kids say the darndest things

July 1, 2010 by Kelli

Sloan: “Hey Mom! What if I had a fire bootie?”

Me: “Um…what?”

S: “What if I had a fire bootie? Then, if a dinosaur started chasing me, I could just toot and it would be like a rocket and I could get away.”

Me: *silence* There’s really no way to respond to that.

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Sloan: “Tia! Stop copying me.”

Tia: “Stop copying me.”

S: “Tia, stooooop.

T: “Tia, stooooop.”

S: “Mom, Tia is copying me.”

T: “Mom, Tia is copying me.”

Me: “Tia please stop copying Sloan. That bothers him.”

Tia: “Well I can’t help it. My bwain tells me to copy and I can’t say no to my bwain.”

Me: “Well, you’re gonna have to learn to say no to your brain, honey, or you’re gonna have a lot of trouble in life.”

Sloan: “Yeah. And some of that trouble will be with me.”

Someone tell me again…how long until school starts back up?

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Me to Landon: “What’s your name?”

Landon: “Bubba.”

Me: “No, what’s your real name.”

Landon: “Uuuhhh…Hey you Bubba?”

I swear we don’t go around calling that child ‘Hey You.’ Just want to make that clear.

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Tia: “Mom! Sloan called me a wowyer.”

Me: “A what?”

Tia: “A wowyer.”

Me: “What’s a wowyer?”

Sloan: “A lawyer, mom. I called her a lawyer.”

Me: “Oh. That’s not a bad name, Tia.”

Tia: “Yuh-huh. He said it mean and he said I’m a big, fat wowyer.”

Me: *sigh* “Sloan, don’t call your sister a lawyer, please.”

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Tia: “Mom, I weawy, weawy, weawy wish I was a boy.”

Me: “Why?”

T: “So I can stand up to go potty and so I can carry guns.”

Me: “Well I can’t help you with the potty thing – that’s just how you were made. But girls can carry guns just like boys.”

Tia: “They can?”

Me: “Sure.”

Tia: “Can I have a gun for my birfday? A weal one?”

Me: “No.”

Tia: “But I fought you said girls tan carry guns?”

Me: “Pretend guns, honey. Sloan doesn’t even have a real gun.”

Tia: “Yuh-huh. He said he could shoot me dead wif it.”

Me: “Sloan! Come here please.”

Filed Under: funny stuff that happens, Kids, Kids do the darndest things, Landon, Sloan, Tia Tagged With: Kids bickering, kids say the darndest things, Sibling rivalry, summertime

Tia Tales: The Four Year Old Edition

April 14, 2010 by Kelli

She is part girl, part Tazmanian Devil. She is gregarious and passionate. Equal parts sugar and spice, she really is everything nice. And she is 100% a four year old, which means she lets loose with a few gems now and again.

Take, for instance, our trip to Target last week. As we run into the store (and when I say run, I mean run. This child rarely walks), she smacks right into one of those big, red, cement balls out front. And at a decible only a preschooler can create exclaims, “Ow! My penis!”

And the older couple in front of us turn in surprise then melt into laughter. And I wonder if I could possibly dig a hole in the ground and bury myself there…

She’s a happy girl who loves to dress up, but won’t let a dress stop her from having fun. In fact, I’m pretty certain you won’t find a messier child on planet earth. It’s probably a good thing we don’t have a little girl behind her, because I don’t know that I have a single outfit without a stain on it.

She’s also fearless. She will climb up and jump off of anything. Case in point, we were at a friends country home this weekend. They have a swing chained to a tree branch and it swings out over a hill so when you’re swinging forward, you’re much higher in the air than you expect to be.

My kids love to jump off swings. Sloan went first and in keeping with his thoughtful approach to life, he waited until he had slowed down a bit before jumping and rolling down the hill. Tia went next. In keeping with her fly by the seat approach to life, she jumped at the peak of her swing, which means that she was easily 6 feet in the air when she launched. Maybe more.

Lee and I had heart attacks and both yelped. She arced through the air as confident as could be and slammed to the ground. I was certain she broke both ankles, but she hopped up, turned around and gave us a look like Dude! I totally had that.

She takes delight in tormenting her brothers. De-light. Here she is spraying them with the hose. Despite the fact that Landon was screaming his head off, she chased him across the yard, spraying and grinning like the Cheshere Cat.

