“…I have to decide what my last words are going to be.”
That was MilliCal just now. She’s about to turn 10, recall. I have no idea what brought this on.
“Where’s your Daddy?” asked Pepper Mill, my wife.
“He’s upstairs working on the computer, Don’t worry – he’s not about to die.”
Where does this stuff come from?
Earlier today (I took the day off and took her to a Water Park) she asked me, point blank:
“Daddy, Why are you weird?”
Why can’t she just ask why the sky is blue, or where babies come fromm, or something?
Oh, yeah, we answered all those. This is what we get for doing that.
I just have to say, you have a damn interesting kid. And I mean that in a very good, respectful way. I love it when you post about things she says or does.
She probably read something about “famous last words” or somebody’s last words in particular. It probably impressed on her that last words were something important that people remembered you by, so she, quite naturally, set out to figure out what she’d leave behind for posterity.
Did you ask her to define weird? And did you ask WHY she needs to decide on her last words right this minute? I need answers!!!
My coworker’s two year old has taken to making a statement of fact, with no special emotion attached to it, that has coworker baffled as to where she learned it. Example: she wants to hold a hippo towel holder that attaches to the wall, but is difficult to take on and off. The conversation goes:
“Mommy, can I hold the hippo?” “No, Claire”
“Mommy, can I hold the hippo?” “No, Claire”
“Mommy, can I hold the hippo?” “No, Claire”
“Mommy, can I hold the hippo?” “No, Claire”
"Mommy, I think I'm mad."
Of course, I think maybe she’s using mad in the sense of insane rather than angry (because I have a low tolerance lately for two-year-olds, but nevertheless
My cousin Megan will be three in the fall. This spring, there was a pretty nasty storm and tornado warning, so my uncle called us to make sure everybody was all right. He was holding Megan while talking to me on the phone, and I could hear her say, “Daddy, Megan talk to Sarah.” He said something along the lines of, “In a second, sweetie. Daddy and Sarah are having a conversation.”
So we talked for a little bit more, and then she said again, “Daddy, Megan talk to Sarah.” He gave her the phone, and she said, “Hi,” and then proceeded to breathe heavily into the phone and not answer any of the questions I asked her. My uncle would try to take the phone away from her, and she would say, “No, Daddy. Megan turn.” And then breathe heavily into the phone. She finally ended our conversation by saying, “Bye-bye, Sarah. Daddy turn.”
For some reason, receiving a heavy breathing phone call from a toddler cracks me up.
She’s completely adorable. When she plays with kittens, somebody else has to pick them and the preferable way to play with them is to follow them around and narrate their actions. Kitty’s walking. Kitty stopped. Kitty’s sleeping. Kitty pooped.
My girls going on six and really only bothers to ask either questions that are classic kid: “Daddy, why is it raining?” and the inevitable, “Daddy, why did it stop raining?” minutes later or things I cannot possibly answer, such as, “Daddy, where are those boys going?”
However, a good two years ago she asked something I’ll never forget. “Daddy, why don’t I have a peepee trunk like you?”
I just hope her knowledge of elephant anatomy remains greater than male human for many years.
[Bill Cosby] Kids say the darndest things. [/Bill Cosby]
I have already reported in another thread that *I * fully expect my last words to be: “Dave, kill me before I become one of them! And hide my porn! My mother…”
“Uncle Nemo, what are clouds made out of?”
“Little drops of water like fog”
“Uncle Nemo, what’s the sky made out of?”
“Air”
“Uncle Nemo, what’s air made out of?”
“Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Carbon Dioxide.”
“Uncle Nemo, why is it called air?”
“Because that’s what its parents named it.”
That’s right, kid, Uncle Nemo has all the answers.
[hijack] CalMeacham, I wonder if you might take a second to weigh in on a parenting/education question. I’d really like to hear what you have to say about it.
Remember Art Linkletter, and his Kids Say The Durndest Things segments?
I remember one cute little girl, maybe 5 or 6, that let it slip that Mommy slept on the couch last night. Art asked why, and the little girl said it was because Daddy made it too hot for her in the bedroom.
:eek: :eek: :eek:
Remember, this was 40-plus years ago, so that was super-racy stuff for TV back then. Turns out they couldn’t agree on the setting for the window A/C unit, so she slept downstairs where she could turn that one down to sub-Arctic levels.
My dad died on Tuesday morning, on Friday at his memorial I met my 5 yr old great neice/second cousin…my dad’s brother’s daughter’s child!
My dad had stayed the night with his brother some time last week. His brother’s 5 yr old grand daughter had also stayed there.
She was given one job… wake up “Uncle Gary” in time to go to work. She woke up her grandparents at 5am to see if it was time to wake up my dad. “YES” they answered. He told me about his 5 am waking and thought it was lovely and funny.
When I met my lil neice-ish person at the memorial I said “I hear you are are good at waking people up”. She looked at her mum with a confused expression, her mum said “this is Uncle Gary’s daughter” without missing a beat she said “He’s dead you know”.
Her mum looked horrified but I thought it was a lovely honest moment, when a little girl was trying to make sense of the world.
Damned if I know.
Seriously – I’ve never heard of it before.
I don’t think I’m weird, but that’s jusy me.
MilliCal asked to see **Goldfinger[/B[ last night. I asked her why – she wasn’t interested in James Bond before.
“Because I want to see the cat,” she replied.
I explained that there was no cat in Goldfinger, but there was in a lot of the early Bond films featuring Blofeld. So I pulled out my Bond DVDs and went through all the appearances of the white cat (I don’t have Never Say Never Again, with the ginger cat, or Diamonds are Forever. At least not on DVD.) We watched all the cat appearances and ritiqued them, giving the cat a voice.
"Let go of me! It’s clear that you don’t know how to Pet a Cat! What are you doing, trying to cut me head off?
aaack! Explosions! Cats HATE explosions! Let me go, you idiot!"
And so forth.
We finished up with Thunderball – the scene at the beginning when Emilio Largo goes into that outrageously-sized meeting room. Blofeld is sitting behind his venentian blind, petting his cat (ably, for once) and executing cheating underlings. MilliCal pipes up with this ad-lib:
“SPECTRE only uses the meeting room on weekends. On weekdays they rent it out for rollerskating.”
I gotta see if Mike Nelson’s new group needs another writer.
I once had this conversation with one of my favorite four-year-olds:
“What happens when you flush the toilet?”
“The water is flushed away and the toilet refills itself with clean water.”
At this point she looked exaperated and burst out “No, Shannon! Where does the poop go?”
“When the toilet flushes the water goes down a pipe and collects in a big container underground called a septic tank. Eventually the poop gets mushier and breaks up into tiny pieces.”
“Oh good.”
My five year old son & I were in a crowded public restroom a year or so ago, and he asked me in a loud, incredulous voice, “Mommy, are you SURE you don’t have a penis?”
:eek:
“Yes, honey, I’m pretty sure…”
All the moms and grandmas gave me a sympathetic smile.
calm kiwi, you reminded me of something my youngest cousin (he’s now 19, I think) said at our grandpa’s funeral.
First: my grandparents are/were very religious Catholics. My aunt married a Jewish man and converted to Judaism, so my cousin had probably never been to a Catholic service before. (I hadn’t either, but I’d seen them on TV!)
At some point in the service, my cousin, who was ~8, turned to my aunt and said loudly, “MOM! They’re just saying the same thing over and over!”
Everyone cracked up. My grandpa would have loved it.
