My five-year-old daughter and I were looking at photos from a recent trip to Disney World. We came across one of her posing with two characters in front of the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. For fun I began quizzing her about various details of the picture:
“Who’s on your shirt?” I asked.
“Mickey Mouse!”
“Who is that standing there with you?”
She chirped, “Chip and Dale!”
I wondered if she remembered the name of the treehouse, so I asked, “And what are you standing in front of?”
She thought for a minute, then her face brightened. “A camera!!”
One night, I brought home the video of the original Planet Of the Apes. The youngest child (6 at the time) was absolutely captivated by the story. At the very end, when Charlton Heston came upon the Statue of Liberty, she pointed at the screen and shouted “Disney World!” Right concept, wrong location. We laughed and laughed, but at least she GOT IT!
My son and I were playing chess the other night and paying no attention to the program my daughter was watching. We were talking probably a bit too loud, and she turned to us annoyed and said “Do you MIND!? I’m trying to listen to the subtitles!” (okay, yes, blonde, but please don’t hold it against her…)
Oh, I forgot this one. My son, practicing his ‘complimenting skills’ (I guess) told Dad “Dad, you look good with all that extra fat on you!” (DH is NOT that fat.)
The last one reminded me of something my daughter said the other day. I’ve been losing weight, and the best compliment I’ve received so far was when she said, “Wow, Mommy, you went in on the sides!!”
At the dentist, the other day, the dentist was brushing my 4 year old’s teeth. Brush brush brush … more brushing and finally she goes “Okay, you’re done!”
Dentist laughs, continues to brush. When he’s finally finished she goes “Can I show you how to do it now?” and then proceeds to show him the “right” way to brush teeth (haphazardly).
Four years old and she knows more than the man who went to dental school.
I asked my 3.5 year old son “What do you want to do for lunch today?”
His reply was “To go to Legoland and have lunch there!”
Last night, as I was busy prepping classes, he kept asking me if I wanted to have a ching-ching fight (what he calls a sword fight, after the sound effects of such). I told him, “I’m sorry, but I’m really busy and I can’t do that right now.”
His reply was “Dad, would you like to have a LITTLE ching-ching fight?”
The other day I was driving down the road with the children in the back seat, when a sudden fight broke out back there. My daughter cried, “Mom! Paul’s throwing trash out the window!”
“No I’m not!”
“Yes you are!”
“No I’m not!”
“Yes you are! I saw you!”
My son was getting more and more outraged, and finally burst out, “It was a BOOGER, Alex!”
A few weeks ago I watched my friends’ 3-year-old son for a few hours while they were painting. At one point, my friend asked her son, “Do you like Val?” He said, “Yes. She’s my favorite color.”
My friend and I were She said jokingly, “Hmmm … well, I guess he’s fond of white people, then!”
I figured out what he meant later when we were talking about colors. He pointed at something green and said, “That one’s my favorite.” It was then I realized that I was wearing a green shirt—his favorite color!
I was in the Brown University bookstore with my husband and son last summer. Hubby was there to look at medical books (he’s a therapist) and my son and I were along for the ride because we thought it might be fun to hang around Brown afterwards.
We must have looked at a million things that said “Brown University” on them and my son asked a million times “what does that say, mom?” I replied " Brown University" a million times and I’m pretty sure, at this point, that he gets that these are all souvenirs of Brown. So, finally, we’re looking at the t-shirts and Kindergarten Caricci selects one in his size that says Brown on it. I told him he could have the Brown t-shirt if he was sure he would wear it. I told Mr. Caricci I had said yes to the Brown t-shirt because I had been promised that it would be worn. And finally, I said, “Okay, so I’m going to pay for this Brown t-shirt now. You still like it, right?”
Nearly five year old HBKid doesn’t have much time for imaginative games, he’s very practical. Yesterday he came up to me with a little house that he’d cut out and stuck onto another bit of paper, leaving a door that could open and close.
He asked me to open the door, and I did, revealing a little stick man standing in my doorway. Rather to my surprise, HBKid put on a little “Stick man” voice and squeaked, “Hello! I’m Little Man!” Deciding to encourage this rare flight of fancy, I replied, “Hello Little Man, are you coming out to play?”
In the same squeaky “Stick man” voice, HBKid said,
“Don’t be stupid, I’m a drawing”, and walked off…
5 year old niece is in Sunday school. It’s a lesson on the Sermon on the Mount. Niece is fine until the teacher gets to the part about Jesus riding there on the ass. Niece gets all shocked and says "You can’t say that! You should say Jesus rode on his butt!
5 year old nephew is playing outside with some of the neighborhood boys. He is using his new word for the day, “broad.” Except that’s what he’s calling the other boys. His mother explains that first of all, it’s not a nice thing to say and secondly, broads are girls. Little guy thinks upon this a bit and then says, “So that’s why in church, the priest says, ‘You may now kiss the broad’!”
I used to travel a good bit on business. Before each trip I would gather the kids, pull out the atlas, and show them where I was going. We would talk about how far away from home the destination was, what interesting “stuff” was there, what time zone the city was in, etc. Kind of a mini-geography lesson before each trip. We had gone through the whole nine yards before an upcoming trip to Miami, Forida. When I asked “Well, any more questions?”, my youngest daughter said “Yes, Daddy. Just exactly who is you’re Ami, anyway?”.
I’m at least a few years away from having kids yet, so I’ll share this gem from my own childhood. The house I grew up in had a big kitchen with a walk-in pantry that was larger than some bathrooms I’ve had since. One afternoon Mom was working in the kitchen, and little 6-year-old me walked into the pantry for a snack. Sitting on the counter at exactly my eye level was a coconut that Mom had bought earlier, the three indents on the end pointing towards me. I’d never seen a coconut before. My eyes got really big, and I ran back into the kitchen and started tugging on Mom’s apron. “Mom! Mom! There’s a brown furry animal in the pantry!”
**The Weird One’s ** story reminds me of the time my son found a huge bloated tick which had fallen off one of our cats. “Mom! Mom! I found a pea with legs!”
She said jokingly, “Hmmm … well, I guess he’s fond of white people, then!”