Potpourri

As is typical now a days, I find myself delinquent in my posting. I blame my new job. Nothing more. Oh, and having three kids is hard. Not sure I’ve mentioned that. Still, they keep us on our toes, and I occasionally remember to write some of the remarkable things down that they do. The following is a small collection of the things I’ve remembered.

Mireille

…on language…

Mireille’s pronoun usage continues to improve, though her favorite pronoun continues to be “him.” The possessive form of her version of the “super pronoun” is him’s. I don’t know where she heard the song, but the other day she started singing an adorable rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” or at least the beginning of it. Her’s, however, went like this.

Oh my god, lookit him’s butt

Not to waste a teaching moment, I attempted to correct her by saying, “no, honey, it’s her butt, it’s for a girl.” She seemed to understand after a few more incorrect expressions of the phrase. This time, she would look at me, and I would give her a look, and she would immediately correct herself. Now, each time she sings it, she says it correctly:

Oh my god, lookit her butt

With emphasis on the her everytime.

…on race…

They say that kids start recognizing color at a very young age, but I’m pretty impressed at how early Mireille is grasping not only color but race. Quinton always told us he was brown until very recently when we were able to impress the difference between color and race on him. Perhaps since Mireille isn’t hampered by a lot of English speaking history, she is able to transcend this problem more easily. Anyway, we were testing her the other day after she had announced to all of us that she was black, just like Quin. So we gave her a little quiz:

Us: What color are you?

Mireille: Black

Us: What color is Quinton?

Mireille: Him Black (yes, the super pronoun again)

Us: What color is mommy/daddy/Ethan?

Mireille: (for each) Him white

Us: (trying to trick her) What color is Heinzy?

Mireille: Him black and white

…on human anatomy…

Two minorly amusing stories here. The first one involves Mireille’s play house that we bought her for her birthday. As Denver has pretty mild winters in spurts, she was outside playing in it the other weekend while I was doing some work on one of our current home improvement projects. While I was trying to turn off the circuit so I could disconnect an electrical outlet, she came over to me and announced, “My ding-dong is broken.” I didn’t understand what she was talking about, so I asked her again what she said, and she said again, “my ding-dong is broken.” Finally I asked her to show me, and she took me by the hand and walked me to her play house and proceeded to point to the door bell that was indeed not making any noise. Her ding-dong was, indeed, broken.

Lastly, Mireille has a strange fascination with watching me get out of the shower. Since I am about honesty and fact with my children, any time she asks me about different anatomical parts, I tell her. So when she points at my man bits when I’m drying off and asks what it is, I tell her that it’s my penis. She will then, invariably, go off into four year old learning mode and ask why she doesn’t have one, and then verify that Quinton and Ethan both have one, and mom doesn’t. This is all fine and good, but the funny part is she calls it a “peanut.” And as a kicker, the other morning she said that she really wanted to be a boy so she could have a “peanut” and not have to sit down to go potty…

Quinton

…on relationships…

Quinton has already “dated” several girls in his class. Don’t worry if you are confused - I have no idea what it means to date a girl in third grade, and continued questioning hasn’t revealed the mystery to me at this time. His latest infatuation is with a girl named Trinity, who he really wants to “date” but she’s just not that interested in him. The other day when walking home from school he regaled me with the story of how he tried to pique Trinity’s interest that day. He apparently asked her what her favorite restaurant was, and told her that he was going to make reservations for two at that restaurant. He then mentioned Papa John’s specifically, and said that he was going to call them and ask if he could get a reservation for two at their finest table. This is of course amusing for many reasons, like how he would take a girl on a date to a restaurant, or even figure out how to contact them to make a reservation, but the most amusing thing about it to me is that he selected a Carry out/Delivery Pizza chain as the location of his first date.

And finally, Quinton proves yet again that he is wise beyond his years to me the other day while riding to religious education (what used to be called CCD). I wish I could remember the entire conversation, but the gist of it was that he was never going to get married. “A wife is forever, dad. You never get rid of them.” The first part is verbatim, the second is paraphrased. He then went on to reveal that he was only going to have girlfriends, and if they ever asked him to marry him, he was going to tell them no, that a wife is forever… I think he has this figured out.