Stuff My Kids Say, Part 17

Pictured, from left to right: J, O, R

I was on the train last week with my three boys - we were coming home from work and child care respectively. As per usual, I gave the boys each a banana to eat. They were slightly green, not quite ripe. J soon discovered how this makes them more difficult to peel.

He frustratingly cried out, "I can't peel this bloody banana!"

I quietly suggested he ask for help next time.

At that point, as I avoided eye contact with other passengers, I decided it was really time for another edition of Stuff My Kids Say. Recently, I gave toddler O his turn in the spotlight. However, it's been so long since R and J got a run, that some of the stories in this come from a time when we had a different prime minister!

(Okay, so it hasn't been that long. This is Australia, after all.)

So here are some selected tales of the last four months or so. I've had to edit out some stories I collected in this period for brevity. Other stories have been cut because I can't make sense of my shorthand notes from so long ago. So unfortunately we will never know why J said, "I'm not an octopus!"...

Bloody octopus bananas.

1.
They are twins, but they are also individuals. For an insight to their differences consider these reports from childcare on an art project involving hammering shapes onto a cork board.

Firstly, J explained how he is making a barnyard with lots of different farm animals! And there was a photo of his creation, with a square frame for the barn, animals inside and outside, and a rooster on the roof.

Then R explained how he is making a person in bed and the bed is going to turn into a rocket ship and when he goes into space he is going to make alien friends and have a picnic! And there was a bunch of stuff that maybe resembled a rocket?

They also both create books - that is, they draw pictures and dictate the words for someone else to write on the pages.

R's tend to focus on some random story, a burst of imagination that may or may not make sense. J's will typically be lots of great pictures of, say, reptiles, with numbers to show how many metres long they are.


2.
A few months ago we decided to get a part-time nanny - I was going to go with "au pair", but I believe you can only use that term with Home Affairs Minister intervention. Basically it was cheaper to hire a backpacker with babysitting experience than increase their attendance at child care.

The twins seemed okay with this, but I suspected it was one of those things you tell them and it doesn't really register.

So a few days later I said to R, "you know, in Mary Poppins the kids write a song about what they want from a nanny. You haven't thought about this at all."

He didn't say anything, then three days later, when I'd forgotten all about it, he said to me, "I've started writing my song about the nanny."

Then he began to sing:

She must be kind

And give me chocolate every day

3.
R's literary talents extend beyond singing. Here he provides a few entries to add to the next addition of the Kids Dictionary:

Drains
One of the system of branching vessels or tubes conveying blood for various parts of the body to the heart.

I have blood in my drains.

Rumpleschnitzel
A popular fairytale from the Brothers Grimm about an imp turning straw into gold in exchange for a first-born child.

No, really. Fairlytales are messed up, as are nursery rhymes.

Taste Bugs
Small, flask-shaped bodies on the tongue which are the end organs for the sense of taste.


4.
J is more mathematical in his approach to life. He prefers numbers and patterns to words and stories.

He recently figured out that once you can count to ten, and then you learn twenty, thirty, forty etc., you can basically count until you lose your voice.

It's both impressive and terrifying, as at any moment you can be subjected to endless counting.

After surviving a recent train trip where he counted up to 318, J decided to start again from one on the walk home. I interrupted as he was about to start, and asked in desperation, "why are you counting?"

"Because I want to!", he remarked. Then he continued, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ..."


5.
Australia just marked one year of marriage equality. Instead of an expensive survey, we should've just asked the kids.

Recently, R asked his mum, "can I marry a boy or a girl?"

Mum replied, "you can marry whoever you like. Do you think you'd like to marry a boy? Or a girl?

R said, "I don't know, it depends who I like the most."


6.
In case you missed it, we are expecting a fourth boy early next year. At the time we told the kids, J wanted a girl and hoped "the next baby will be a sister."

A few weeks later, as toddler O destroyed another Lego creation, I think he changed his mind.

"The baby keeps ruining everything," he cried, in frustration. "Why are we getting another one?"


7.
It seems inevitable to me that there will come a time where R and J band together to overthrow the tyrannical rule of their parents.

One morning R was very animated as he whispered to J. I was curious, because normally their volume control doesn't go below 11. So I listened in and overheard the tail-end of their secret conversation:

"I would never lie to you J, I only lie to them!", R said.


8.
We started with a bloody banana, and we end with a pizza.

When I said earlier that J was big on patterns, I forgot to mention he also doesn't like pizza crusts. This is how the kid eats a pizza: