My post last week about Crappy Boy's non-belief in fairies, got me thinking about back when he did believe.
It reminded me of a cute story from when he was tiny.
I tell him we have a special little road trip planned and that we get to…
He jumps up and down with excitement!
Until we get there…
You can imagine the disappointment.
Especially when he probably had something more like this in mind…
Poor thing. (Not to worry, the outing was redeemed by a ride on a carousel & ice cream on a stick.)
I adore these types of language misunderstandings. Such a crystal clear window into the way they relate to the world.
Got one to share?
adorable!
We were going to Value Village (a thrift store) and my 3.5 year old didn’t quite understand and was expecting to see animals…not quite sure why but it must have been so disappointing to end up in a store! (she coped very well)
That is so stinking adorable. When I was little my mom said we were having pigs in a blanket for dinner and I started crying because I didn’t want to eat the little pigs all cuddled up in their blankets!
I distinctly remember my dad telling us kids to “hop in” the car. Which I did, literally, and banged my head in the nastiest way!
I was JUST talking to my husband about this last night…how cute their interpretations of the English language are. It’s cute to think of how their brains absorb certain things. Oh, the joys of learning the English language! 😉
My almost 3-year-old says “What’s that noises?” (instead of “what’s that noise?!”) when he hears something. I finally figured out that he says that because I would say “I don’t know what that noise is…” (interpreted as “noises” instead of “noise is”) Cute.
Also, he says “that’s mines” because I’ll say “that’s yours”. Mines. Yours. Same thing. Right? 😉
p.s. LOVE your posts! 😉
LOL! When I was young, growing up in the Canadian Prairies, I couldn’t imagine that there were boats big enough to carry cars. (At this point, I had only seen canoes.)
I have to say, the best part of your posts are the size of your kids’ eyes! Too cute!
So cute. And it must be a common one too! My sister in law used to always point out the Ferry Building (in San Francisco) to my niece. One day she said “Mommy, do ALL the fairies live there??”
My little one and my mother-in-law always feed her piggy bank and pretend the money is food. One time the MIL said she was feeding the piggy Strawberry Shortcake. My daughter got all solemn and said, “Grandma, I don’t think piggy likes to eat humans.”
When my sister, Amanda, was little I asked her if she was a man or a woman. After a few seconds of thought she responded, “I’m Amanda AND a woman.”
My daughter got very confused when her uncle said “hold your horses” when she was 3! She stopped and looked at him and said, “But I don’t have any horses!”
The zoo in town just built an Aerial Tram (gondola/ski-lift looking thing that goes over the animals…very fun). But my daughter spent months thinking it was an Ariel Tram (as in Ariel the Little Mermaid) and was sorely disappointed when I had to tell her that Ariel would not be riding with us.
She was happy, though, that there was no Ursula and apparently had been a little worried about running into her.
I got my 4 year old all excited about Halloween. Too young to Trick or Treat (we’ll start next year), we decided we would make cookies and dress up to greet the Trick or Treaters at the front door. We spent all day getting excited. As soon as the doorbell went we ran to the door, gave out some candy and then said goodbye. My son was really confused. “Aren’t they coming in to play with me?” He asked. Poor chap. He spent all day getting excited about a play date and eating cookies. Still there was lots left over so he was happy in the end.
My younger brother was very disappointed after a long day of errands, as he thought he had been promised a trip to the boating place at the end. When we drove into the neighborhood going home, he was confused as to why we didn’t go to the boating place. My mother had to explain to him that we were going to the VOTING place, and we had just been there. He was crestfallen.
When my oldest (now 16) daughter was 3-ish, my Dh and I were very proud of the parenting job we were doing, raising our kids to be civic-minded little citizens, and we told her all weekend that come Tuesday, we’d be going to vote. She was so VERY excited all day, waiting (semi) patiently until her Daddy got home from work. We put her and her little sister in the double stroller, and I threw baby brother into the sling, and off we went. All the way (all 3 blocks), she was singing, as 3 year-olds do, “We’re going to vote. We’re going to vote.” I was So. Proud.
We get to the school, do the voting thing, and stop by the playground for a bit to let them run off some steam. Poor Sarah bursts into tears. “Where’s the vote? I want to see the vote!” After much questioning, it was determined that she thought we had said BOAT. That we were going to see a boat. And the school and playground just weren’t the same. 🙁 We still laugh about it lo these many years later… 😀
My daughter had the exact same misunderstanding when she was 2! She was so bummed that there wasn’t a boat.
Our most recent one happened the other day when she said “mommy, my fingers are sticky, I have a whack on them.” I said “a what?” “A whack, mommy. From my ear.” Oh, earwax.
We had a similar experience when we told our son he’d be sleeping in a pup tent when we went camping. He thought for sure a puppy would be inside!
This one is a misunderstanding – but on MY part, not on daughter’s…
I worked downtown, about an hour away from home, but my daughter went to daycare/preschool just a block away from my office. We had a lot of fun times in the car – we were experts in making up awesome car games…
There was one corner, every day she would say “Da Cow!! Da Cow Mommy! Da Cow!!” For months I would look everywhere around that corner looking for this stupid cow! A few months later, we got to the corner and she says “Downtown Mommy! We’re downtown!!”
Apparently, once we got off the freeway and stopped at this corner, that’s when she decided we were downtown – and that was exciting. But before she could pronounce it, downtown was DaCOW! 🙂
I was trying to teach my 2 year old son how old he was since that seemed to be the only question strangers ever asked him and I didn’t want him to look like he didn’t know anything (They never asked him about letters or numbers all of which he knew at that age. haha, but I digress…)
So I asked him “how old are you?” and got a blank stare. So then I figured I’d start with the answer first and went, “You’re two now! Two years old!”
He gets this big wonderful look of recognition on his face and goes “OHHHHHH!” (And I’m mentally patting myself on the back at this point for how quickly he learns things) then he points to his right ear and goes “one.” then his left ear and goes “two! Two ears old!”
You can imagine his disappointment when on his third birthday he still only had two ears!
When my daughter was little and had hurt herself she used to run up to me sobbing ‘What’s Happened, what’s happened’. As in falling over an hurting yourself was a ‘what’ so ‘what’s happened’!! Well, thats what Mummy said!
Ha! Your blog always makes me laugh! Love it 😀
I have one from this evening, actually: a conversation between me and my middle daughter, who is 3…
Daughter no.2: What are we having for tea, Mummy?
Me: Chicken foo yung.
Daughter no.2: Oooooooh! Kung Fu Chicken!
I’d *love* to see a picture of that! 😀
Lol! I mentaly did a crapy picture of it!
When my sister was 4 years old and I was 18 (15 years ago now) we were doing some drawing and I asked her to get me a book to lean on (ie put the paper onto) so she go me a book and put it behind me to ‘lean on’.
A little different, but something I have laughed about for two weeks. At my son’s second grade parent teacher conference, his teacher pulled me aside with tears of laughter and asked what I thought about the test… I am thinking, “what test?” because honestly, between my kids there are about 87.5 million pieces of paper entering my house per week. The best I can do is quickly skip over the grades while shoveling Fiber One and coffee before school… She tells me that on Open Response on their life science test, the final question was “Explain the differences in the life cycles of frogs and turtles.” My son wrote in, “The difference is that frogs get laid in the water, and turtles get laid in the sand.” She said she passed it around to all the teacher before she corrected the test with the word “EGGS!!!!” I would just about give anything to have that test in hand.
We told my son, then three, we were going to eat out. He started crying… “but I want to eat INSIDE the restaurant.” It was so hard not to laugh. 🙂
My oldest daughter, then 2.5, swore to me and everyone that I was pregnant with a baby elephant when I was pregnant with her middle sister. She told people for months and months it was a baby elephant in my belly. So you can imagine her disappointment when she got to meet her baby sister.
My 3 year old got angry with me and started miming throwing things at me. when I asked her what she was doing, she replied: “Throwing mice and rats at you. Feel my rats mama!” Confused, I finally put it together: “Feel your WRATH, honey?” “Yes, feel my rats mama!!” Not sure where she picked up the phrase: feel my wrath, but she put it together in her head that it was “rats” and the only way someone would feel them is if she threw them at someone.
My daughter thought nightgown was nightDOWN because you wear it when you lay down at night. Makes sense I guess!
The last picture of his daydreaming happy baby face expression has me laughing out loud. I think you’ve probably captured it perfectly, not crappily.
Not exactly the same thing, but my twins are 18 months old and recently my daughter was laying on my shirtless husband’s chest and she pointed to his nipple. He said, “That’s Daddy’s nipple.” She looked up at him and said, “Apple?” I laughed until I peed a little, for reals.
Just the other day my 2y.o. son said some statement – not asking for anything – just a random thought. I asked “What did you say?” because I was sharing my attention between him and his 6m.o. sister. He replied “Please”. I guess I must prompt him with “What DO you say?” a bit too much.
