Stuff My Kids Say, Part 12

I thought about changing this series of blogs from Stuff My Kids Say, Part 12 to SMKS12.

Like how New Kids On The Block became NKOTB and went onto bigger and better things from there.

As always, these are actual things my actual kids said. They are pictured below. Stories are laid out step by step, it's the right stuff.

R, O and J

1.
I probably only know two thing about kids. The first is this:

Bandaids fix all minor problems.

As my wife applied a Star Wars themed bandaid to a very small or possibly even imaginary scrape belonging to R, he began to calm down and stoically declared, "we are braver than you, mummy."

This is a lie.

They are not braver than anyone. Well, O might be. But the twins recently screamed at a museum when looking at the stuffed crocodiles. They'd been to the museum before. They knew they weren't alive. They screamed anyway.

They also still want to go back and look at the woolly mammoth exhibition.

So to the claim of bravery, my wife humoured them - "I dunno, I'm pretty brave."

"You weren't very brave with the cockroach," J interjected. "And all the bugs, mummy."


2.
I took the three boys to the park. R and J were having a great time together, while O played separately. R and J even made friends with another boy.

Back in the car afterwards, I asked about their new friend.

"Yeah, we made a new friend!", said R. "He is also four."

"Yes, he has almost the same birthday - the 900th of July," added J.

"I'm not sure that's how it works," I suggested.

"It does!"


3.
Made up numbers are fairly common. Small things weigh 91 kilograms, or the time is 26:30, and so on.

Aside from 900th of July, my other favourite recent instance is this:

After O had done something fairly standard for a not-quite-two-year-old, R exclaimed, "O is the cleverest baby I've ever seen!"

I laughed. "How many babies have you seen?", I asked.

Without hesitation R replied, "oh, 400. And they don't do anything!"


4.
R and J have got to the age where a lot of car conversations are along the lines of, "are we there yet?".

Or they will request some particular music or audio book, only to ask constant questions about the music/book because they aren't listening to the music/book.

But we did have a recent trip with three quite interesting moments.

Firstly, as mum reversed down a long driveway to start the journey, R asked, "why do you get three mirrors and we get none?!". His tone suggested that it just wasn't fair.

Secondly, R later asked about why you need to wear seatbelts.

J calmly responded, "if you don't wear your seatbelt, we will have an accident and everyone will die."

Then R said, "don't say 'die'! It will give me bad dreams!"

In hindsight, I honestly don't know which part of the conversation was more disturbing - the pre-schooler flatly declaring we will all die, or the pre-schooler having nightmares about death.

I was too busy laughing to contemplate this at the time.

Thirdly, we started listening to an audio book - it was Harry Potter and the Something of Something, I'm not really up to speed on my wizards - and there was a section about unicorns living in the forest.

"Unicorns are weird," J declared.

"Why's that?", I asked. I don't disagree, but I felt this could be going somewhere.

"Because unicorns are made of horses but horses don't have horns," he said. "And they don't live in the forest. They live in Unicorn Town."


5.
My wife was driving on that trip because she doesn't like being a passenger.

Or it could be because, as J suggested, "dad, you're the worse driver."

On a similar note, one time my wife was fishing for compliments by asking the twins about her cooking.

"You're the best cook!", R said.

"And you're the badder cook," J added, looking at me.


6.
Can't drive, can't cook. You've got to wonder, what makes me a dad?

Fortunately R has the answer.

"I'm dad!", he declared one day.

"I'm tall," he continued. Well, I'm definitely tall relative to everyone else in the household. "And I don't have much hair."

Another time, he told me, "dada, today you're going to boring, boring work and I'm going to have so much fun." That was motivating.


7.
We picked up everyone from childcare and R had required an underwear change. I asked him why.

"Because I was doing a fart and I pushed too much," he explained.


8.
The second thing I know about kids?

They grow up so quickly.

(This one might be my fault.)

My wife was about to leave the house with the kids, and she asked J, "do you have your drink bottle?"

"Aww fuck!", he exclaimed, as he raced back down the hallway to get it.

He has since added "what thaaa fuck?" to his vocabulary.

(That one is not my fault. His friend at pre-school taught him it, which is really a 'what the fuck' moment in itself.)