I walk into the living room and my daughter (4) is sitting on the floor crying.
“What’s wrong?”
“She (little sister, 2) ate my nose!” What? It’s still there on her face.
“Did you eat her nose?”
“Yes”
“She ate my nose, it’s in her tummy! Waaa!”
I go over to little sister, blocking big sister’s view. I say “Cough up her nose right now! Thank you.” I walk back, making a “nose” with my thumb between my fingers and pretend to put it back.
“Happy now?”
“Yes. Sniff”
Not having kids of my own, I’ll relate stories from my own childhood.
My parents, who love stories like these, told me that when I was just a wee squirt I was quite literal-minded. When asked to keep my eye on some toy, I would go over, pick it up, and put it adjacent to my eyeball. Merriment assuredly ensued.
I personally remember this from when I could read and my youngest brother, G, could not. G was looking for a specific video tape and was using me to expedite the process by reading labels. Eventually, he grew tired of my pace and decided to speed things up by forcing one of my eyes open as far as it could go and shoving the tape as close to that eye as he could manage, yelling “Read this, Tee-ser*!” to ensure his desire was clear. My parents laughed their damn asses off.
*(His toddler rendering of my name, Christopher.)
Edinburgh Zoo is laid out on a hillside and, when we were there on Sunday, as were were going down one of the steeper paths, a mother with a little girl were going up the other way. As she toiled up behind her mum, the girl proclaimed, “Mummy, my legs are out of breath!”
Very cute!
That’s adorable. I’m sure that I’ll think of it next time “my legs are out of breath!”
At school yesterday, one girl was telling a friend where the story of her younger brother’s namesake. “So then Finn killed the giant, and he got the treasure…”
“I KNOW!” interrupted her friend. “I read the Bible, you know!”