I have one from Halloween! My 2 year old ended up sick, so a friend of mine was going to take my 4 year old son to trick or treat at the building where my husband has his gallery. My friend has been to the building before, but never to my husband’s gallery. I told my son, “Now, Shannon is going to take you. She hasn’t been to daddy’s office before so when you get there can you take her to see daddy?” He paused for a good 5 seconds (I always love that pause) and said, “But how do I drive?” I love picturing what’s going on in his head – him behind the steering wheel, driving my friend to daddy’s office. Apparently the whole way there, he was pointing out buildings, saying “That’s daddy’s office! Oh, no it’s not. That’s daddy’s office! Oh, no it’s not.”
That’s so precious. 😀
This just happened the other day- I stacked some stacking cups for my 18 month old and told her to “knock them down.” She looked at me, paused, then said “Knock knock” and knocked on the cups.
HAHAHAHA-that is too funny!
When my 5.5yo was 2yo, she was doing the potty training deal. I said we needed to get a clean pair of panties for her and as I went to get them… she flipped out, and I couldn’t figure out why. She’s been fine with panties before that moment… then she started signing “pear” and I realized she thought I was going to put a PEAR on her BUTT. AHAHAHAHAHA. We still laugh about that.
The rat/wrath one has me almost crying at my desk LMAO! My son says funny things like this all the time, really need to start writing them down…
LOL! So funny and sweet!
Sounds like you were in Balboa. 🙂 When we moved into our old house, the previous owners left their pool table. Imagine my kids’ disappointment when it wasn’t, in fact, filled with water. Also, I just wrote about how my daughter thought that Harriet Tubman rode on the subway, after hearing my son talk about how “Follow the Drinking Gourd” was about how people were wanting to go drink alcohol. Nice.
I gave my 4 year old daughter some raspberries in a bowl beside her cereal. When she ate them all I gave her one more and called it a “bonus” raspberry. She looked at me with disgust “EWWWWW I don’t want a bonus raspberry!” I asked her why and she said “Only Daddy has a bonus”… oh dear.
I may have shared this before, but when I was expecting my youngest, his immediate older sibling was four years old. When we decided it was time to tell the kids that we were having another baby, I chose to phrase it this way: I have a baby in my belly. The 4yo got this horrified look on her face and was nearly in tears as she said “You ATE a baby?!?” LOL!
For a long time, when our son was just learning words, he would say the word “Moose-ca-no” randomly while riding in his car seat on our travels. For several months this went on and no one (even my in-laws) couldn’t figure out what he was referring to when he said that word. Sometimes he would get so excited and shout the word LOUDLY over and over again; still we couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.
Finally, one day we were driving over a toll bridge and we were in line waiting for our turn when our son shouts at the top of his lungs “MOOSE-CA-NO!” and points to the line next to us with about 20 Harley Davidson Motorcycles.
DUHHH! Silly Mama! Didn’t know Mooscano was another word for Motorcycle, did ya?
My little guy says “mines” too. I think they do it to be cute.
Hi! Just a little comment to say I love your blog ! Soo funny. I was pregnant when I first discovered it. Now that I have my little girl it’s a reeeaaaall pleasure to read you in the 5 minutes-rest I can have in the day. Hope to read you a lot in the future. a french fan of your brilliant crappy pictures.
Ha ha, I love that you were looking around for the cow!
I’m totally throwing rats next time I want someone to feel my wrath.
My cousin told me that she once thought “Gun Point” was a place, and she was wondering why people would go there if they kept getting robbed.
When my son was little I told him we were going to run errands – he thought we were going to someone named Erin’s house. And when he’d sneeze I’d say “gesundheit” and one time he yelled “I not a zoon-hite!”
I’m an Erin, an my younger sister is Lindsey. When we were 3 and 5, my sister had an absolute meltdown one day when my mother told her we had to run errands that day. Apparently she’d had enough of all these errands, and yelled to my mother “It’s not fair! You love her more! We always go on Erins, and we NEVER go on Lindseys!”
On Halloween this year my 6 year old was dressed up as Yoshi. When we arrived at a Halloween party, my friend gushed, “You are adorable!!!!” to which my son looked angry and said, “I am not! I am Mason!!!” He was visually relieved when he found out he wasn’t a “dorable” (I can only imagine what kind of creature he thought a dorable was) and she told him it meant cute. He nodded and said, “Oh, well in that case, thanks.”
LOL my toddler called mine “apples” too! And then shortly after that it was “vipples”.
I vividly remember “yummy bears,” “yunyuns,” “eyebrowns,” and “belbows.”
That is so cute that he was thinking you expected him to drive. LOL
Apparently, this is a common mistake among kids! My 3 year old did that exact same thing when she was 2 1/2
This was my toddler’s first halloween out, and when I told her to say “Trick or Treat!” when the neighbor opened the door, she didn’t get it. Once she got her treat, something must have clicked. We went to the next house, she shouted “pick a sweet! pick a sweet!”
