Category Archives: Cute Kid Quotes

Happy Easter!

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“I know that Santa is not real,” Mark said ponderously, “But what about the Easter Bunny?”

I considered for a moment before replying, “What do you think, honey? Do you think a bunny will hop into our house with a basket of treats?”

Mark thought for a moment. “No. That doesn’t really make sense. How would a bunny open the door?”

Is this where I’m supposed to answer “MAGIC”?

Anyway, we have been busy, people, with various egg-colouring projects and other spring-related crafts.

We’re a talented family, no?

I took a cue from a much more imaginative friend and filled little plastic eggs with written clues about where various Easter treats were hidden in the house. My husband was puzzled by this method – “can’t they just look for the treats?” – but I was adamant about it being FUN and not only that, Mark could practice his reading. He looked at me like I just taped a Kick Me sign on my own back. There’s nothing like incorporating educational value into an Easter egg hunt. Nonetheless, the boys really did enjoy the hunt because that crazy bunny hid treats everywhere from the dryer to Jake’s underwear drawer. Fun!


Little bunny footprints leading to the basket o’ clues.

We had Easter dinner at my parents’ yesterday, with my brothers and sisters-in-law and all my nieces and nephews. My mother made ham AND turkey, so Jake was happy, and we were combining this family gathering with Mark’s birthday so our contribution to the dinner was this:

Yes, the good people at Dairy Queen made us a giant Muk-Muk cake, which was a little too much for fifteen people and so I ate a very large leftover piece this morning, which left me feeling somewhat nauseous for the rest of the day, but oh so worth it. The remainder of the day has been spent in a rather leisurely fashion, with Mark and his dad raking the lawn and Jake surreptitiously playing with Mark’s new Star Wars action figures obtained only yesterday, and then later an outdoor hard-boiled egg hunt that fortunately did not conclude with the dog consuming said eggs.

I hope that, whether or not you celebrate Easter, you have had a beautiful weekend, this lovely first weekend of April.

Yeah, me too.

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Jake, in the car today: “It’s a good thing Tiger Woods is not MY dad.”

Me: silence, trying to digest this comment while simultaneously wondering if watching the news around the children is damaging their psyches in some deep and troubling way.

Jake: “Mom? Mom? I’m happy Tiger Woods is not MY dad.”

Me, realizing silent thoughts are not an appropriate response, and also recalling that it would be wrong and appalling to insert a ribald joke while talking to a four-year-old: “What do you mean, honey?”

Jake: “Mom? I don’t think Tiger Woods plays much with his kids. I don’t really think that’s very nice.”

Me: “I think you’re probably right.”

"…maybe Christmas – perhaps – means a little bit more…"

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Me, looking at Jake’s school schedule: “Oh, it looks like you will be writing a letter to Santa in class!”

Jake: “Does that mean I will be writing a letter to you and Dad?”

Yes, well. Let’s just say that Jake is feeling a bit confused these days. If you’re four, and you have a brother who is five and is a non-believer, then you will likely get tipped off about the non-existence of Santa earlier than your other classmates. But, if you are in a pre-kindergarten class where everyone is busy writing letters to Santa, mailing letters to Santa, and getting ready for Santa’s classroom visit, the issue may become cloudy for you.

I’ve read a few things in the past couple of days with regards to the de-bunking of the Santa myth and how terribly sad it is when children stop believing. Now, I don’t want to belittle anyone’s belief system here, or ruin anyone’s Christmas spirit, but I don’t really equate the belief in Santa barreling down one’s chimney to bestow gifts and eat cookies with the magic of Christmas. I don’t know. I love the Christmas season as much as the next person, in fact I might even love it more than the next person, but I have to say that it actually didn’t affect me when the boys stopped “believing”.

When Mark first spoke about Santa not being “real”, given his personality, I felt it best to be honest with him. I told him that Santa was something that little kids like to think about until they can understand that Santa is more than just a fat guy in a red suit with a flying sleigh, that Santa means goodwill and generosity and kindness, and that when you do something nice, it is like you become Santa. It’s an explanation I’m more comfortable with than maintaining a myth that I think is beside the point.

Nevertheless, we will hang our stockings and set out cookies and milk on Christmas Eve. Just in case.

Will I be pretty, will I be rich?

