The things we hear

In our house we hear lots of interesting words, sentences, and conversations that we take in stride, not even thinking how they might sound to someone outside our little world. Every now and then, though, I stop to think about how weird some of our conversations actually are.
Case in point–I bet you didn’t hear any of this at your dinner table last night:
“Catherine, please stop chanting ‘pee-pee,’ and Elisabeth, we don’t howl at the dinner table.”
“Elisabeth, get your fingers out of your drink.”
“No, sit in your seat, not on the table.”
“Oh, he just decorated his shirt with clam chowder.”
“Elisabeth, get your fingers out of your drink.”
“Wow, that fruit looks really good in your hair, bud! Better than gel!!”
“Elisabeth, get your fingers out of your drink.”
“Oh, yuck. Honey, you can’t open your mouth until after you swallow your milk!”

Just a few examples. Anyone with little kids could give more. And these were just what we said, and it doesn’t even count all the funny things they say each and every day. Oh, the things you never imagined you’d hear on a regular basis. Having kids changes everything.

Let’s finish playing.

My girls live in a dream world most of the time.  From the time Abigail and Catherine were old enough to play together, it’s been apparent to us that any time they are asked to spend with us is just an interruption of their playtime.  Their playtime has always found them in another reality, being other people and using different voices.  Most of the time they don’t need any props besides a baby doll or two, but even if they actually sit down and play with other toys, they are never Abigail or Catherine.

Their alternate personalities have morphed over the years, beginning when Abigail was still playing by herself and she was Peter Pan and Wendy, switching voices as she switched roles.  They have played with Billy and Sally and Molly, their other “siblings.”  They have been every member of the Brady family–all at the same time.  They have been Chelsey, Charlie, Ella, and Kelly.  They have days when they are every other kid at church.  They become their cousins on a regular basis.  Sometimes, they even play Abigail, Catherine, and Elisabeth–that one confuses me because even though they are being Abigail, Catherine, and Elisabeth, they are not being themselves.  Throughout all the name changes and voice changes and personality changes, though, one thing has become a constant over the past year or so:  “Let’s finish playing.”

This is the phrase we began hearing when they would be released from the required time at the dinner table or in conversation with Mom and Dad, or even upon waking up from the interruption that sleep brings in playtime.  One would look at the other and say, “Let’s finish playing.”  I don’t know who started it, or exactly when it began, but I hear that phrase twenty times a day now.  And the conversations that follow this phrase are always interesting, if I’m privileged enough to be able to hear snatches of them.

The appropriate answer to “Let’s finish playing” is “Yeah.”  What follows is usually a narration of the next scenario in their world.  For example:  “Let’s finish playing.”  “Yeah, and now Molly is going to church.”  “Yeah, and she’s shy of all the kids.”  “Yeah, and her sister is going to go in her class with her.”  “Yeah, and she’s wearing a purple dress.”  “Yeah, and the other kids all like her dress.”  “Yeah.”  Now, sometimes, one of them will automatically say “Yeah” and then realize they don’t really agree with that particular direction of play, and I’ll hear, usually in a disgusted voice, “Catherine, her dress wasn’t purple.  She doesn’t even like purple.  Her dress was blue.”  Depending on the mood of the corrected child, this can be just a blip that they move past quickly, or this can be the end of the play, since the corrected child is now so offended that her idea was vetoed that she needs to come wailing to Mommy that “she won’t let Molly’s dress be purple!”  This is where common phrases such as, “Then I’m not going to play!” or even “I’m never playing with you again!” are heard.  But, if I just hold my breath and wait very quietly after sending them to work it out on their own, about 80% of the time, after about three minutes of sulking and glaring at each other, I’ll hear one of them finally say, “Well, let’s finish playing.”  The response?  “Yeah.”

This phrase has become so much a part of our family’s vocabulary that we no longer even hear “I’m playing.”  This phrase has become, “I’m finishing playing.”  When they tell me about something funny that happened in their world, they’ll say, “Mom, when we were finishing playing, …”  Often, I’ll hear one of them call, “Mom!”  But when I answer, I hear an impatient voice call back, “No, Mommy.  Not you.  We were just finishing playing.”  And it’s now spreading to the youngest sister.  When Elisabeth, laying on her belly in the kitchen floor, yelled, “Help, me stuck!!”, I hurried to her, asking how she was stuck.  She looked up at me, quite exasperated to be interrupted, and said, “Mama, me not really stuck.  Me just ‘fishing paying.’”