Then she tried to spray me.

I caught her putting on my make-up last night. She had on blue eye shadow, a LOT of blush and red lipstick. She looked like a little Vegas Showgirl. When I asked her what she was doing she gave me “the look” (the one that clearly says, Duh Mom…) and said, “I jus want to be woody (really) pitty for Daddy.”

I caught her taking a swig out of the Infant Tylenol bottle yesterday. Fun times. She didn’t get but a sip, but I made sure she understood how dangerous it was to drink medicine. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “Yes Ma’am, I undewstand…but I still woody, woody fink I need medicine.”

“Why do you need medicine?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just fought if I said dat you would give me some.”

She is my girl and, my goodness, I am madly in love with her. Even if I am fairly certain she is conspiring to make sure I age at hyperspeed.

Filed Under: Family, funny stuff that happens, Kids, Kids do the darndest things, Tia Tagged With: Funny things kids say, kids say the darndest things, Tia

Beautiful Lips

March 22, 2010 by Kelli

It was October of 1999. I was a senior at Baylor University and Lee and I were an official “item.” We’d had the obligatory *DTR sometime mid-July and we had finally settled into calling one another boyfriend and girlfriend, although I must admit I giggled every time I called him my boyfriend. It sounded so silly and trivial for no other reason than I knew I was going to marry this man and “boyfriend” seemed to diminish that.

But whatever – he hadn’t put a ring on it yet so that’s what we were stuck with. You know what else he hadn’t done yet?

Kissed me.

Ah, he was a noble lad. He was ever the gentleman and I think he was trying to hold out until he proposed. But that could take forever for all I knew and, being the little minx that I was, I was doing everything in my power to break his will.

I put on shiny lip gloss. I bat my eyes repeatedly. I giggled and grabbed his arm when he made a joke. When we hugged I layed my head against his chest and lingered as long as he would let me. And he was weakening, I could tell.

Then came the crisp Texas October night. We were standing in the parking lot of my apartment complex saying our long, drawn out good-byes. It was after midnight and Lee had to get up early the next morning. I was feeling brazen and had made it some kind of subconcious mission to get him to kiss me.

We were discussing things that only those who are young and in love discuss. Those discussions that have a sole purpose of giving you extra time to stare into one another’s eyes and dig deeper into the heart of the one you adore. They are cheesy and innocent and sometimes I miss those conversations. We still have them but they’re usually laced with fecicious banter and laughter…which is also fun, come to think of it.

“What is your favorite physical trait?” Lee asked. Before I tell you my reply, I’d like to remind you once again that I had a mission to get him to kiss me. We had been an official item for roughly three months and I was so close to cracking through his gold plated chivalry.

Naughty girl…

“My kissable lips,” I said without missing a beat. His eyes widened and I grinned mischeviously. I blinked and gave him my best Come Hither.

“Gotta go,” he said and with a quick hug he hopped into his1992 fire red Pontiac Grand Am and tore out of the parking lot, dust and rocks billowing behind him. Like James Dean…only not as cool.

Dang! He was good. I was terrible, but he was good.

He finally kissed me about a week later after we had our first argument. I can’t even remember what we fought about but I do know it resulted in him looking at me and saying, “This not kissing thing is getting hard.”

We got engaged three weeks later. He was so close…

Fast forward ten and a half years to Friday when I sat on the couch with the kids watching TV. A Revlon commercial came on with Jessica Alba prancing around looking all catlike at the camera. She was advertising lipstick. When they zoomed in on her lips Sloan, who was nestled in the crook of my arm, shook his head slowly.

“Whoa,” he said. “She’s got beautiful lips.”

My head snapped down and he looked slyly at me from the corner of his eye with a devilish little grin and blushed slightly. Then he shrugged his shoulders all cool and said, “What? She’s a beautiful girl.”

He comes by it honestly folks…

*Define The Relationship

Filed Under: funny stuff that happens, Kids do the darndest things, Lee, Sloan Tagged With: Jessica Alba, Kids, kids say the darndest things, Motherhood, Revlon

The one with all the vomit – and other funny stuff…

July 24, 2009 by Kelli

It is amazing to me how two children from the same two parents can be so very different.

