My Quotable Kids (Babble)

One of the greatest pleasures of spending time with little children is the funny things they say.  My kids say something that makes me laugh every day so I thought I’d share a few good quotes.

Recent quotes from Quinn (age 3):

A friend of mine asked if there was any way she could help me out, and I told her if she would play with Quinn at the violin store one morning so I could get more work done, that would be wonderful.  So she arrived with toys that used to belong to her own kids and got down on the carpet with my son to spell out words with a kit that came with cards and letter tiles to put on them.  Quinn is very interested in learning to read and was excited to be spelling words.  He picked out a card with a list of fruits and vegetables to write out, but was concerned that the space provided next to the picture of the watermelon only had room for the word ‘melon.’  He insisted they needed to write out the whole word, and my friend suggested that they run the ‘water’ part of the word off the card onto the carpet.  That made him very uneasy and he finally said, “But mama says we’re not supposed to put water on the carpet.”


When I was making cream puffs Quinn wanted to try one.  I kept telling him he could have one when they were ready, so he kept checking in and asking if they were done, but he couldn’t remember what they were called.  Finally at one point when he came up to me in the kitchen and said, “Can I have—what are they called?” and I said, “Cream puffs,” he repeated, “Cream puffs.”  Then he ran up the stairs saying to himself, “I have to go write that down.”

Quinn likes to pick up random books and pretend he can read out loud.  He just makes stories up as he studies each page, but instead of speaking normally, he reads like his sisters do:  By. Stop-ping. At. Ev-er-y. Word. And. Care-ful-ly.  E-nun-ci-at-ing.  Ev-er-y-thing.  I pointed out that the copy of the Giving Tree he was reading was in French, but he said he didn’t mind.

Poor boy has had some kind of tummy problem lately, and he’s been throwing up at odd times.  (No fever, no other problems so I’m not sure what’s wrong.)  Anyway, after he threw up all over the living room and I was working on cleaning it up, he asked me if he could have some cereal.  I asked him if his tummy (which he corrects me is ‘stomach’) was up to it.  “Yes.”  So I asked him again to be sure, “Are you done throwing up?”  He assured me he was.  “If you need to throw up will you do it in the bathroom this time?”  “Yes.”  So I washed up, made him a bowl of Cheerios, and as I handed it to him he said, “What’s throwing up mean?”

Recent quotes from Mona (age 6):

Mona is my wackiest child.  Most of the time it’s not what she says but how she says it, so it’s hard to quote her and do her justice, but these are still pretty funny.

Mona puts together the most interesting outfits.  Some days she wants to be all black, or all pink.  Sometimes there is a theme by pattern, but most of the time it’s hard to know what she was thinking.  There are a lot of skirts over pants and layered shirts and dresses and lately many headbands.  Whatever ensemble she puts together, she always stikes a pose in my doorway in the morning and says, “Do you love me in this?”

She wants me to refer to her as my “Cute Muff.”  (I have no idea why.)

We were eating dinner in a restaurant, and out of the blue she asked loudly, “Mama?  How did they get the tubes out of you to tie them?”

When I picked her up from school the other day she said in her outdoor voice (actually, she doesn’t have volume control, so we only have the outdoor voice), “Mama?”  Yes?  “Can I tell you a joke?”  Sure.  “What did Mr. Grape say when he saw all the elephants coming over the hill?”  I don’t know.  “Look at all those grapes coming over the hill!  You know, because he was vision blind.”

Every once in awhile she beams up at me and says, “You are the luckiest mom in the whole world!”  She can’t figure out why that makes me laugh, especially since I always agree.

Recent quotes from Aden (age 8):

Aden’s getting past the age of the silly quotes.  More often I’m just impressed.  For instance, I have a habit of interrupting what I’m saying to the kids to double check that they actually know the words I’m using.  If I’m ranting at them about being ‘responsible’ but they don’t know what that means, then I’m just wasting everyone’s time.  But with Aden anymore, the definition she gives me is usually better than the one I was going to say, so I’ve stopped doing it.

My favorite was from when I objected to a piece of clothing she was going to wear when I took her to the ballet.  I had stressed the word formal and she appeared in a tie dye T-shirt.  To her is was the most beautiful shirt she owned, but I overruled it.  I explained that as someone who normally sits in the pit orchestra at this kind of event, I feel better if people dress as if they respect what we’re doing.   So I asked, “Do you know what the word formal means?” and she immediately responded with, “Exquisite?”  How’s that for vocabulary?  (Anyway, I tried to explain that what you choose to wear is like carrying around a sign in some ways, that certain clothes tell people certain things and you had to be aware of what you were saying to people.  However pretty she thought her tie dye shirt was, to other people it screamed ‘casual,’ and if that was not the signal she was trying to send she had to pick something else they would understand.)

Her favorite adjective of the moment is ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.’  (Quinn’s learned to say it too, he’s heard it so often.)

She knows every single word to the song Another Postcard by the Bare Naked Ladies.

I know no one finds anyone else’s kids as amusing as their own, but my kids do crack me up.  Now if they would just pick up their dirty clothes while cracking me up we would really be onto something.