My four year old was musing on what she should be for Halloween this year, and went through some rambling thinking out loud: “I’ll be a witch. No, I changed my mind, I want to be a ghost,” and so on. Finally she settled: “I’ll be a chicken! Yeah, I want to be a chicken.” All well and good, until she elaborated on the idea:
“I’m gonna be a chicken for Halloween, and Mommy - you can be the barn!”
In a similar vein, we were changing after swimming, and I’d wrapped a big yellow towel around my head. She admiringly said, “Mommy! You look like a fancy, beautiful . . . dinosaur!”
(Yes, I am large, but her comments are in no way motivated by that fact - later she told her skinny Gramma *she *could be the barn. So I’m not offended, just amused.)
When the Kid was about 4, someone in the grocery store asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. What follows here is an exact transcript of her reply:
A couple Sundays ago, our lesson in First Grade Sunday School was on “Asking God For Help When You Are Afraid”. So I went around the table, asking the kids to tell what they were afraid of.
Got the expected replies–“Tornadoes”, “big dogs”, “sharks”, “getting shots at the doctor”, and from the Usual Offenders, two little boys who sit together the farthest away from Teacher, “Nothing”.
Uh huh. I smiled at them gently.
And finally we got to Maggie, who scrunched up her little face in horrible thought, and said, “Having a coconut fall on your head and kill you.”
I must have looked blank, because she elaborated earnestly, “More people are killed every year by having coconuts fall on their heads than by sharks.”
“I see.”
Then she added, “And poisonous frogs, too.”
“…?”
“I’m afraid of poisonous frogs, too.”
“I see.”
As the nearest poisonous frogs are in the Amazon, I think she’s pretty safe. Not to mention the 100% freedom from having a coconut fall on your head in Decatur, Illinois.
At church, a month or so ago, the minister did a children’s sermon focused on Oreo cookies.
So she handed each child a small plastic bag with 2 Oreos in it.
And waited. Expecting one of these children to open the bag to take out an Oreo.
Kids being kids, they didn’t.
She said something to the kids, and one of them said “Grandma said that if we went to church with her she’d take us to McDonald’s afterwards” (Grandma later–"I did say that, but it wasn’t intended as a bribe).
Eventually, the kids were prodded into investigating their Oreos closely enough to determine that they were kind of lacking in the filling department.
A moral about the good stuff being in the middle was delivered, the children were handed more baggies of Oreos, this time with the filling in the middle, and the children were permitted to return to their seats.
My brother (a single parent) was dealing with his two kids, then about 3 and 5. We were all together for a Christmas visit at my mom and dad’s house. These two kids had been scrapping all day, and my brother repeatedly said/ growled/ shouted, “The rule is that there’s no fighting at Grandma’s house!”
Finally we were all in the car on the way to dinner and the 3 year old boy was still picking a fight with his 5 year old sister. That led to this exchange:
MY BRO: WILL YOU BE QUIET??? Son, what’s the rule?
SON [after much thinking]: No pee pee in Daddy’s bed.
On the other hand, total disclosure on such matters leads to funny stuff too. My daughter was drawing a picture of me, and said, “I’m making a 'bilical cord from your ear, so you can have a baby from there.”
My daughter isn’t yet two, so the voacabulary is still a little limited. So what we get is usually much more along the “funny-cute” than “funny-haha” line (with the occasional exception). So…
…yesterday I was making breakfast and I glanced out the window into the backyard. There, sunning itself, was one of the local outdoor cats that likes to call our yard “sometimes-home”. Since my daughter loves cats, I called her over, picked her up, and pointed at the little guy. It took her a second, but she spotted him.
“Cack!”, she exclaimed. That’s her word for “cat”.
She immediately started squriming and wriggling, trying to get out of my grasp. I placed her down and she ran into the dining room and grabbed one of her toy cell phones.
“Laney!”, she breathlessly exclaimed, apparently having just phoned up her friend Delaney from day care. “Look! Outside! Cack! Cack outside, Laney!!”
Cracked me right the hell up.
A bonus story that isn’t mine. I got this from a parenting magazine, but it made me laugh hard enough that it’s worth sharing.
A woman wrote in telling about how their home is a fixer-upper, and how they try to get their renovation work done at night after putting the kids to bed. One morning she pointed out to her kids that the pantry had a new door on it.