My daughter’s first real Halloween was when she was about 23 months old. She didn’t understand the concept of saying “Trick or Treat!” Instead it came out “Apple Tree!” I still chuckle about that three years later…
Once my daughter (3yo) made up a song about having a boyfriend & & how boys think she’s pretty..where she got this from I have no clue…anyway I explained to her that her song was cute but that she was far too little to have a boyfriend and she said “no mom it’s ok the boys I like are little like me” and held out her hand above her head to show how tall they are. Oy vey! *palms face*
My nephew went with my mother in law to run errands but started crying when they didn’t go to cousin Aaron’s house!
My 2 yr old was asking where something was as we were driving down the street. I said, “In 2 more blocks.” He said “No! The street is not made out of blocks!” We’ve had that conversation several times. He’s very concerned that I don’t understand. 🙂
My husband claims that he was once disappointed by the lack of pencils in Pennsylvania.
My 2 year old calls windshield wipers “windshield diapers”-cracks us up every time!
Kids really must think we are stupid sometimes!
My daughter was a flower girl in my sister’s wedding and we prepped her weeks in advance that she was going to walk down the aisle with a ring bearer. So the rehearsal night came and she was so disappointed she was walking down the aisle with a “real boy and not a little BEAR!”
My daughter did something similar when she was little. When we would get up in the morning we would go in the living room and one of us would say “it’s dark in here!” and we’d turn on the light. I didn’t realize she was misinterpreting that until one night when she looked out the window and said “Mommy, it’s darkin outside.” For a long time it was always “darkin” at night.
My husband told our 3 year old that he could not go outside without supervision. My son then began to cry and said, “but daddy, I don’t have super vision!!!!”
My 2 month old son can’t speak yet, so we have yet to experience the joys of a literal little child learning a new language =)
But when I was a little girl, I would watch my Mom put on her makeup, and when she’d put her lip gloss on at the end over her lipstick (and it was a very specific lip gloss, with a distinct smell that, to this day, transports me back in time to my childhood!), she would ask “Do you want any?” so from then on out, I would always ask her if I could have some “any” for my lips…. we still call it “any” now that my sisters and I are all grown up, needing to borrow each other’s “any” after a meal!
We took our kids to the polling station to vote. The twins asked what we were doing there and we explained that we were voting! The got all excited…but it was short lived when they realized that we hadn’t said BOATING. They kept asking when we were going to get into the boats. Haha!
Ha, that is awesome.
My 4 yr old daughter and I had an hour commute from her school to home each day and we’d take the ‘highway’ for a majority of the trip. Whenever we would go under an overpass she would insist that we were no longer on the highway but the ‘lowway’ because the high road was above us. Couldn’t argue with her…lol I love my lil girl and I love this blog!! I actually look forward to getting it in my email each day…yes this is what my life has become…LOL
Ack! So cute!
Mine was from when I was little. My dad used to take me out for walks around the abbey ruins. There is a bit with bars over it and he told me that’s where they keep the naughty monkeys. Years later and wandering around there with friends as an adult, they remarked on it and I said it’s where they kept naughty monkeys. Anyway, that started a whole conversation of why would the abbey have monkeys, etc etc. Next time I see my day I mention all this and ask why on earth they had monkeys there, only for him to tell me he was making a joke of the word monk. He thought I’d got it. Clearly I hadn’t and I never came clean with my friends. So these childhood mistakes in interpretation can last for ever, especially when aided by an adult! (needless to say I’m now 35 and I tell my daughter EXACTLY the same thing) :O)
Awwwwwww! LOL
My now 7 year old souls tell me when she was 3 that her doll wanted to go in a parrot shoot, I wondered why she wanted to kill such beautiful birds until I saw her playing with her Barbie plane and heard her tell her doll to put on her ‘parrot shoot’ in case the plane crashed so she could float down safely, still laugh about it.
My daughter was very disappointed when the “Potty Train” wasn’t actually a train. She didn’t believe me and continued to think that once she was trained, we would get to ride on a train. When we started training her younger sister she told her “You don’t need to pee on the potty, there isn’t really a train”
I used to tell my son, “I love you to pieces” and one day it finally bothered him enough to ask: “You love me *two pieces*?” I’m still not sure what the poor thing visualized…
I still don’t get it ether way. What “love you to pieces” means? I’ll have to google it.
Then there is my favorite story about my 9 year old, then 4 or 5 yrs old.He had just finished drinking some red koolaid and since we were about to leave I told him we needed to go wash off his red mustache. As he looked in the mirror to make sure he got it all washed off, I asked him if he knew how he’d gotten the red on his face. He put his finger up to his cheek and thought for a moment before saying, “OH! I know! I get one of those on my bottom if I sit on the toilet too long!”
