Kids say funny things, right? I like to collect ours and write them down so I can remember them and continue to laugh over them. Here are some from the past months from my three:

Little E was trying to encourage her big brother, two years older than she is and yet weighing less than she, to eat his dinner. She said, “C, if you eat that meat, you can be strong like me!”

I wish I could say Little E and Mr. C always get along, but I’m afraid Mr. C likes to tease his little sister. It’s pretty tempting with the screams he can get out of her. One night Little E was praying, and she must have been annoyed more than usual that day by her big brother because she prayed, “Thank You for loving us…even C.”

JP is a pretty good eater, but there are times when it’s hard to get him to eat the food on his plate, particularly when it’s something a bit distasteful to him. One day I asked him, “Are you going to eat or what?” His answer: “Um….or what.” I guess the “what” sounded more desirable than what he had before him.

With our changing weather patterns this past winter, our city streets became pockmarked with potholes. I explained to the kids why potholes form in the roads, how freezing weather followed by warm weather combine to create the holes. Apparently this stuck in Little E’s mind, although she got it a little backwards. A week or so later, she was very hot in the car but then soon felt freezing after she started drinking a smoothie. She said, “That makes a pothole in me!”

Mr. C loves to be hugged and kissed by his mama, but he never wants to let me know he loves it. Sometimes he’ll ask me to hold him, and I’ll hold him up tight, swinging him back and forth with his legs dangling. He makes sure to remind me that we’re not hugging. Most of the time, we have a game of me trying to kiss him while he giggles and tries to get away. One day I grabbed his arm and kissed it, as I couldn’t reach his face. He squealed, “Don’t kiss my arm! My leg is jingling!”

I heard a loud scream from the backyard. This is not unusual, especially since spring brought out all the bugs this southern state can offer. Moments later, I heard the expected quick steps of Little E coming back through the door.
Me: What’s wrong, E?
Little E: I had a spider on my dress!
Greg: How’d you get it off?
Little E: I screamed.

Have you ever considered what a rainbow smells like? One morning I poured Berry Berry Kix for Little E. Mr. C, sitting next to her, exclaimed, “Oh! It smells like a rainbow!”
Little E asked, “How do you know what a rainbow smells like?”
I interjected, “It’s what he imagines it would smell like.
Mr. C added, “Yes, fruity!”

When you are a classical educator, some funny words can come out of your two year old’s mouth. It’s not unusual to hear JP singing about Mayflower Compacts or say “in principio erat Verbum,” Latin for “In the beginning was the Word” from John 1:1. He does tend to get it mixed up, though. He really loved the song about Davy Crockett, but to him it was “Congressman Baby Crockett.”

Mr. C and Little E were trying to explain why traffic signals use red, yellow, and green for their colors.
Little E: The red light is for blood. You have to stop for blood. The yellow light is the light. You have to go slow because it’s so hot.
Mr. C: The green light is spring grass. You run through the grass!
I never knew why those exact colors were chosen. Now I understand!

When I first dressed my kids in short sleeved shirts in the spring while they were toddlers, they always thought something was wrong. JP was no exception. When I put his short sleeved shirt on for the first time this spring, he protested, “Aaah! These sleeves not work!”

Although I thought my kids enjoy when our friends babysit for us, I guess they don’t like it after all. Little E was talking about someone being watched by a babysitter. She said, “They got babysat; I mean, kidnapped.”

Just before last Mother’s Day, Little E apparently had noticed all the work I do around the house. She said to me, “You don’t get to play because you’re the servant. But on Mother’s Day you don’t have to be the servant.” I can only hope she has this same attitude this coming Sunday!

JP was playing with Mr. Potato Head, and he was trying really hard to get the mustache on him, but he couldn’t figure it out. I noticed his troubles and told him he needed to get Mr. Potato’s nose. “Get the nose!” I told him repeatedly. Finally, he got up and walked off for a minute. When he returned, he handed me a snotty tissue and said, “Did it!” Yes, he got his nose!

The other day Little E was looking at the top of Greg’s head.
Little E: Daddy, have you been pulling out your hair? Because you have a bald spot.
Greg: No, it falls out on its own.
Little E: Is it going to grow back?
Greg: No.
Little E: Why not?
Greg: I’m old.

Little E wants a new name, Sparkles in particular, and she’s trying hard to make her new name catch on with others. She writes it at the top of all her papers, and she’s corrected me several times when I’ve used her real name. At her first presentation in front of our homeschool group, she introduced herself to the whole group as Sparkles.

Little E wasn’t the only one to make my homeschool group laugh. When Mr. C introduced himself and was telling about how he loves to play soccer, as proof of how good he is at soccer, he told everybody that when he played soccer with his daddy, he always won.

One day I was reading The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question to Little E and Mr. C. In it, Sister Bear asks Mama Bear, “What’s God?” Without hesitation, Little E cut in and answered Sister Bear, “Oh, He’s a powerful guy!”

Little E was pretending she needed more dollars to buy some food. She had a good solution for getting dollars I hadn’t thought of before. She said, “I need to go buy dollars at the dollar store!”

Since I teach my kids using the classical method, they spend a lot of time at this age memorizing facts they won’t understand until later. It makes for funny conversations sometimes, though. One time, I asked Mr. C a question about his history lesson. He answered, “A past participle is a noun plus -ed used as an adjective or a verb.”

Another example of the kids not quite getting what they’re memorizing came the other day. For some reason, Boise, Idaho was stuck in Mr. C’s head. He said it aloud, and Little E replied, “I wish it were Girlse, Idaho!” Then, Mr. C wanted to know if Boise is full of boys. “I want to be in Girlse where it’s full of girls!” Little E continued.

We had a history lesson about Ashurbanipal, who was known as a cruel dictator, not a well-liked ruler at all. He did, however, support the arts well. At least Mr. C understood the spirit behind this, even if not the details when he said, “There was only one way Ashurbanipal was good. He gave them money when they colored.”

We were studying in our history lesson about the Egyptians, and we learned about their unique coffins. Little E piped up: “I know what a coffin is! It’s in Wall-E!” I racked my brain trying to figure out to what she could possibly be referring, until Mr. C chimed in: “Yeah! ‘Coffin! Rogue Robots!’ ”

I wore a new flowy skirt that goes just past my knee to church. Several times, I turned around to find Little E, who loves my bright new skirt, holding it up in the back, showing off more of my legs than I’d like to in a public place. She said, “I’m holding it off the ground!” When I objected that it didn’t need that since it was short, she said, “No, I’m pretending it’s long!” Oh, it’s ok, then!

Little E might dress in a very feminine way and fill her room with feminine objects and toys, but she doesn’t always act very feminine. One example is how funny she thinks it is to toot, as we call it. One day, she was wearing an Elsa costume, laughing over the fact that she had tooted again. Mr. C looked at her in disdain and told her, “Elsas don’t toot.”