Archive for the 'These People Crack Me Up' Category

A Short History of the Piñata

February 24, 2010 @ 7:34 am | Filed under: Family, These People Crack Me Up

Every now and then I like to collect the kid-quips I’ve tweeted and deposit them here, just to keep the family archive in one place. Apologies to Twitter-friends for whom these may be repeats.

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Actual last line of chat with friend last night: “TTYL—must go get hulk out of dishwasher.” 

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Rilla just asked me to pour her a “nice juicy cup of milk.” 

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Rilla staggers into the sunny morning, squinting. She rages, rages, against the coming of the light. 

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Baby boy just figured out how to activate big bro’s toy computer, uttered his first triumphant “YES!” All it was missing was a fist pump.

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How very cool. Scott & girls are at small-venue Suzanne Vega concert (hasn’t started yet) & have a table directly in front of the stage.

Suzanne Vega wished Beanie a happy bday after the concert last night. (Bday was last month; the concert was her present.) Beanie is beaming. 

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Prepared for anything: Wonderboy just came to me with his hearing aids to put in, his glasses to clean, and his pirate scarf to tie on. 

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Beanie: “Whenever I put honey on our sandwiches, I always make sure there are smiley faces.” Love that kid.

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This moment caught: 9yo sketching amaryllis, the 2 boys playing w/ trains. 11yo reading about B. Franklin. Teen reading Gulliver. 3yo sings. 1:28 PM Feb 3rd

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Big Bad Bunny has become Rilla’s Mike Mulligan & the Steam Shovel, and I’m Beezus.

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She comes to me with socks on her hands & gives a fearsome roar. Then, as she clambers onto the bed: “Did you know monsters love to cuddle?”

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Yesterday: I’m in the rocking chair. Rilla climbs in my lap, arranges herself comfortably, says: “OK, Mommy. Let’s do this!”

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3yo: “When I grow up I’m going to teach my little boys and little girls how to squish gummy bears.” (Pauses. Thinks.) “And math.”

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For dinner Jane made a SCRUMPTIOUS cheese & onion “hogbake” from the Redwall cookbook in honor of the arrival of Doomwyte in paperback.

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Rilla & I just spent 20 minutes watching elephants on Youtube. She very badly wants them to be able to see her back.

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Overheard: “Wouldn’t it be funny if his name were Chris, and our last name was Muss? Get it? Chris Muss?” Ah, 8-yr-olds.

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Playing hangman with the 8yo. Very tricky, actually, because she keeps picking very short words. _o__. No E, T, N, S, or A. My guy’s toast.

Ha! Saved by the L! (It was doll.)

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Was just requested (by 8yo) to draw a picture of a “Norwegian forest cat.” Um.

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The 3yo is demonstrating proper lollipop-licking technique for me. She takes this extremely seriously.

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Rilla asks me to draw a horse. Surveys my handiwork, laughs indulgently. “Mommy! It didn’t need a mouth.”

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ME: I’m worried that (minor detail of story) isn’t right.

SCOTT: Sweetheart. At this stage, that’s like worrying that your font isn’t right.

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The 8yo just asked, “Mom, would you like to hear a short history of the piñata?”

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Rilla, upon seeing the blue button-down shirt the baby was given for his birthday: “We’re going to dress him in MAN clothes!”

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Listening to Scott and four or five children wail to “Like a Rolling Stone.” There is some delicious irony there (“How does it feel..to be on your own”—ha!), and also just deliciousness.

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The 8yo: “Mommy, I am haunted by the temptation to stick a lettuce leaf in the candle flame and see what happens.” (So yes, I let her try.)

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This day so far: donut holes at the park with the younger 5 while the 14yo did mix-y things with chemicals in her science lab.

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Rilla asks me to draw a picture of grandma. I comply. She looks, quivers, says sadly: “I guess it’s okay if she don’t be a ballerina…”

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Today: took a mountain drive, clambered over rocks, gobbled Pfeffernusse, assembled the Galileoscope. Now trying to get the moon in focus. (Dec. 31st, 2009)

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Overheard: the 3yo: “How old was I when I was a baby?” The daddy: “Perfect. You were perfect.”

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Beanie upon trying (and loving) her first green smoothie: “This has liquified my distaste for spinach!”

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1 comment  

That Would Be the Other Kind

January 26, 2010 @ 9:15 pm | Filed under: These People Crack Me Up

My friend Kristen sent the kids a box full of fun stuff: fairy wands, Slinkies, a board book for Huck to eat.

Says Rilla, about the wands: “They’re GORGEOUS. Now I can be a fairy all right.” (In a tone that conveyed she’s been waiting all her life for the opportunity.)