One interesting aspect of this phrase is that, apparently, one child can finish playing even when the other doesn’t.  This is evidenced by the times that one sister will ask the other, “Are you finishing playing?”  Most of the time, even if the answer is no, the first sister will say, “Well, I’m finishing playing.” I guess in their world it doesn’t necessarily take two to tango.  But maybe sometimes it does, because I also often hear, “Mom, she won’t finish playing and she doesn’t even have a good reason!!”

Overall, this phrase has been both humbling and intriguing to me, personally.  It’s humbling because, with the speed that it comes out of their mouths as soon as dinner is finished or as soon as they think they’re free to leave our presence, it’s quite obvious that we are truly just an interruption to their private little world.  They spend the necessary time with us, but their thoughts are “finishing playing” the whole time.    And it’s intriguing because it’s like the book series that just keeps on pumping out title after title.  Because even though they’ve been “finishing playing” for months on end, they’ve never actually finished.  I write about it now, because I know one day down the road, I’ll think back and realize that they must have indeed finished playing, and that will be one of those phrases that we don’t hear echoing through our little house anymore.  But let’s not be melancholy.  Are you done now?  Good.  Let’s finish playing.

Overheard at the Hall house

Just a few recent remarks from my remarkable children.  (Warning: some involve bodily functions.  Sorry for the gross-ness. It comes with having kids, you know.)

*  “I burped in the potty.”–Elisabeth.  She is really having trouble with potty terminology, and this is her current terminology for “number 2.”

*  “Mom, Elisabeth messied on the deck!”–Abigail.  Apparently Elisabeth said she needed to pee-pee while they were playing outside.  Abigail loves any chance to walk on the wild side by pottying outdoors, so she offered to help Bess “squat.”  Unfortunately, she neglected to move her off the deck onto the grass.  Also unfortunately, Elisabeth’s mixed-up potty vocabulary struck again–she didn’t need to just pee-pee.  And also unfortunately, it wasn’t nice and neat, but runny and yucky.  (Told you it would be gross.)  The good news:  they managed to keep from getting any on clothing.  The strange part:  Abigail waited until she had already re-dressed Elisabeth and gotten back on the swing to bother to shout the above-quoted phrase into the window to me.

*  “Mom, what are we doing?”–Catherine.  Bless her little heart, she uttered this question in a confused, sleepy voice as she awoke to find herself standing in the bathroom in front of the toilet while her mommy was stripping her clothes off of her and trying to put her in the shower at 3:30 am.  She had thrown up in her sleep and I was trying to talk to her and get her cleaned up, and she had no idea anything had even happened.  What a rude awakening, huh?

*  “Mommy, why you have a hiccup in your mouth?”  and “Mommy, stop talking like that!”–Elisabeth.  Trying to figure out this whole “Mommy’s lost her voice” thing.

* “Don’t wash my mouth.  Either my nose.  There’s ookies in there.  (pause, thinking) Why me take my ookies in the bathtub?”–Elisabeth.  I have no explanation for this one.

*  “Baa.”–Samuel.  This usually means ball, but can mean bite, or anything else because he says it constantly.

*  “Daddy, is it polite to take tiny sips of your drink, and then take big, deep breaths after you take a sip?”–Abigail.  Apparently she’s got good manner admonitions, and relaxtion exercises from Daddy’s art lessons all swirling around getting mixed up inside her head.

*  “Daddy, I did more work than Mommy!”–Catherine.  She was super excited to be the only kid in the grocery store with Mommy, where she got to push her own little cart and put Mommy-approved items in it all by herself.  She was especially thrilled that her cart had more items than mine did.

Busy schedules affect us all

I guess the busy schedule we’ve had lately is getting to all of us. Last night, I was getting Elisabeth ready for bed. Laying quietly as I changed her diaper, she finally looked up and said, “Take nap, wake up, go church, eat cake, go home, get my messy out, go night-night.” Then she sighed. I guess that’s a good sign that we all need to slow down a bit.

Overheard

I hear many words each day.  (I am raising three girls, after all.)  There are the mundane, necessary words that must be spoken to get things accomplished:  “Peanut butter or bologna?”  “Do you need to go potty?”  “Come on, let’s brush your teeth.”  There are the typical preschooler, sibling rivalry words that every parent hears:  “She hit me!”  “I had that first!”  “If you won’t play my way, I’m not playing!”  There are the spontaneous sweet words that keep me going throughout the day:  “My mommy’s the best mommy!”  “Me yuv-oo Momma!”  “Mommy, Catherine is my best friend!”

But then, there are those other kinds of words.  The ones that I take in stride at the time, but then later it hits me how strange they really were.  It hits me that mine may very well be the only household around that overheard those particular words that day.  And these are the words that usually are going to involve cleaning up some sort of mess, receiving a puzzled look from any non-family member that may have heard them, or simply making a mental note to repeat them to someone later so that I’m not the only one who knows exactly how remarkable my children are.

