The Knighting

A (with a pool noodle): I dub thee Sir David. 

M (hits A with noodle): I dub...

A: No, the king doesn't hit the knight. Or he'd chop off his arm or head. It's a sharp sword. So, he taps lightly. (Demonstrates.) I dub thee Sir David.

M (gently): I dub thee Sir Mommy!!

Phone Etiquette

Monkey (on pretend phone): Heyyo! Heyyoo!

A: Hi. What are you doing today?

M: Good!

A: No, that's "how." I said, "WHAT are you doing today?"

M: GOOD!

A: No, no. WHAT are you DOING today?

M: How!!

A: Me redskin?

M: Watching movie?

A: Haha! You're so silly!

Run, Forrest, Run!

LadyBug ran into my room: "I need to run as fast as I can!"

Why?

"Because I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

Ah.

The Penny People

Monkey (not quite four yet) just informed me that, "Penny people have no legs." And in case you don't speak toddler, what he means is, "the people on coins are just heads, no legs." 

Someone got into Daddy's change pile this morning.

Words of advice

Little Frog encouraging her siblings to pick up the messy bedroom: Be strong. Be beautiful. Be wise. Do the motions with me. Be strong. Be beautiful. Be wise. 

Collector

I picked up a pair of Monkey's dirty pants that he left on the couch, intending to just throw them in the dirty clothes. But they rattled. So I began emptying his pockets.

Lego pieces

Barbie accessories

Game pieces

Stamps

Beads

Connector to glow-in-the-dark bracelet

Dried up playdoh

Car

Change

The size indicator for a plastic hanger

I believe the next stage of boyhood (the one where they bring all kinds of things home in their pockets) has begun.

On Shaving

LadyBug: Daddy, why do you have a beard?

K: Well, hair just grows on my face. And Mommy likes it.

LB: Oh. Grammy must like Grandad bald, then.

Homophones

Keith: Ech!

LadyBug: What?

K: He shot himself with a pellet gun!

LB: With a pelican?

K: Ha! That's a funny image, but no.A pellet GUN, like a bb-gun.

LB: Like...your mom?

K: Ha! No, not like Bibi.

Where you toy?

Grammy decided to treat us to lunch. Kids' meals.

Monkey: Where you toy, Mommy?

A: I don't have one. 

Monkey: What?!

A: Adults don't get toys in our meals.

Monkey: But me got bird! (Angry Birds)

A: Yes, but adult meals only have food, not toys in them.

Monkey: Oooh! Dat sad.

Sense of Humor

Like all kids, mine attempt "Why did the chicken cross the road" jokes without really understanding how jokes work. This morning's round of jokes produced a lot of illogical and unfunny nonsense. But one bit of illogical funny nonsense came from Monkey:

Why did the horse jump on the roof?

Because I wanted to eat him.

To hear a three year old with a speech impediment talk about a horse jumping on the roof is probably the most surreal experience ever. His joke wasn't all that funny. After all, what three year old talks about eating horses? But his presentation was hilarious. 

A true hero

If you only knew about super heroes from what my kids say, then you'd think Cat Woman's greatest weapon is her bad breath.

Semantics

Monkey: Mommy, help me?

A: Aren't these the shorts you wore yesterday?

M: Yes.

A: Get clean shorts. And underwear.

M (crying): No!

A (laughs): You need to wear clean clothes every day. No just school days.

M: But me no want to! No laugh me!

A (laughs harder): But you're so cute!

M (cries harder): Me no cute!

A: Then what are you?

M: Me handsome!

A (can't breathe from laughing): O...K...

M (yells in frustration): Not funny! Me handsome!

Clearly we're starting the day off sync. 

Aspirations

My kids are playing "Sonic." This is where they pretend to be skating carhops. This despite the fact that they've never seen a real carhop skate. They've only seen the recruiting posters with carhops with skate-shod feet. But they're doing excellent "skate" shows between asking me if I want tater tots with my owl cake. 

Instructions on the Plague

Monkey: (as he's jumping on me) You really sick?

A: Yes.

LM: Why?

A: Because you caught the stomach bug from Daycare and brought it home to me.

LM: Oh. ...Sorry.

Punny Girls

Frog (8yo): It's Hotel Pennsylvania in the dark hallway!

LadyBug (5yo): It's TRANSylvania, not PENNsylvania!

Frog: No, Pencil-vania! It's full of pencils!

Adventures of Speech Impediment

Today, Monkey and I were in Hobby Lobby when someone was called over the intercom to the frame shop. So he decided to say, "Frame shop." I showed him how to enunciate it. He practiced a few times. He even got it perfectly when we separated the two words. But then he put them together again. "Shame fop" was the results. Which pretty much just made me laugh and laugh. Everyone else in the checkout line just grinned at him. 

Kisses

Monkey and I were having a tickling fight. At one point I caught him up and said, "I want kisses! May I kiss you?" 

He said "No," of course. Such a little boy.

"How about Eskimo kisses?" 

"No!"

"Butterfly kisses?"

"No! Dinosaur kisses!"

"Dinosaur kisses? How do we do those?"

--

At this point, I should explain. Our family will often "Eat you up, I love you so!" This is a quote from Where the Wild Things Are. Eating you up involves "biting" the hollow of the neck/shoulder with no teeth to result in lots of laughing. 

--

Monkey shows me a "dinosaur kiss" by "eating me up, he loves me so." This proceeds to even more tickling and laughing. Pillows become involved, so now it's a full fledged pillow fight. At one point, he's sitting on my chest and says, "Rottett kisses!"

"What kind of kisses?"

"Bast off!!" He then leans down and gives me what seems like a normal kiss until I say, "MWAH!" and he falls backward like a rocket blasting off. I die laughing. 

It draws the attention of LadyBug. More tickling. More pillow hits. More dinosaur and rocket kisses. I sneak in butterfly kisses for LadyBug. Frog wonders in to see what all the noise is back. She runs back and reports to Daddy. When the two of them come back, I tap out. 

Tura Lura Lura

Last night, Aunt Z told me about a time several years ago that she sang a lullaby to my girls. As she sang "Tura lura lura, Tura lura, lural," the girls asked her, "What about Karen?" So, she sang "Tura kara Karen, Tura kara Karen." Of course, when Z told me this last night, we had to look up what "Tura lura lura" meant. Since it's just random rhyming syllables, we decided that "Tura kara Karen" is an appropriate change. 

The Boggart

Little Frog woke up from a nightmare right as my alarm went off. I brought her into the kitchen to help me with my morning routine while we talked. 

She begins tellinging me about skeletons invading Heaven, so various people are trying to protect her, when Daddy suddenly turns into a skeleton too. So, she said, "Pause! Bathroom time!" Everyone froze, and she headed off to the bathroom...where she woke herself up.

This is the first time in any of her vivid dreaming that she's told me she controlled it. Ah! Finally! Another lucid dreamer in the family! 

So, I did what any geek parent does. I went and pulled Prizoner of Azkaban off the shelf. I looked up the Boggart in the Wardrobe chapter, flipped through to the staff room scene, and handed it to her to read. 

When she got to Professor Lupin assigning their homework, I stopped her. "So...how did they defeat the boggart?" "By laughing?" "Yes, by changing what was scary into something funny." "So...I can change my scary dreams?" "Exactly. Next time Daddy turns into a skeleton, make him do something funny. Like tap dance until all his bones fall apart." "Oooh! So I don't have to be scared?" "No, you don't."

This is where I want to die.

I think I may be raising Anne of Green Gables. She has decided she wants us to lay her on the bench in front of the fire place whenever she dies. I guess it's appropriate because there are already two ashes urns on the mantle.