Awww…. When my son was about 2.5 we were driving over a bridge and the tires were making that whiney sound. Son perks up and says, “What is that sound?” I tried explaining it was the sound of the tires, and son’s face falls with disappointment. “Oh. I thought it was an elephant.”
Damn you autocorrect, that was ‘would’ not ‘souls’!
Parrot shoot = parachute is a great one!
oh my how that made me laugh so hard! Makes me think of when my 3 yr old says “I’m mad at you I’m going to take a nap!” (apparently time out for me is time without her presence lol)
When I told my kids my day had not gone well because my computer froze, my daughter asked me if it was because the air conditioner was on…cuz, you know, that blows cold air = freezing 😉
Love the “they are just tricking you!” sibling advice!
Oh just remembered my grandmother when she was small thought the religous song ‘gladly the cross I’d bear’ was about a cross eyed bear called Gladly! Too funny
We don’t live far from a gas company. They have huge barrels/containers…what ever you call them..I guess full of gas?? Anyway, my then 3 year old would yell out “Mommy, PIGS!! PIGS!!” Every time we passed by there. It took my husband and I a few times to figure out he was talking about the huge containers. They are long and oval shaped with a round front (snout)…lol He is 4 now and still calls them pigs….I’m glad:):):)
When my daughter was 2 I was singing “Muffin Man” to her since she had just learned it at daycare. When I finished she said “Now sing ‘Sino'” and became increasingly frustrated with my ignorance when I claimed not to know this other song. Weeks later I solved the mystery when I heard her singing the second verse of “Muffin Man”: “Yes, I know…”
My son is only 20 months old, so we haven’t had any incidences like this just yet. Looking forward to them, though. However, I do have one of my own to share. When I was little, I remember my father saying we were going to a Flea Market. I was baffled and amazed. You can imagine what I was thinking! I was trying to decide if it was a tiny store for fleas to shop in, or a store where you could BUY fleas. But why would you want to BUY fleas? What for? So it must be a tiny store FOR fleas, instead. That made MUCH more sense. Would we be able to SEE the tiny store? Would we need glasses, or binoculars? Would they make us itchy? Would they wear little clothes? Where there miniature shopping carts?
I was 1% logic, and 99% magic. I sorta still am. :/
When my sister was in nursery, the teacher told them they were going on an outing, on a coach trip. She was so excited for the outing, and would talk of nothing else for weeks.
When the day arrived, they had the outing, and she came home and told us that they went on the outing, but it was so disappointing that they went on a bus. She was expecting a Cinderella-style horse-drawn coach!
that reminds me of my son’s first ride on a merry go round. which he insisted was called a “Miracle Round”. i was like, fine, whatever. Miracle Round it is.
My two year old daughter walked into the laundry room where I had a bra hanging up to dry. It was hanging by one strap and when she saw it, her jaw dropped and she yelled to her 4 year old sister, “Look! Mom’s BOOBS are BROKEN!” I laughed until I cried 😀
Me too. 🙂
When we had our 2nd child (a daughter), we also had a puppy. We always crated the pup at night. When my daughter was 1 and her little sister came along, whenever the baby would sleep, my older daughter insisted that I put the baby in her crate (referring to her cradle). LOL It was too cute that I couldn’t even correct her!
Apparently I say heck too much according to my daughter. One night while I was getting her ready for bed I couldn’t find her toothpaste. I said, half out loud and half to her, ‘ Where the heck’s the toothpaste?!’ She looked at me really confused and said, ‘Mommy? What’s a heck-a-toothpaste?’
I was giving my 2 year old the stink eye for doing something he wasn’t supposed to. So, he tried to raise his eyebrow like I did. So funny. We have a full length mirror on our bedroom door, I look over and he has his finger trying to move his eyebrown up and down. I said “Whatcha doing, Sammy?” Him: “Mommy, my eyebrown bwoken. It not workin.”
Too funny!!
Also, he is another one for creative english. He does not say “I want a drink.” Instead: “My want a drink.” Too cute!
My friend served couscous for dinner one night and 3yo Olivia burst into tears and cried, “I don’t want to eat goose poop!”
When I was 3, I repeatedly asked where my “robeon” was, as my parents were always telling me to “Put your robe on.”
I was helping my 4yo put on his sneakers and I pointed to his foot and said, “This is your right foot.” He said, “My right foot?” Glances over at the other foot and said, “Is this my wrong foot?”
LOL bras! My daughters somehow came to call them nipple covers. LOL Needless to say, i do try to correct that!!! hahahaha
I spent ages thinking that very thing, and eventually began keeping a blog of them. It’s amusing for those of my friends/family who are interested, but mostly it’s a treasure trove of embarrassing anecdotes for when my sons are teenagers 😀
My 4 year old asks me to do the hard parts (like setting the zipper on a jacket) and he will do the soft parts lol (zipping it up.) I guess if it isn’t hard to do then it must be soft.
Once when my son was very little he said, “I hear the pineapples!” and we said, pineapples? “Yes, the pineapples on the roof!” It took us a minute, but he meant crab apples. I love thinking about him hearing the tiny pings and thinking of pineapples falling on our house.
We have a new sushi train in town… my 4 yr old was nearly wetting himself thinking we were going ON a sushi train!!! WOW A TRAIN! Nope sorry mate this is one that goes around with food… his comment?? ” It doesnt even have an engine at the front!”
Not exactly the same, but reminded me of when my sister brought her 5 tinies to visit us newlyweds in NJ. The twins were almost 3 and were in awe of the ferry taking us to Ellis Island. One of the little guys, flanked by my husband and myself looked up at us and asked us very seriously, “Is this a pirate ship?”, LOL!!!!!!!!!!!! It was really precious.
Ok so I bring those Australian wool duvets from the store, I am very excited because of the price, my husband is too 🙂 On the box there is a photograph of a sheep (the sheep looks so cute, it was probably selected from 10000s of sheeps, given a bath and a new hairdo and makeup + Photoshopped-cute sheep, sheep does not look like that in real life) Seeing the mass excitement in the house my almost 3 year old gets really excited too and starts jumping up and down “Open, open!” I open the box, get the comforter out, he is looking around and says in a very disappointed voice: “Oh, where the sheep go?”
when my oldest was little, he thought a band-aid was called an ‘owie’. he hated band-aids and would run away and hide if he hurt himself. but if i discovered him or saw him do it, i would have to intervene and fight him tooth and nail to get the band-aid on him. when he would see me coming, he would run away screaming, “i don’t want an owie! i don’t want an owie!” i can only imagine what the neighbors thought i was doing to him.
We go to Myakka State Park sometimes. So my son asks, “Can we go to Your-Akka State Park today?” Or sometimes “Mom’s-Akka”. Too cute! He also said “Hold you!” meaning for me to hold him, all the time. He’s 5 now, and the funnies keep happening. The other day he told me, “Mommy, when you get older you’ll understand why I like reading so much.” Obviously something I’ve said to him!
When I was pregnant with my 2nd, I had health scares early on and had multiple ultrasounds to check the baby’s health as well. My ODD was 3 and I tried to keep everything from her so she wouldn’t be disappointed, but she overheard me saying to DH that the baby was okay and grew from a grain of sand to a blob in the latest ultrasound. ODD heard the words baby and “Bob” and was so excited to learn that we were having a baby boy named Bob. It was hard to convince her to name the baby something else when we learned we were having a girl, lol. YDD is 16 months old and her sister still teases her with the name Baby Bob.
Whenever anything was lost, my older son always used to say it must be ‘behindaneath’ something. He continued to say this until he was well into his fifth year. All purpose term for ‘not in sight’, so adorable.
He also asked me one time ‘Mummy, what’s an enemy?’ so I explained with a small amount of caution ‘Well it’s somebody who you don’t like much, and who doesn’t like you either.’ He paused to consider this, and while he was, his 3 yr old brother piped up loudly, ‘NO, anemone is a sort of purple thing!!’
Which is why my blog, chronicling many delightful misunderstandings and creative uses of language, is called ‘a sort of purple thing’. 😀
My 3 year old LOVES seeing school buses on the road. Every morning on the way to daycare we have to find school buses. One morning after she had told me 5 million times or so that she NEEDED to find a “Cool Bus”, I told her to keep her eyes peeled and she would find one soon. She was absolutely horrified and nearly started crying. “No eyes peeled! Not keep eyes peeled! No!!”
My three year old called them pipples. Die laughing 🙂
we don’t eat mc donalds. When my daughter (now 5) was about 3yrs old I needed to meet someone at mcdonalds to pick something up. I told her we were going to mcdonalds for a moment, she got quiet and then said, I don’t want to go to the farm today mom. It took me a moment to figure out what she was saying…
She thought we were going to ‘Old McDonald’s Farm’ as in the song!
Just until recently, she had no idea that it was also a resturant! I was so sad when she did figure it out.
OH MY! My 3 yo also asked why I ate a baby when I told him that i had a baby in my belly. I thought it was so sweet. I proceeded to clarify that I did not eat a baby, and that it was in there to grow big into his baby brother or sister.
His response: “You know mommy, it’s going to turn into poop!”
Ugh!
That is so cute! And the eyes peeled phrase really is weird, isn’t it?
This one reminds me of the time my MIL told my son to “keep your eye on the ball!” and he picked up the ball and put it on his eye.
LOL My middle son calls bras “Boobie Bands”.
When my oldest (now 9) was around 3 we asked her what she wanted for Christmas. ESOSEBALLY she would say. over and over. Holy crap, how are we going to get her something we have NO IDEA what she’s saying. After about a month or so, we finally were watching TV together and saw a commercial for this LittlePony toy. And she started yelling ESOSEBALLY ESOSEBALLY. WTF. Turns out, she was saying ‘each sold separately’ which the guy says really fast at the end of the commercial. We still laugh about that.
Oh my goodness, your blog is awesome! LOVE.
Oh, I love it!! <3
I was chatting with my dad one day when my son lost his bouncey ball under the couch. Because he couldn’t reach it, my dad told him “you need a yard stick to get it out.” You know…the long measuring stick variety. Well, apparently my son didn’t. We continued our chat, but a few minutes later, in comes my son “Grandpa, I got a yard stick.” He went out into the yard and found a stick. hahahahaha!
My son was also teribly disappointed one day when we went on a ferry for the first time and my husband said something to him about `sea legs’.
He thought the ferry was taking us to `see Wags’ …from The Wiggles!!
So…I was having a friend and her son over for a playdate with my 3 year old and 20 month old sons. The oldest and his buddy were happily munching on their PB&J sandwiches and my youngest was earnestly calling for his “damnich” when my friend started severely scolding him for saying that “naughty word” (damn it). My poor baby started crying at being scolded for asking for a sandwich and I was offended that she thought we used that language around them. But I was laughing too hard to say anything.
My son is just starting to talk (he’s 1 1/2) so he doesn’t say much. One of his few words is Dada, of course. Well I started noticing him pointing to pictures and toys of Spongebob at stores and such, and saying Dada. Well my husband does like Spongebob and watches it sometimes, so I thought this association was hilarious.
Apparently he’s actually saying, a little more clearly now, Gada which according to the babysitter is his own little word for Spongebob (her son watches it every morning before school).
My daughter(now 11)used to call her coat “coaton”. Like, “Mommy where is my coaton?” because that is what we always said “It’s time to get your coat on” My 2 year old son says the same thing now with his socks, lol.
Awww! Did you answer with, well, uh, here is his hair! lol
When my 6yo was about 4 he was studying the big cashew jar from Costco pretty hard and then eventually says, “I don’t see any shoes in there!”
When my sister was 3 we told her she was going to be an aunt because my brother’s wife was pregnant with their firstborn. She immediately burst into tears and hopped down off her chair. We asked her what was wrong and she said, “I don’t want to be an ant, I want to be a grasshopper because I can hop like a grasshopper.” And she began hopping around the room. It was so funny!
For the longest time my now almost 4yr old son, would repeat the word “say” when repeating what I would tell him to say something to somebody,. you know for example : Kalel say thank you to the lady: which he would reply say thank you! He went away until 2 days ago, when I guess getting tired while trick or treating, he forgot to say thank you at one point and when I said Kalel say thank you and said say thank you!! Also a funny fact about learning two languages sometimes he will say a complete sentence in English with one word in French which is always so cute! My favorite is when he talks about his bum; Oh mommy I just fell on my fesses!
That is perfect! Makes so much sense!
When the second of my nine kids was about four years old we went to the park. She kept talking about all the glitter everywhere. As far as I could tell there wasn’t any. But on the walk home she pointed at a soda can on the ground and said, “Look, Mommy! Glitter!”
When I was little (about 3) my mom said we were going to the beach (my first time). I thought she said, “the beet,” so I thought we were going to this big, Dr. Seuss-like beet.
My niece was very upset when she saw “Dancing with the Stars” . She thought it was dancing with actual stars from the sky.
Oh I just remembered a good one!lol. When my daughter was 3 she got her first Barbie for her birthday. Not long after she got we noticed that she was playing with it and kept saying “VCR”. We could not figure out what the heck she was talking about. Turns out she had named her Barbie “VCR”. The only thing we can figure is that she must have heard us say that word and decided she liked the sound of it. haha After that she would refer to any toys that talk with that girlie barbie- type voice, “VCR” because they sounded like barbie too, so it must be her. We still joke about it and she is almost 12 now:)
Aw, that is so sweet how trash can be beautiful to a child, isn’t it?