The latest example of this kind of words?  Well, the other day, I heard my husband come home and the first words out of his mouth were, “Why does the dog have Parmesan cheese all over his head?”  Now, I’m just taking a wild guess here, but that probably isn’t something you heard at your house this week.  Even though Clay is the one who spoke those words, they do in fact refer to Elisabeth, since she was the one who dumped the Parmesan cheese all over the table, chair, and floor, and yes, unfortunately, all over poor Elliot who happened to be sitting beside her chair at the time.

There are countless examples of these words that result in a massive clean-up effort.  Words like, “Um, how did these Sharpie marks get on the steering wheel and windshield and rearview mirror?”  “Mom, look at Elisabeth!  She got into your bubble bath!”  “No, no, no…put the pancake mix down…put it..oh, no!”  “Oops, we forgot to put a pony in her hair while she was eating!”  “Look, we painted in our class today!”  Oh, the messes I’ve had to clean up within five minutes of hearing words like those.  These are the words that spark dread in a mommy’s heart.  I hear them, and I know action will have to be taken, but quite frankly, sometimes I’m scared to go look.  When moms hear words like these, it is truly an exercise in courage to go and deal with them.

But not all of the unusual phrases result in clean-up efforts.  Some, while not commonly heard from most kids, simply happen through the course of daily play and conversation.  This would include the other day, when my girls were playing outside.  I stood at the door for a few minutes watching them, and Abigail was positioning Catherine and Elisabeth around the yard and telling them to stand in the typical outfielder “ready” pose she’s learned at tee-ball.  She instructed them to yell, “Hey, batter, batter!” and to pretend to hit and catch the ball and run the bases.  I called out to them and asked them what they were playing.  I’m not even sure why I asked, since it looked obvious to me, but I was completely taken off guard when I heard the answer:  “We’re playing Harvey!” the older two yelled in unison.  Harvey?  I thought they were playing tee-ball.  But no, a few more minutes revealed that they were in fact playing Harvey Klinger, who is a random character that shows up in one episode of the Brady Bunch.  You never know what you might hear my kids say while they’re playing.

They play pretend all the time, but they pretend in about seven distinct games.  There’s Brady Bunch, sure, but there is also “Chelsey, Charlie, Ella,
Kelly” which used to be quite the favorite.  The funniest thing overheard regarding this game was when I asked one day, “Hey, Catherine, when you guys play Chelsey, Charlie, Ella, Kelly–who are you?”  Her answer:  “Rachel.”  When they’re playing, you might also hear things like, “That mean old Buddy Hinton–he made Cindy cry again.”  “Billy, stop pushing me down!”–(spoken into thin air as she throws herself down to the ground.)  “Mommy, I need to stay in my bed because I’ve been having a baby all morning.”  Most of the time, I take these without a blink since I’m the only one there, but anytime someone else is around, I always feel obliged to explain to them why my kids really aren’t weird but just extremely imaginative.

Then there are those things I hear that are just darn cute.  Like a couple of weeks ago when we were shopping.  I needed something from one of the higher shelves and couldn’t reach it.  Catherine was observing my struggles and said, “Boy, Mom.  That’s so high only God can reach it!”  And Elisabeth’s verbal struggles to figure out this whole “God made everything” concept.  She’s been taught that God made everything, but she knows that Nanny made her new “dankie.” (blankie)  So one day she said “Nanny make my pink seat,” referring to her carseat.  I said, “No silly.  Nanny didn’t make your pink seat.”  Elisabeth thought for a minute, then said, “God make my pink seat?”  I hesitated, wondering how technical I should be, but said, “Yeah, I guess God made your pink seat.”  She grinned and said, “God make my pink seat, but Nanny make my pink dankie.”  She thought she had one on me there, since I was obviously wrong when I said God made everything.

There are so many other phrases that mark milestones in my days, like today when Abigail came in the living room, very excited, and said, “Guess what Samuel just did!!”  But before I could guess, she immediately shifted gears, got a worried look on her face, and nervously asked, “Am I allowed to hold Samuel’s arms and help him walk?”  Oh, well.  Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?

Every mom is going to have moments like these, hear these words that you just don’t hear every day.  The more kids you have, the more outrageous things you’ll hear.  But it’s these crazy words that spice up my days, I have to admit.  Whether I find myself rushing down the hall to rescue a baby, walking fearfully into the kitchen to see how much Parmesan cheese is actually still in the can, taking a deep breath and trying to judge how weird someone else now thinks my family is as I try to explain why my kid just said what she did, or simply hiding a smile and recording the cute phrase in my memory, I definitely have learned to laugh at all the things I’ve overheard.