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Here are some more conversations that the children had recently:

Growing Up

“Someday I will be taller than mama.”
“Yes, someday.”
“And I will be taller than you.”
“Oh, maybe. If you keeping eating your food, then you’ll keep growing.”
“No daddy, that’s only at birthdays!” (that you grow)

Zero is the New Thirty

The oldest has taken to adding 30 to all the kids ages, so they’re comparable to our (his parents’) ages. But he leaves our ages intact. I suppose it’s a good thing that he doesn’t add to those.

5-year-old: “I’m 35, you’re 33, you’re 33, and the baby is 30.”
(One of the 33s was for me and the other one was for the 3-year-old. But the 3-year-old disagreed with the baby’s new age)

3-year-old: “No, he’s thirty-zero.”

We were about 5 minutes into a 45-minute van ride with the family, and the 5-year-old wanted to know some math answers.

“What’s 100 plus 100?”
Sometimes we ask him to figure out the answer, sometime we try to explain how it works, but for some reason this time I decided just to answer him.
“200”
“What’s 200 plus 200?”
“400”
“What’s ” (at this point I knew that my training in base-2 numbers would come in handy. As a software engineer, I have 2-to-the-X down pretty well) “400 plus 400?”
“800”

(Condensing the story here. When we made it to 12,800, I decided to call it “128-hundred” for quicker calculation and pronunciation, and I continued that way.)

“What’s 512-hundred plus 512-hundred?”
“1,024-hundred”
“What’s 1…what’s 1 hundred…what’s that number?”
“One thousand twenty four hundred”
“What’s that number plus that number?”
“2,048-hundred”

We continued like that, with his question of “What’s that plus that?” the rest of the way. Then we got to “65536-hundred”. After he asked me what that plus that was for 65535-hundred, I gave up. Mainly because I have 2^X memorized for X from 0 to 16, but this answer was 2¹⁷, so I would have to think about it.

I replied with “I don’t know.”  I expected that he would be disappointed, but he was rather pleased.  “I can count higher than you!” he said, with a grin on his face.

I let him enjoy his victory.

The boys and I were playing on the couch two Sunday afternoons ago. Playing in close quarters, with boys who like to talk/yell, means that you can tell what they’ve been eating by the scent of their breath. The older one’s breath smelled sweetly fruit-like.

Knowing what they had for dessert, I said “Someone’s breath smells like Skittles. Who had Skittles for dessert?”

To which the 5-year-old replied: “I did!”

Next I smelled the 3-year-old’s breath, but his didn’t smell like anything. He had a Tootsie Roll for dessert, and apparently Tootsie Rolls don’t affect one’s breath much.

Then the older one wanted to smell my breath, so I breathed on him. His response was “Your breath smells like skunk spray!”

And the 3-year-old chimed in: “Did you eat skunk spray for dessert?”

I think they were being dramatic, as my wife hadn’t said anything about my breath. Or maybe she was just being polite.

For the record: All I had for dessert was some toffee brittle.

Here are some updates on recent conversations with the children.  They are more into weapons.  We don’t really have many weapons in the house, but they have good imaginations.

Cup-Bearer

One day I came home from work and the kids were glad to greet me.  The 5-year-old brought me one of his plastic play cups from a food/kitchen set and told me I should drink it.  So I pretended to drink from the empty cup, and then we had the following conversation:

“I just gave you medicine with diabetes in it!” (and he was laughing that I fell for his trick)
“Diabetes?”
“Yeah, what possums have.”
“I think you mean rabies.”

They are trying to poison me.  Once they’re old enough to cook, I’ll have to be careful.

Proofs

Driving home from church one recent Sunday, I heard the following coming from one of the car seats behind me: “Our van is shooting spears and bullets and everything that hurts.”

When it not that, it’s the quicksand and hot lava (not just lava – hot lava) and lasers and electric (not electricity – electric).  Anything that they can wave their hands and pretend is shooting out of them, they will do that.  I think it started with Spiderman’s web-shooting abilities and then progressed from there.  They’ll shoot ice at you to freeze you and then squirt hot lava at you to unfreeze you.  Or tell you that the floor on which you are standing is really quicksand.