About the Slinky: “Ohhhh!!! WIRES!”

She inspects everyone else’s presents. “This is so great. Mommy, WHO are they from again?”

Me: “Krissy.”

Rilla, head tilted, clearly puzzled: “You mean Krissy, my Polly Pocket? Or the other kind of Krissy?”

3 comments  

I Can’t Keep Up

January 3, 2010 @ 7:29 am | Filed under: These People Crack Me Up

Rilla comes hobbling in, using a wiffle ball bat for a cane.

“Look, Mommy, I’m playing I’m a grandma!”

Me: “Why, hello there, Grandma.”

Rilla: “Mommy. I’m not playing that any more.”

4 comments  

Going Green

December 15, 2009 @ 7:46 am | Filed under: These People Crack Me Up

Beanie, upon tasting (and loving) her first green smoothie: “This has liquified my distaste for spinach!”

1 comment  

I Blame the Godmother

December 1, 2009 @ 7:34 am | Filed under: These People Crack Me Up

What happens when you read one of Karen’s posts aloud to your husband in front of the small fry?

The three-year-old decides “Feral Squirrel” is a perfect nickname for her baby brother, that’s what.

3 comments  

This Could Go on Forever

November 7, 2009 @ 7:21 pm | Filed under: Hearing Loss, These People Crack Me Up, Wonderboy

Wonderboy: My hearing aids aren’t working.

Me: Oh, are your batteries dead?

Wonderboy: Huh?

Me: Do you need new batteries?

Wonderboy: What?

Me: Come here, let me check your hearing aids.

Wonderboy: I think my batteries got dead.

(And yes, we can communicate in sign language as well, but during this conversation I was holding a plate in one hand and a giant slice of pizza in the other. Priorities.)

3 comments  

Literalist

October 26, 2009 @ 8:14 pm | Filed under: These People Crack Me Up, Wonderboy

A conversation reported to me by the 14-year-old:

biscuitWonderboy (looking at book): “Biscuit is spelled B-I-S-C-U-I-T.”

Jane (hiding book): “That’s right! What does B-I-S-C-U-I-T spell?”

Wonderboy: “Biscuit!”

Jane (still hiding book): “That’s right! How do you spell Biscuit?”

Wonderboy: “With letters!”

5 comments  

Indeed They Do

October 23, 2009 @ 6:29 am | Filed under: These People Crack Me Up

Overheard: the three-year-old exclaiming over the nine-month-old, “Oh, they just grow up so quickly!”

3 comments  

Good Listener

October 22, 2009 @ 7:02 am | Filed under: Hearing Loss, These People Crack Me Up, Wonderboy

During yesterday’s evening tidy, Jane asked Wonderboy to put a pair of shoes away in the cubby.

Wonderboy, as many of you know, is hard of hearing. Even with his hearing aids in, he cannot pick up soft unvoiced consonant sounds such as those made by the letters C and T.

Which may explain why, this morning, we discovered that pair of shoes in the kids’ bathroom—in the tubby.

3 comments  

Like Mother, Like Blogger

September 29, 2009 @ 7:19 am | Filed under: Snippets, These People Crack Me Up

Jane shares my relish for a good little-kid story and often emails me choice snippets of conversations she has overheard. This one made me laugh out loud for real (LOLFR?).

Rilla, AKA ‘mommy’: “I want a lollipop!”

Beanie: “No, you’re too sick to have a lollipop.”

Rilla: “But I WANT one!”

Beanie: “Oh, fine, here’s one.”

Then she pulled out an invisible lollipop.

And Rilla said: “No! I want a RED one!”

2 comments  

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Melissa Wiley




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Jane, 14 yrs old
Rose, 11 yrs
Beanie, 9 yrs
Wonderboy, 6 yrs
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Book Log 2010


March


Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith
by Deborah Heiligman
(shows up in posts
here and here)

February


Mare's War
by Tanita Davis

Betsy and Joe
by Maud Hart Lovelace

Mockingbird
by Kathryn Erskine
(notes)

Liar
by Justine Larbalestier

Winona's Pony Cart
by Maud Hart Lovelace


January


Essays of E. B. White
(selections)

Carney's House Party
by Maud Hart Lovelace

How to Say Goodbye in Robot
by Natalie Standiford

Kendra
by Coe Booth

Secret Keeper
by Mitali Perkins

The Prince of Fenway Park
by Julianna Baggott
(I interviewed her here)

The Kitchen Madonna
by Rumer Godden

Asterios Polyp
by David Mazzucchelli


Book Log 2009

(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)


Book Log 2008



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boys


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3littles

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Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.

(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)




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    How We Learn

    “Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”

    Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?

    And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?

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