Kids Say The Darndest Things!!!!!!

Mollie writes:

One of the blessings of staying home with kids is that you are on hand for all their questions, observations, proclamations and edicts.  When I decided to be home with the kids full time, I knew that I was signing on for some good times, but never did I know how much I would enjoy their verbalizations.

The following are the tamer observations made by my children or friends' children upon their acquisition of verbal skills.

"DeeDee Da no go!"   This was uttered by one of mine when he was just starting to mimic sounds.  I swear this is true, he was 13 months old and standing at the living room window, watching his dad take off for work.  "Dee Dee" was Peter's name for himself and "Da no go" is self-explanatory.  Never think that your wee ones don't suffer disappointment, loss or grief.    They may not get syntax yet, but at age 13 months, they get that daddy goes to work - which leaves us with . . .

"That's women's work!" uttered by the same child as we were out driving when he was approximately 27 months old (I was very pregnant with Roger at the time).  We were driving down Powell Boulevard when Peter spied a man mowing his lawn.  At our home I was the official gardener, and that included mowing the lawn, spreading barkdust, and other macho chores.  Peter hadn't seen a guy mowing the lawn before, his limited experience was his mother's doing the work.  He wasn't being sexist, he was just commenting on life as he knew it at the time.  Amazingly, I didn't drive off the road, I simply told him that ALL work was women's work.  That was good enough for him.

"I NEED MONEY!"  Roger's first sentence, bellowed from somewhere beneath his gut, when he was 20 months old.  We were in Switzerland at the time, having just driven our motor home across the French border.  I only had French francs when Roger saw a mechanical elephant ride at a Swiss restaurant.  He couldn't ride it since I didn't have the right coinage.  That child had it all figured out at that tender age . . .

"I have a dire rear" was stated by Erica when she was pre-two.  She had the tummy flu and was experiencing the 'tail end' of it.  I thought that was the funniest thing I'd ever heard in my life - but then again, I was 21.

"I can't hear you over the sound of my being right!"  Stated by a grade schooler to her brother when they were arguing over something (anything, frankly).  I've taken this sentence and tattooed it on my brain for future use.

"Sh'up Mollie"  Stated by a little girl I was babysitting when I was 19.  She was maybe 15 months old and had fallen while playing in the back yard.  I told her I'd kiss it and make it better, this was her response.

"Your spaghetti tastes like cigars!"  Ok, so I burned the sauce.  The same little one who told me to sh'up also knew the taste of cigars when she was 3 years old.  Hmmmmmmmmmmm

I have plenty more, rattling around in my memory, these are simply the best.  So don't forget to sit back and listen to your kiddies - they've got something to say!

Millie Writes:

Hee hee; this really brings back memories.

Sassy's first words were "Shu-up, Bee" - spoken from her stroller at Rocky's parent-teacher conferences. Seems Bender was horsing around outside the classroom window, and she repeated what she'd heard Birtha say so many times before.

Jack - well, Jack doesn't think about things the way other people do. To little Jack earwax was plural for earwack (which is what you got one of on your finger when you scratched your ear), and a "Conver" was one of a pair of Rocky's tennis shoes.

Baby Rocky coined the phrase, "Help me do it myself!" I love that story. It seems like such a ROCKY way to enter the Terrible Twos.

I still call those loud emergency vehicles "amblee-ances" because of Red, and I well remember how relieved I was one day when I had the idea (during the million-and-sixth reading of Animal Sounds) to ask him, "What does the MAMA say?" and he answered, "I YUVVVV you!"

When Bender was about 13 we were all at the zoo and he saw someone he knew from school. It's bad enough to be in PUBLIC with your PARENTS when you're 13, let alone to be at some baby destination like the zoo, so Bender was determined to show off his Cool. He gave that little Teen Boy half-nod to the other kid, and said in his bass-est voice, "Hey Dude; how's you?"

You never know what's going on in those little heads until a chance phrase opens up a whole new world to you, either. One night when she was 3, Joy was sitting next to me flipping through a magazine and pointed to a shoe-store ad showing various modeled shoe styles. "Look, Mama, isn't that sad?" she said. "All those people had their feet cut off!"

Which has kept me wondering ever since: What ELSE do our kids think is perfectly commonplace that we have no clue about?