But don’t worry, our kids are quicksand proof.  And hot lava proof.  And “everything proof”.  So if you ever try to pretend-squirt them back, it won’t work.  And it also won’t work if they try to shoot/squirt each other, because whatever one says to the other, the other quickly claims that he is that-proof.

Always Winning

Then there was the Super Bowl.  The kids usually like to watch football with me, and they usually want to know whom I want to win.  So they asked me who I wanted to win, and I replied “The Cardinals.”  And then they asked who was winning, and I replied “The Steelers.”  Then my 5-year-old shared his philosophy: “Whatever team is winning is the team I want to win.”  I suppose he will always be happy with whatever game he watches.

Sunday morning in our house: “Whoever gets their coat and boots on first is the winner.” is what I heard coming from the children as they were getting ready to head out the door for church.  One child, the one who did not call out the terms of the game, got his coat and boots on and was out the door first.

As he was leaving, the first child changed it to “Whoever gets their coat and boots on second is the winner.”  When I got to the van, they were both angry at each other, because the first loser was telling the other that he was the loser, and the real loser was mad for losing, and so on and so forth.  They both got in trouble for that little exchange.

That evening, as they were getting ready to go out again, I heard the same child start the routine again, “The first…” but I think he learned his lesson from earlier that day, because it was different this time: “…two people who get their coats and boots on are the winners.”  And then when they both got ready and out the door, the one said “We’re both winners!”  And everyone was happy.  Eventually, they’ll have to learn that not everyone can win all the time, but that’s good for now.

Then a couple days later, we happened to be having ice cream after dinner.  I notice the younger child stand on his chair and raise both fists in the air.  What was that all about?  “I won!  I finished my ice cream first!”  And then after he and his brother finished and cleared their places, he noticed I was still eating.  He couldn’t let that go: “You’re the loser! You’re the loser! You’re the loser!”

Also, he will race me up the stairs or outside to the van.  When he wins, which he always does, he will sometimes tell me “I won you!”  It’s so fun hearing that, I don’t feel like correcting him with “It’s ‘I beat you.’”

Here are some recent conversations with our kids:

Three-year-old, holding a piece of paper that was cut out to be a person: “I can’t talk!”
Me: “If you can’t talk, how’d you say that?”
Him: “I don’t know!”

The best part about that conversation was that he had this fake voice, pretending to be the paper guy the whole time.  And he was moving it in front of his face.

On another evening, I was reading a book of farmyard animals to our 3-year-old.  I asked “Do you know what baby pigs are called?”  He answered “No“, so I replied “Piglets.”
The next page had puppies.  I asked “Do you know what baby dogs are called?”  He answered “Doglets“.  He catches on quickly.

Try talking to a 5-year-old when you have the hiccups:
“Pick that up, off the fl-HHHK-oor”
“Daddy, you said ‘fl-HK-oor!‘”
“Please hand me that pa-HHHK-per.”
“Ha-ha, you said ‘pa-HK-per!‘”

It’s fun dealing with a young child who is still learning grammar.  Here are some recent accounts of conversations that we had with our young children.

Before the funeral – Me: “Okay, you need to be good during the funeral.”
After the funeral – Child: “Did I be good?”

How can you not smile at the child who says that?

A different situation, this time:

Me:  “You need to get dressed; it’s almost time to go.”
Child: “No, I willn’t”

Part of me was ready to discipline him because he said that with a defiant and angry attitude.  But more of me was ready to laugh at the grammar or using “willn’t” instead of “won’t”.  But I couldn’t let him see me laughing.  One reason was that I didn’t want him to think his attitude was okay, and the other one was that if he saw my laughing at him while he was angry, that would make him even more angry.  So that was one of those situations where I had to stifle my amusement until later and deal with the immediate problem.  So I went over to him and said, “It’s won’t, not willn’t.”

Here is an exchange that happened while we were driving somewhere.  As I was driving, not taking notes, I don’t have the exact words that were used, but these quotes portray the spirit of the event.

Me: “That’s not food.  Do not put anything in your mouth except food.”
Child: “And drink!”
Me: “Yes, and drink”
Child: “And silverware”
Me: “Yes, and silverware too”
Child: “And medicine”
Me: “Okay, and medicine”

I think it ended there, but that reinforced the concept that family rules should be more general than specific.