Kids say the darndest things

Thumbs up! How old is beeps nowadays?

she'll be 5 in march. how did that happen???

Damn, I don't want to have to explain to my baby girl about the bad men at Hooters before she's like 8 or 9 or something. : (

I think possibly the third or at most fourth thing that went through my mind when I found out I was having a daughter was "as soon as she's old enough I'm going to explain to her about how she should kick guys in the nards if they try anything"

(Sometimes I feel like such a troll dad.)

BEEPS
Daddy, aliens don't exist, right?

ME
Right. Until we're proven otherwise.

BEEPS
And there's no such thing as ghosts?

ME
No such thing as ghosts. Those are only pretend on TV.

BEEPS
What about volcanos?

ME
Volcanos? Oh, those things are everywhere. Here, let me show you some pictures on my iPhone...

oh lord

Beeps spent weeks before her birthday begging for her very own goldfish. She told us how she would LOVE the fish SO much and make sure it was happy and heathy and loved all the time. I hated the idea but finally we relented and her grandfather bought her a 5gal tank with glow in the dark plants, a spongebob pineapple house, neon pebbles etc Like a totally tricked out tank.

So a couple of weeks later the water is disgusting. Like I mean her entire room smelled of fish crap. This was partly pp and my fault because we just can't seem to get the whole bio circle in sync and partly beeps and henrys fault for feeding the fish 9 pinches of food at a time a gazillion times a day and not using the water conditioner stuff that i guess kills the poop and keeps the water health .

Anyway, I peered into the murky water to catch a glimpse of 'Princess Pink' and there she was swimming about just fine BUT her previously golden body had changed to black fins and black lines around her gils. I later learned these are ammonia burns and aren't fatal but at the time it freaked me out because it looks really bad.

Me (Shocked and semi-hysterical): "Beatrice!! Look at princess pink! HER TAIL AND GILS ARE BLACK!!!"
Beeps (Giving the fish tank a cursory glance and speaking very calmly): "Oh. Why does she have black?"
Me (Now passive aggressive (yeah - I know) and still semi-hysterical): "Uhhhh maybe because she's breathing in FILTH from the FILTHY gross water she swimming in which is filthy and gross because no one puts water cleaner in it and she gets fed 100 times a day??????"
Beeps (Still calm and looking at her LeapPad): "Hmmmm...Is she sick?"
Me (Checking my bad parenting and speaking much more calmly): "Well, I dont know but she doesn't look so good"
Beeps (SO Nonchalantly): "*Sigh* Oh well. She was a good fish"
Me:(Incredulous)"BEATRICE! SHES NOT DEAD YET!!"
Beeps: "oh yeah." (shoulder shrug)

GAH

"my arm is too windy"

Oh well. She was a good fish

:D

premature beepitaph

Ben: it still smells like pizza in my throat. Oh! I mean uvula!

they're learning

evie's new thing is laying down on the ground very slowly, saying "oh no i fall down" then immediately saying "are you ok? are you ok?" (because that's what we say to her when she falls down)

awwww

"26, 27, 28, THIRTY!!"

"you forgot 29"

"there is NO TWENTY NINE IN MY LIFE!!"

LOL!

I got in trouble the other night because Beeps told sunny how there's a man who lives in the ground, under the dirt, and at night, he comes into the house and throws dirt at everyone's faces. When asked from where she got this information, Beeps replied "From Daddy."

So I had to explain that I had told her about THE SANDMAN, lightly sprinkling crystals into her eyes to make her go to sleep (and why she had eye boogers in the morning, the reason this all came up in the first place.) SHE'S the one who came up with dudes buried alive in the yard and shit.

My friend's 2-year-old got the same haircut as me. When I pointed it out to her, she said, "We both look so cute!" She has a half-inflated football she calls Frogbot.

Ava decided to rename her band last night - "I don't want us to be Mr Cool any more, in case people don't think we're cool, because the name would be silly. We're now Pitchfork Pandemonium. Because I have a guitar shaped like a pitchfork*." (* - it is a plastic pitchfork) Lulu immediately made herself the singer, wearing pants on her head, two pairs of socks on her hands and Mum's cardigan. Creative differences immediately:
A: "We're not doing a song called Barbie Band!"
L (singing): "Barbie is lovely..."
A: "I'm going to guitar practice!"
L: "Then I'm going to singing club!"
They re-emerge...
L: "This song is called Wonderful Daisies."
A: (groans) "Ok then."
A makes neow-neow gtr sounds, while L sings "I am going in a garden / It has a lovely bench / We went on a swing that was shaped like a tyre / The ground was covered in daisies".

