We encourage Carolyn, our three-year-old, to tell us what she did that day when we sit down at supper/dinner (the evening meal). My wife and I also do this, of course. Carolyn was telling us about her day, butr got stuck when she got to lunch. She couldn’t remember what she’d eaten.
Carolyn: Daddy, do you remember what I had?
Me: No, Carolyn. I can’t “remember” what you had. I wasn’t there. You’re my only source of information.
Carolyn: (indignant) I’m not a SORCEROR!
(I should point out that we’d watched Fantasia, with its “Sorceror’s Apprentice” sequence a coupole of days earlier.)
A better one came a few months ago, between my wife, Mrs. Cal and our daughter. Someone had just gotten a new car.
Mrs. Cal: But we don’t need a new car. This car isn’t that old.
Carolyn: I’m afraid it is, my dear.
We still have no idea where she picked that phrase up!
I was moving into a new apartment with my now ex-fiance and her 4 year old boy. The ex is a germ freak and had sprayed this foaming anti-germ sterilization stuff all over the bathroon without telling anyone and then left to buy groceries while I unpacked the boxes. After a while, the boy comes to me and says he needs to go to the bathroom. I show him where it is.
“But I can’t go,” he says.
“Sure you can,” I say, “This is our place now, you don’t need permission to use the bathroom or anything.”
“No, I can’t go,” he insists.
I ask why not and he takes me to the bathroom where there is foam everywhere. I run my finger across it and say to myself, “What the fuck is this shit?” Just then, I hear the door open, and I tell the boy to ask mommy what this is in the bathroom.
The four-year-old then stands in the hall and shouts, “Mommy, what the fuck is this shit?”
I have since learned to watch my mouth around kids.
My niece was about 3, strapped in her car seat, as my sister was driving. Niece was trying to perch her sunglasses atop her head without much success. In a fit of pique, she threw them to the floor and said: “Fuck it!” It was everything my poor sis could do not to break out laughing…
When my son was three, I enrolled him in preschool. When I picked him up after his first day there, I asked him what he had learned that day. He proudly recited: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republicans I can’t stand…”
My mom told me that one day when I was like 2 I woke up in the middle of the night and stood in the hallway and said in the most serious voice you’ve ever heard,“Mom, I can’t sleep. Should I count sheep?” She said it was hard to keep from laughing.
When my daughter was 4 I took her over to visit her grandfather who was home working on the water well. Well when she heard what he was doing when we arrived at the house she immediately wanted to go outside and help him.
About five minutes later my daughter comes storming in the back door and I can tell she is very upset. I ask her what’s wrong about the same time her grandpa walks in behind her. She turns around pointing her finger at him and with all the little kid fury she can muster hollers “Liar Papa! That’s not a whale! Whale’s have tails!” The poor thing thought he had been outside working on a big fish! Dad and myself couldn’t stop laughing over this one.