“Yeah, I know”, said their son, “We heard you and dad screwing last night!”
Well, my son (3) knows that babies live in their mothers wombs. He likes to hear about when he was “tiny tiny baby in Mommy’s womb.” Part of the folklore is about how many cherries I ate when he lived in my womb, and all the crazy things my pregnancy addled body ate. (mostly ginormous quantities of fruit. and cous-cous salad.)
So one day the story is that at my parents place he had raisin bread toast with nutella, cheez whiz and pickles on it. I said “Fooolieboy, do you have a baby in your womb?” thinking this would crack him up. ( Or something. He likes to talk about when my mother and I both lived in his womb… either he knows something about reincarnation I do not, or he has an interesting imagination)
He looks me square in the face and says “No, but you have a baby in your penis”
From my MMP, but still cracking me up this week…
His imaginary friend is Hon, and he used to tell me “Mommy, I got a Hon.”
Now Hon has an imaginary friend. Named Hickey. “Mommy I got a Hon, and Hon’s got a Hickey…”
My daughter knew where babies come from, she just didn’t know how they got there, except in a very general way. Naturally, she’s a bit squicked still about the details. She seemed relieved yesterday when I said that toads don’t really have that sort of sex.
We have firebellied toads. However they are both boys and, while fond of each other in that punch-you-in-the-shoulder way that guys have, they probably aren’t going to start a family.
One day when I was a wee bairn, my parents took me to the grocery store. I was, oh, I don’t know, maybe three? Somewhere around that age where I was learning things and felt the need to share them at the top of my lungs. (As opposed to now, I suppose, when I’m learning things and feel the need to share them with the internet.) As small children do, I waited until we were in the middle of the store, and my mother was preoccupied with my baby sister, and decided to yell:
“Poppy has a penis!”
Anyone who has ever met a three-year-old knows they shout these things totally at random, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. I think most of the crowd laughed. But my mother just about died when my father leaned down and told me, very seriously:
“No, no. Poppy has a BIG penis.”
Been a family legend ever since. It’s told on me AND Dad.
Anyway, per Juliefoolie’s request, I was four years old, did not know about cursing or anything like that. We decided to go to Fuddrucker’s for lunch. My cousin asked where we were going and I said “F***ers”. I honestly thought that was what the restaraunt was called. I didn’t get in trouble or anything, I was only four.
My 8 year-old and I frequently have discussions about why he can’t sleep in my bed with me. Just today we had one, and I told him (for the 167th time) that it just wasn’t appropriate for an 8 year-old boy to sleep with his mom (especially when the mom sleeps naked but I didn’t say that out loud). He replied, “Look, mom, I’m not trying to have sex with you.” :eek:
This is from several years ago. I was visiting a friend’s apartment/duplex, saying hello to the neighbor’s 9-year-old daughter. Pleasantries aside, she remarked: “A nice day to smoke dope!”
Another one from my 8 year-old that happened a couple of weeks ago- the Nirvana song Rape Me was playing on the radio. He walks up and says, “That song is so stupid- “rape me.” :rolleyes: .” I said, “Uh, do you know what “rape” means?” “Yes,” he said, “it means when you choke someone.” I then explained to him in simple terms what rape is. He looked at the radio and said, “Wow. That really is a stupid song.”
I am a Nanny and I take care of these darling four year old twins who I will call Jake and Lila, who keep me rolling in laughter everyday. I’ll give you the most recent story as it is still in my head.
Every once in awhile I bring my little Pomeranian Pup to work with me because he loves the kids and they are really good with him. This is the conversation we had on the way home from pre-school:
Me: Guess who is at home waiting for you guys?
J&L: Who?
Me: Jordie! Can you guys babysit him for me while I am making lunch? It’s a very important job.
Jake: Oh Goody! We’ll make sure he doesn’t eat anything bad, like poison.
Lila: Or anything from China!
Jake: Lila…(Huge sigh) everything is from China.
Can you guess who Lost a few toys in the recent recalls…
My seven year old son, last month at his Great Grandmother’s house. He was looking at a photo of me and his dad holding his older brother as a baby. He stared at it for a while and then said “I’m not there”.
“No”, I agreed, “You weren’t born yet.”
He turned round and told Great Granny (92 years old…) “No, I was still in my Daddy’s willy.”