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One thing I find very entertaining about children – especially small children – are their career goals. Very small children have somewhat abstract ideas about what they will be when they grow up; I clearly remember wishing to be a flower. And now I have a flower profile picture on my blog! Profound. Anyway, both of my boys went through a prolonged period in which their burning ambition was to drive a garbage truck; I don’t want to sound snobbish here, we all know the importance of sanitation workers and the difficult job that they do, but I was kind of glad when that phase passed. As of today, Jake’s career ambition, strangely, is to be a mountain climber. Does that mean he wants to be a vagabond? Or maybe he will be a mountain climber and write books, like that guy who wrote Into Thin Air. If so, cool. Mark alternates between a path of paleontology and being a “business man”. We went to visit my husband at the office one day, and Mark stretched out on his swivel chair and said luxuriantly, “Is this where you make all the money, Dad?”. I could just imagine what he thought the world of work was like. I guess it was not unlike my experience in grad school, where I thought that with my economics degrees I would somehow change the world for the better, and then I ended up working as a quantitative analyst in natural gas option trading. Totally NOT changing the world for the better, but an interesting job nonetheless.

Anyway, the kindergarten is doing a Community Helpers unit at school, better known in my day as “What will I do when I grow up?”, and I was helping in the classroom. I had a group of four to cycle through the various work centers and in a slow moment at the dentist center (an awesome craft of painting a yellow paper tooth white with the help of toothbrushes and a mixture of corn syrup and white paint) I asked my group what they wanted to be when they grew up. The group consisted of two sweet and well-behaved girls, a disruptive and somewhat hyper boy, and a boy who the teacher euphemistically informed me “requires extra assistance with the activities”. One girl, predictably, wanted to be a ballerina, the other wanted to be a mom. I was a little surprised; I didn’t know girls said they wanted to be moms anymore. Nonetheless, I praised their decisions with enthusiasm. Disruptive and Somewhat Hyper Boy told me he wanted to be a cop and shoot all the bad guys! Bang bang bang! I answered that police officers are very important Community Helpers. Then I asked the Boy Who Requires Extra Assistance what he wanted to be. His answer: a princess. I was, momentarily, speechless. He looked up at me, smiling, waiting for the positive commentary I had given his classmates. One of the girls said “He can’t be a princess! He’s a boy!” – to which I rallied, and said that anyone can be anything they want to be when they grow up, if they work at it.

It’s something I tell the boys all the time, but I don’t entirely believe it. I mean, if you work really hard at something AND you have some degree of aptitude, then yes, you can be what you want to be. But really, no matter what amount of effort I put into it, no matter how hard I work, there are some career options that are forever closed to me: becoming a supermodel, say, or an Olympic shotputter, or a NASA scientist, or anything at all requiring artistic ability. I could, as the hockey players say, give it 110%, and I would still achieve minimal, if any, success in those fields.

But who wants to quash the kindergartener spirit? Certainly not me. Even if the Boy Who Requires Extra Assistance wants to be a princess, well, it’s probably only marginally less likely to occur than his classmate becoming a ballerina. So I guess we all can dream.

Drive Slow, Homie

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When Mark was two and Jake was seven months, I received “Late Registration” by Kanye West for my birthday, and although I mostly listen to a radio station best described as “oldies” – the kind that advertises for Grey Power Insurance and the benefits of getting your prostate checked – I really enjoy hip hop. I especially loved that album and I listened to it all the time in the car, with the kids. And – you can probably see where this is going – I didn’t at the time realize that the kids might be actually absorbing the information that was being presented in the music. I didn’t realize it until Mark – did I mention he was two? – informed me that he didn’t have no money, so he couldn’t get no ho’s. Nothing says you’re a good mother like having a two year old misogynist on your hands. Later, he told his grandmother that he wanted a prenup. At that point I put the album away, only to listen to it when the kids were not in the car.

In the past two days, there were over six hundred car accidents in the city! Six hundred! What could be going on, you may ask? What indeed but ten centimeters of snow. Apparently in this lovely city only one hour from the Rocky Mountains, in the Canadian prairies, snow is a new and novel concept. One that causes people to be in a perpetual bad mood and drive like lobotomized maniacs. As my yoga teacher said, “Snow is like death. We all know it’s coming, but for some reason when it arrives we are all still surprised and sad.” Yes, exactly.

So what does all this have to do with my wildly inappropriate musical choices? It’s my public service announcement for the day: DRIVE SLOW, HOMIE. Although you really do not need to “put your hazard lights on when you see them ho’s”. Really.