It took me until 10:30 last night to get Ava to sleep.

lolz at all of these...

funny in particular about the guy who lives in the ground because my 2 1/2 year old has started talking about NIGHT GUY. Which sounds pretty creepy (we haven't shown her any It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia). But she says his name in this excited voice, like he's a fun dude. "NIGHT GUYYYYYY!" If you ask her what Night Guy does, she just says "He sleeps."

I think going to gigs in the US has had a profound effect on our girls. "I want to be a rock star as well as an author now, Daddy," says Ava, "but I worry that with all the soundchecks I won't have time to write my stories."

Ava and Lulu killing it omg.

I wd like Ava to be my train conductor every day, even if she does seem skeptical about the validity of the bar car argument.

She told me I would have to stay on the train for FIVE DAYS to get to Kalamazoo, even though Lulu was going to Liverpool and her ride was only two days long--that hardly seems fair. Miraculously, I was ordered off right around the time I ran out of beer.

I'm going to go through all our photos with them at some point, and make sure they don't forget any of their new Stateside aunts and uncles.

I will bribe their memories with American children's books <--unfair advantage even though they have no idea who I am.

evie got a pair of my boxers out of the clean (fortunately) laundry, held them up in front of herself, and said "i like my tutu!"

One of the tasks I worked on on Mechanical Turk was analyzing transcripts of children's speech. I was this close to emailing the researchers that I worked for and telling them that their tasks were the most adorable ones on the entire site.

"I had the weasels!" --my husband at 6-7 years old after a certain now rare childhood illness.

After having that illness, I mean.

PPs first words: 'Leave me alone"
<3

Lol no way.

a couple of times now evie has described food that she didn't want to eat as "boogers" (one time it was avocado, another time hummus)

heard a kid in an NPR piece say, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, replied: "a soldier, a computer expert, and an. . . exterminator."

pplains's Sandman story is killing me :-D

"you taste like peanut butter, grasshoppers, and a fireplace"

I think I had that dish at Coi!

Owen: "I want to be a space alien, so I can pick up bad guys in my flying saucer and throw them into the garbage truck!"

Ben: "I want to have a space suit that has computers, and night-vision goggles, and shoots french fries at bad guys!"

parents are having a serious conversation after breakfast, I start a sentence "sometimes...", kinda trail off

my nine year old pipes in, straight faced, "you gotta live mas", then grins

that's my boy!

nice

Henry, on mother's day, in packed restaurant, at the top of his lungs, busts out with some Katy Perry "BABY YOU'RE A FIREWORK!"

hahahaha <3

my Dad (David) used to tell people on the bus as a toddler that his name was Burset. My Grandma was mortified and never figured out where he got that name from.

One of my friends went through a phase when he was little where he'd only answer when people addressed him as Hong Kong Phooey. He even has books from that time where it says This Book Belongs To: Joanh Hong Kong Phooey.

haha

*reading 'Pinocchio'*

ME: Do you know what a conscience is? It's supposedly what makes you know the difference between good and bad.

BEEPS: I already know the difference between good and bad.

ME: Well, yeah. But just like you use your hand to pick up your milk there, you use your conscience to know what's right and wrong.

I start reading the book again. She starts punching her own forehead.

ME: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

BEEPS: There. No more conscience. Let's finish the book.

Little girls are at their best when charmingly amoral, and Beeps is a fairly wonderful example. None of that pesky conscience for me, thanks.

evie's grandpa got her one of those board books with a finger puppet of a bee in it, like this:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UPJ4-0s41Mk/TqJ_Fsf5rVI/AAAAAAAAAfM/h0145klM-5k/s1600/beee9780811852364-crop-325x325.jpg
she pushed the puppet inside out through the back of the book, then pointed at it and said "bee bottom"

"I've got a case of the hippies"

While discussing the King of the Hill episode about Dale's gay dad:

Wife: So when you grow up, are you gonna marry a girl or are you gonna join the gay rodeo?
Son: When I grow up I'm gonna be a journalist for ten years, then I'm going to war.