, “look at my little brother’s woody!” Don’t know why that struck her as so hilariously fun to say, because she obviously doesn’t get the double meaning. But in any case, I decided to change his shirt that day.
Bricker Jr is recently infatuated with Pokemon, and has been playing his Pokemon DS game with rapt attention for a few weeks now.
In addition to completing the “main mission” part of the game, you can do all sorts of things with the Pokemon in this game, inlcluding putting two of them in “day care” while you travel. If the two are male and female of a compatible type, they’ll produce an egg, which will then hatch into a baby Pokemon. By selecting the father Pokemon carefully, the baby can have “egg moves” – battle maneuvers – which a Pokemon of its type could ordinarily never learn.
This whole process is called “breeding,” and can get pretty complicated when the desired egg move requires several generations to pass along to the desired recipient.
So he’s tried to follow it, but at age 6, isn’t quite hip to the calculations required to figure out generational ancestry, etc. So I’ve helped him out by showing him which Pokemon to put in day care to get the Pokemon he wants.
All this lead up is to explain this line at lunch last weekend, with my wife’s boss no less: “Papito, here.” Hands me the DS, and then turns to the entire table to explain, “He does this part because he likes breeding so much.”
I’m sure I’ve told this one before too, but:
When my daughter was 3 years old I took her shopping with me for new pants. I needed to try a couple of pairs on and took her into the change stall with me. There were maybe 6 or 8 stalls in all, with various other men coming and going. Anyway, I usually wear boxers, but on this occasion had usual men’s briefs on. As I took off my pants, my daughter exclaims out loud (for everyone to hear) “Daddy, you’re wearing big girl panties, just like me!”
So, I had to explain in my manliest, man voice, that no these were in fact men’s underwear.
I can foresee some confusion arise if you ever have to drop off the Jr at “day care.” :eek:
she’s preschool age now!!!
Next thing we know she will be in College.
HAH!
That is superdoubleplusAWESOME!
My wife was driving out to my Mom and Dad’s a few years back, muttering to herself about how they happen to live ‘in the middle of nowhere.’
They get to Grandma’s and the then 4 year old jumps out and says how glad she is to get to ‘the middle of nowhere’ to see her grandparents.
A real Dennis the Menace moment.
I play in a band and was out on a few gigs over the Memorial Day weekend. At some point I called home to check in. I told my wife how much money I would be making for the various gigs. My 7 year old son was on the other line and said: “That’s great, papa. You can give half to mama, half to me and keep the rest for yourself!”
I know, right?! She’s 3.5 - right between “toddler” and “preschooler”. The local school system wants her in preschool this fall (like, next week), but I’m stalling and officially homeschooling for at least another 6 months.
My teenaged step-daughter was still wearing her pajamas (pants and a tank top) one morning when she was holding my 3-year-old son at the kitchen table. He poked her in the boob, and said, “What’s that? Oh, I know! It’s your nittle!”
She turned about 10 shades of red, put him down, and said that she will always wear a bra around the house.
Same step-daughter had dumped her boyfriend of three years, “Greg.” She began seeing another guy, “James,” but my 3-year-old kept calling him Greg, as if that’s some generic term for any boyfriend of hers. So after about 5 months, my son turned to James and said, “Greg, you know you’re black?” James just smiled and said, yes, he knows he’s black, while my step-daughter tried not to laugh. And my son just keeps reminding him, every week or so, but at least he gets the name correct now: “James, you’re still black. You know that?” Yep, he’s still aware.
Speaking of “cute”…something I believe I relayed a few years ago.
My oldest grandson (will be 9 in October) was at our house about five years ago. (We have a partial basement.) Three-year-old grandson was stomping around our dining room (which is over the basement…so footsteps produce a kind of lmuffled hollow-type of sound). My elder Angelboy heard the sound & proceeded to stomp, proclaming loudly, “I’m a GIANT, I’m a GIANT.”
Then he stopped, glarred at his mom, his dad, his grandfather, & me, & told us all in no uncertain terms, “And I AM NOT a cutie boy!!!” Where he got that, no one knew.
Love, Phil
My cousin has The World’s Most Adorable Boy ™. He’s two, and is spoiled rotten by his teenaged aunt and older cousins (all girls–we outnumber the boys in my family). He’s going to be getting a little sibling in a few months. When informed of this, he said he wanted a sister. When asked why a sister, he said:
“'Cause boys stink.”
Another from the same kid: My aunt was helping my cousin out by babysitting TWMAB ™ quite a bit, even when he was very tiny. He’d always called his mom “mamamamamam” (stopping was the hard part, you see) and our aunt “Lettie” (a play on her name).
At about a year and a few months, he was really chattering all the time. One day, he started calling “Lettie” mama as well. After she realizes what’s going on, my aunt tells him, “I’m not your mama! I’m your aunt.” He just looks at her, pauses, and says “Fat mama.” (My aunt isn’t fat, but my cousin is quite tiny. We got tons of mileage outta this one!)
Don’t remember if I shared this before, but I was perusing Chloe’s “baby book” (a/k/a a Word document) and found this one from when she was four. She was eating a bagel with cream cheese, and she said, “You know what, Mom? Sunscreen is made from cream cheese and sweat.” (I *think *this was due to a special on Discovery about Hippo sweat providing them some SPF, so not quite as crazy as it might have been.)
She’s five now. The other morning she hopped into our bed and lay down between us. Then suddenly she held her nose and said, “There’s a horrible smell in here . . . it’s coming from you, Daddy!” (He smelled OK to me, maybe I’m just inured.)
They have show and tell at school that works as a guessing game - give three clues and see if the kids can guess what you brought in. To help her remember, I’ve been making her index cards with the clues as words and drawings, since she doesn’t read much yet. For “Pets and Family” week she decided she wants to (have me) bring her baby sister. One clue would naturally be what Claire likes to eat, “So we should put a picture of your breast, Mommy!” Yeah, don’t think the teacher would appreciate that . . .
Recently, I was holding an unrelated eighteen-month old. She’d picked me out of a small crowd as the person she wanted to have hold her. Someone walked by us and headed out of the house, small child fussed a bit, and I assured her that her mommy would be back momentarily.
Someone else pointed out that Mommy was still in the kitchen–it was my sister-in-law who’d walked outside. Trust me, there is no resemblence between the two ladies.
I saw my first black person “in person” during a trip abroad, at age 15, but nowadays they’re relatively common in Spain. One of the jobs where you often find them is as salespeople in street markets.
This kid, about 3yo, was at one such market with his mom. The mother stops at a handbags stall owned by a black man. The kid looks at the salesman and his eyes go wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide. He says, in one of those whispers which somehow manage to be noisier than this whole market around the speaker, “mom?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Mom, that man, he’s black!” (the verb was the one for ‘being temporarily’)
“Yep, he is black. I’m a brunette, you’re a little boy, grandma is old and that man is black.” (verb for ‘being permanently’)
“Oh.” Kid thinks, his eyes still big enough to use as saucers for teacups. “So it’s all right, he’s just like that?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, ok!” His relief was evident; the salesman gave the mother a smile about as wide as the kid’s eyes had initially been.