From the Mouth of Babes
Since my daughter Lily could speak, she’s made some hilarious statements. All kids do; what makes Lily’s statements different is that I wrote them down. As I read what she’s said over the years, I feel how she’s changing from adorable to adult, from precocious to profound, but losing her innocence on the way.
Age 2:
After coming home with a haircut: “Daddy your head got smaller!”
During a rainstorm: “The rain is a massage on my ears.”
While playing hide and seek: “Look at me! I’m hiding from you!”
In a large restaurant bathroom with an echo: “Listen! My voice is dancing.”
Age 3:
After hide and seek: “I was hiding and I found myself.”
“I can burp and fart at the same time.”
Staring at cereal on her spoon: “Is he a creature? I don’t want to eat a creature.”
“We’re American? I thought we were Jewish!”
When Lily’s head gets stuck in her shirt before popping through: “Don’t worry, I’m not scared of the dark inside my shirt.”
Age 4:
After building a house for the fairies out a shoebox: “These fairies are making it very hard for me to believe in them.”
After watering the plants in Lily’s fairy garden, Lily said the water on the blades of grass “looked like beads of glass shining in the sun.”
While rolling her eyeballs like marbles: “Look, I can make my eyes go in circles!”
Throwing her hand up at the dinner table: “Raise your hand if you like Lily!”
Age 5:
Looking at a tree in winter, with no leaves: “That tree looks like it’s full of Chinese writing. The twigs are the brush strokes.”
After a nightmare, in which a giant squid visited her in her bedroom: “He knocked on my door and whispered ‘wake up Lily, I’m going to take you away,’ and then smashed the door and stuck in a long tentacle -- and then he slapped me with his tentacle and said ‘NOT!’ and left. Then I woke up!”
She had a dream in which we were all genies in a castle: “Daddy could float up high, Mama could float where she wanted, but I was still learning and was hanging onto the castle doors.”
Talking about a mean girl in the playground: “I took her bad words and I threw them in the garbage, and I took the nice words and held them in my heart.”
After finishing her chicken dinner; “Chicken Accomplished!”
“This new gum tastes like a convention of fruit.”
“The irises of Mama’s eyes look like the part of the artichoke just before you get to the heart.”
After I inflated a blue doctor’s exam glove: “Finally, I have an udder! I always wanted an udder! Now milk me!” (She then insisted we milk her.)
After learning she could have French fries: “Holy cannoli, hit myself with a meatball!”
Age 6:
Lily asked me to throw her over my shoulders and carry her around upside down. Hanging by her heel she says: “Ahh...this never gets old.”
Waking up on New Years Eve: “I just had a dream that I had a play date with the entire world.”
“If there is a God, he must be inside us. It’s not like he’s in the sky and looking down like he’s watching TV or something.”
Robin and I were whispering while Lily was in bed, and Lily asked why. We told her we thought she was asleep and we didn’t want to wake her. She said: “If I’m breathing slow, I’m still awake. If I’m snoring and drooling on myself, THEN I’m asleep.”
I asked her if she wanted her bedroom light on in the morning: “No, my eyes are still committed to darkness.”
Her aunt Andrea complimented her on being so well-behaved: “Not at home...trust me.”
“I can feel myself growing. It’s like a tingling.”
Lily is watching a TV show in which the dad is present but the mom is rarely around. Robin asks where the mom is: “She’s always out buying groceries, like you.”
We were playing balancing games on the front lawn and I had to stop because I had a muscle spasm: “I know the feeling. We all have pain in our lives, daddy.”
Lily started a spy club, and initiated Robin and I in as members by touching our ears, noses and shoulders: “We spy on people, and if there are no people, we spy on stuffed animals.” These are the rules of her spy club: “Be respectful, help others, be nice, and never punch or hit.”
Age 7:
As we walk down to an isolated cove overlooking the bay: “Let’s search for something mysterious!”
“Daddy, I want to go to the patent office and get a patent for the words I invent. That way people have to pay me to use my invented words.”
After creating a fort in her room out of purple sheets and blankets: “I have created a purple world.”
“I dreamed I could fly, and my braids were spinning like a helicopter.”
Age 8:
“I am going back to sleep to find a better dream.”
“I’m just goofing around. It’s my duty.”
“I don’t want a birthday cake this year. I want sausage. I want a birthday sausage.”
Lily’s nightmare (with tears): “I was visiting friends who had fairies in their home. The grandmother hated the fairies and tried to kill them with a hammer, but the kids objected. The grandmother then said she would punish the kids and me if we refused to help her, and she made me wear an orange vest to do her dirty work. I said no and took off the vest. The grandmother said she didn’t care and lit the house on fire, and as the house burned I watched a fairy burn in the flames.”
When I confront her about the amount of clutter in her room: “But Mama and I love our stuff. This is the way we live. Don’t try to change us.”
“Daddy, promise me that when you die you’ll be buried, and not cremated. I don’t like the idea of you being cremated.”
Consider these statements protected by copyright. They will end up in some book or script someday. What about you? What’s the wildest thing your kid has said?