Funny Things he says

The things kids say

Chanler got/borrowed a toy from his Grandmama (Jesse’s Mom). It is a space shuttle with a truck that carries it (think matchbox car sized, only they are a German brand.) Anyway, Chanler loves this particular toy and likes to tell you all about his “truck that carries the space SHOVEL”

Cracks me up every time.

A few weeks back, I was putting Chanler to bed, and he requested that I sing him a song from he Veggie Tales CD that he likes to listen to in the car.

I really have to say, Veggie Tales are funny and cute, but after hearing them over and over and over – it is enough to make your head spin.

So I start singing the song to him, I think it was B-I-N-G-O, and bingo was his name-o, but I had forgotten (or blocked out) who the song was supposed to go, so I am blundering through, and Chanler stops me. Then he starts to sing it more like it is supposed to be sung (for Veggie Tales anyway):

There was a gourd who had a drum, and bongo was his name-o,
B-O-N-G-O, B-O-N-G-O, B-O-N-G-O, and bongo was his name-o!

So he gets done with his rendition, and he says to me, “Daddy, I sing more better than you!” Ouch.

So then later, Jesse is driving Chanler and Jessaleigh home from somewhere, and they were listening to, what else, Veggie Tales. One of the songs comes on and tells Mommy o-so sweetly, “Mommy, these guys sing more better than Daddy!”

Hrm, I guess I should take the hint and not give up my day job…

I have regaled you all with Chanler’s bouncy ball purchase already. Today Chanler and I were talking about his bouncy ball and he told me that he wanted to get another one. I asked what he was going to buy it with and he told me a quarter (mind you he doesn’t have any more quarters of his own at the moment). So I asked him where he was going to get a quarter. He said “I’m going to ask Daddy to give me another quarter.” This lead to a conversation about earning money, which ended when I asked Chanler what work he was going to do to earn a quarter? he told me he was going to go to “my office to work. It is very far away. I have to take the office car from Daddy to get there.”

Sometimes his level of thought amazes me (OK most of the time actually)

Kids don’t really understand home improvement projects!!!! My evidence for this – a couple of things Chanler has said over the last few days

1) During bathroom demo: “Daddy is breaking our house” said in the saddest possible tone
2) On Kitchen demo: “the men came and go bang-go, bang-go and broke our kitchen” and “why did that man take our counter”
3) On bathroom reconstruction: “Daddy built a new house?”

I hope it will start to make sense to him when things start coming together (right now everything is broken and nothing new had actually been installed)

We were in the midst of getting Jessaleigh’s paper work done (full story) this morning. Chanler asked what we were doing. We tried to explain that we had to get official paperwork for Jessaleigh, just like Chanler and Mommy and Daddy have. Chanler still wanted to know why we had to go to another office. I told him we had to get one kind of paper (the birth certificate) from one office and then we had to take that paper to the second office (SSN) to get the other paper. He asked if there were going to be doctors there to check Jessaleigh, and I explained that there were just going to be bureaucrats there to help us with our paperwork. The next thing I know Chanler is talking about going to see “Beercats” I had to laugh out loud! I think things might go more smoothly in general if all bureaucrats were beercats!

At the end of his nap this afternoon Chanler said something very funny. I had started moving around in an attempt to get him to wake up, while still letting him wake himself up, because that leads to a MUCH better overall mood. Anyway, Chanler rolled onto his side, curled up and said with his eyes still closed “I’m all done sleeping*.” His mother on the other hand has been know to tell you that she is awake, getting dressed even, all the while still sleeping.

*This phrase is what Chanler says anytime he wakes up – from sleeping overnight, nap time, before he is asleep at nap time, at 3 am when he wakes up, etc. It is not my favorite thing to hear!

“I want to go to the restaurant where they say trebuchet”

A bit of background:
Our favorite Japanese restaurant is Miyake’s in Palo Alto and Cupertino. It is great for lunch, but gets a bit crowded, loud and noisy at dinner time. Anyway when you are seated, the waiter who seats you yells something that ends with “shea,” ALL the other waiters and sushi makers yell back to him again ending with shea. Over the years we have gone there, we have developed our own inside joke that they are yelling Trebuchet, because that is really what it sounds like. I am sure they are saying something is Japanese to welcome us or something, but it literally sounds like trebuchet.

I don’t know where Chanler picked this up, because we don’t make that joke much anymore (because it is old to us), But we were driving in Menlo Park one day talking about getting some food when out of the back some the phrase above. I was floored and a bit embarrassed. I mean if my kid knows a restaurant well enough to want to go there . . . I must be eating there too much.

Chanler and I were walking out to the mail box the other day, and he picked up a stick off the ground. He holds it up for me to see points up at the big tree nearby and says, “That tree made my stick!”

Chanler’s vocabulary is simply amazing (yes I am biased) and he has mastered some pretty complex words, but there are a couple of words now and again that he just has wired in wrong, and he consistently says the them the same way – eventually they just flip and he starts saying them the way that everyone else says them.

Currently we have elfluent (the pachyderm with the trunk), hosible (where the ambulances go) and murdicle cars (the open air kind). Too funny 🙂

I have been waiting for the “why shoe” to drop for months now. Many of Chanler’s friends have been driving their parents nuts with this one forever it seems. Well it has finally happened. The funny thing is that it crept up on me. I didn’t realize he was actually doing it until Scott pointed out how many of his questions were “why” related. Of course after that insight, the number of questions in the “why spiral” has increased to the point that I think I would have noticed it on my own (especially in the last 1-2 weeks).

On the good side
1)Chanler’s why questions are in the form of full sentences – so you at least know what he is asking about.
2) There are a few (very few) answers that will stop him in his tracks. These include “Because God made it that way,” “Because the clock says so,” and not as effectively “I don’t know why.”

On the bad side:
1) EVERYTHING is why right now. For example tonight we had to return a broken lamp to the store. The whys ranged from Why are we going?, Why is the lamp in the car?, Why is the lamp broken?, to Why does the lamp turn off?
2) Once a why is asked – it WILL be asked over and over and over. From above. We discussed “why the lamp is broken” at least 5 times on the short drive to the store.
3) Once a why is answered – there will be another why!
4) Chanler hasn’t figured out that there are something which just are because they are. For example “why is it Wednesday” has no really good answer. It has answers, but none of them seem to satisfy him. (i.e. “because it is the day after Tuesday” leads to “why is it the day after Tuesday” which leads to ??? I don’t know – social convention or a long explanation of Norse mythology)
5) Circular explanations. I can’t remember my example, but I know I actually said something to Chanler along the lines of – do you see how we can never figure this out . . . we just keep going back and forth.

I know this is “just a phase” and it could be MUCH worse, but right now it is driving me up the wall! I have heard it said that Women need to use more words each day than men (in general), but lately I am running out of not only words, but the ability to listen to any more words. Poor Scott just isn’t allowed to talk when he gets home :-p