Sloan has a penchant for melodrama. He gets that from me. I know you’re shocked. I’ll give you a minute to let that bit of information sink in before we move on…

Better? Yes, as a child I tended to be slightly over dramatic about a few everything. I like to think of myself as a passionate person. And Sloan is my passionate child. Thus the reason he and I butt heads constantly. I’m positive my parents prayed fervantly that I ended up with a child just like me.

Tia, on the other hand, is relatively even-keeled. Unless she loses a race or gets beat in a game, then the gloves come off and she releases with a mighty fury. She only slightly competitive – just slightly like her daddy.

But when it comes to things like falling down, getting sick, etc… She’s our tough one.

When Sloan throws up, the world will know. There is great wailing and gnashing of teeth. There is a fair amount of bemoaning (Why did I have to get sick?) and he makes it plenty obvious that he’s not happy. And I can appreciate that – I really can.

So when Tia started throwing up last night, I braced myself for the hysterics. But they never came. In fact, we didn’t even know she had a stomach ache. (This is the same child who, the last time she got the stomach flu, threw up in her bed and went back to sleep in it – we never knew she’d gotten sick!) And as I held her over the sink and washed her mouth off, our conversation went like this:

Me: Are you feeling better now?
Tia: Yes. (heaves and spews)
Me: Does your tummy still hurt?
Tia: No (heaves and spews)
Me: Do you want a little drink?
Tia: No – I want to go night-night. (heaves and spews)

Sweet little girl threw up on and off all night last night, and each time she leaned her head over her bowl, took care of business, then rolled over and went back to sleep with hardly a word.

Yes – they are different. Both sweet and spicey in their own little ways.

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In other, slightly less disgusting news, Sloan and I had an interesting discussion yesterday. I won’t recount the whole thing because it’s not entirely appropriate for this public platform, but let’s just say it involved him giggling over the word penis.

Boys! Honestly, they don’t have to be taught do they?

And finally, this morning I took my brood (yes, even the sicko) to the Social Security office where I had to get all of our cards replaced due to them being stolen last year. That’s fuuuuun.

As we left, we walked past a man taking a smoke break. And my terribly un-shy 6-year-old piped up, “Why do you have a smoker? Don’t you know that’s bad for you? It makes your lungs black.”

Out of the mouth’s of babes…

Filed Under: Gross, Kids, Kids do the darndest things, Sickness, Tia Tagged With: kids say the darndest things, stomach flu

Sloan-isms

July 2, 2009 by Kelli

My boy (who’s almost SIX) has had a few great one liners lately. Enjoy the deep thoughts of Sloan Stuart:

Sloan: “Hey mom – you know what I’m the awesomest at?”
Me: “What?”
Sloan: “Oh, just about everything.”
Me: “You’re modest too.”
Sloan: “Yeah…Mom, what’s modest?”

One morning, after he crawled in bed with us at the crack of dawn, he started rubbing my face.
Sloan: “Mom, do you have sunscream on?”
Me: “No.”
Sloan: “Why is your skin so lotiony then?”
Me: “I put lotion on my face before I went to sleep.”
Sloan: “Oh. Is that to help you not look so old.”
I had no comment…

When I called about 5 days into my trip, I spoke with Sloan who is the only child who apparently missed me while I was gone…
Sloan: “Mom, where are you?”
Me: “I’m in South Caicos.”
Sloan: “What are you doing in South Caicos?”
Me: “I’m just looking around.”
Sloan: “Okay, um…this is getting a little weird. When are you coming home?”

After I returned home, I enjoyed some sweet snuggles with my oldest. As we cuddled up he gave me a kiss on the cheek.
Sloan: “Mom, I missed you so much.”
Me: “I missed you too, buddy.”
Sloan: “You know mom – I always loved you. Like, always…”

And finally – A couple of weeks ago as I was folding laundry, Sloan pulled out one of my bras and held it up.
Sloan: “Mom – when I grow up and turn into a girl, will I wear a nest holder like this?” (he still calls the female chest a nest – at what age do you think I should correct him? Never? Oh good, that’s what I was thinking...)
Me: “Honey, you’ll always be a boy – you will never be a girl.
Sloan: dropping my bra and clapping his hands together as though they were dirty – “Oh good, because that does not look comfortable.”

I seriously don’t know where he comes up with some of this stuff…

Filed Under: funny stuff that happens, Kids, Sloan Tagged With: kids say the darndest things, Sloan