We were having a conversation about the weekend, in which I mentioned that my favorite day is Saturday. My three year old told me that Sadderday made her happy, so she didn’t know why they called it that. There was a lot of back and forth before I caught on to what she was hearing…
Last spring, DS noticed the bird bath was empty. I told him it will fill back up when it rains, and he started running back to the house. I asked where he was going, and he yelled back, “To get the bubbles!!!”
Aww! that is too cute!
Oh no! Haha! *mental picture* lol! I used to babysit a little boy who called Band-aids owies too 🙂
A few years ago we were planning our summer vacation to Cumberland Island, which involved a ride on a ferry (boat). We were all talking about riding the ferry a lot. My youngest was 4 years old and she chimed in dubiously, “Well, alright, but I don’t see how that’s going to work” I instantly got a flash of the mental image in her mind…each of us on the back of a tiny fairy. LOL
My son and I had miscommunication in the other direction. He asked me when we were driving by the city mission why there were bums. Or at least that was how I heard it and launched into a big lecture on why he should never call them “bums” and instead call them “homeless people.” I also went on and on about all the circumstances that could lead to homelessness, blah, blah, blah. Finally, he said “no, I said bumps.” We had just gone over a speed bump.
My 2-year-old heard the doorbell ring after we had gone trick-or-treating and when I said, “Let’s go give them some candy!” she grabbed her bag and handed out all her candy to the kids. Needless to say, I was very happy with that misunderstanding!
My name is Erin and I have a little sister (Alisha) and a younger brother who is in between us in age. Two stories – one day my sister and my mother were getting in the car to run some errands and my sister said, “Just this once can we call it Alishas?!” (She thought they were running Erins and it was named after me?!)
And once, before the laws changed, we were all fighting to sit in the front with mom and my brother tricked Alisha into going into the backseat to get something and he stole the front seat from her. He turned and looked at Alisha and said “Sucker!” (which I’m sure we weren’t allowed to say but mom wasn’t yet in the car) and Alisha retorted – “Lollypop!!”
We are now in our late 20’s/early 30’s and still laugh hysterically about her fabulous insult of Lollypop!
These comments are great! When my oldest was 3 or so she decided that since clothes is plural, “clo” must be singular. The first time she was telling me about her “dress up clo” I laughed really hard.
My aunt is a nurse and for a while my little cousin thought she nursed babies all day 🙂
When we were buying our house, we were driving with the realtors and, I guess, discussing ethnic shifts of peoples because the realtor said something about Jews. My 20-month-old then started exclaiming “Jews! Jews!” and I was getting embarrassed because what must they think we talk about for a kid with a dozen words to know “Jews!”? Then I figured out he thought we were having juice. Bummer for him.
When my brother was maybe 3, at dinner one night my mom told him to stop fooling around and, “Clean your plate!” He got a very confused look on his face, picked up his plate and started wiping it with his napkin, spilling food everywhere. He’s 32 now and we still laugh about that. My son is 16 months, so no personal funnies yet! That’s what I got this crappy blog for! LOL
Haha, gorgeous! My 2yo recently got us when we were telling her the names of her favourite toy dinosaurs… stuck at triceratops :
“No no no it’s not a triceratops!”
“Baby, that’s just the name of the dinosaur, it’s just another kind of dinosaur.”
“NONONONONOOOOO!!!”
“See Em, this one is a tyranosaurus, and this one is an allosaurus, and this one is a triceratops”.
“NONONONONONO *hysterical tears* it’s NOT a triceratops it’s a triMUMMYtops!”
<3
(My name is Sarah 🙂 )
When my older son, (19 now, sniff sniff) was almost three, we went to Mississippi for a family reunion. It was about a 10 hour drive. Of course, he kept asking how much longer it was going to take to get there, and when we finally pulled in to the hotel he could hardly contain himself. We got out of the car, he looked all around, and asked “Where is she? Where is She?” Apparently he thought we were going to see someone name Miss Issispi. LOL I have no idea who he thought that was, but he was crushed to find out it was a state we were visiting.
Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” as poke her face 🙂
It always amuses me as an Australian when Americans say ‘Ferry Boat’ – Everytime they talk about them on Grey’s Anatomy, i’m all *snigger*
we have a much stronger distinction between the e and ai sounds here 🙂
I do have a funny misunderstanding story, but it’s not mine – it’s the story of a lovely french girl i met in paris.
In french a guinea pig is called a cochon d’Inde – literally an Indian pig. A turkey is called a dinde (pronounced the same way), so when she was little she thought guinea pigs were called ‘turkey pigs’. She was quite surprised when she first saw one and it was nothing like a turkey or a pig.
my daughter used to say “Mines” too!!! awww…I miss that.
I was at a wedding where the ring bearer growled all the way down the aisle because he thought he was the “ring bear”. Drawing a blank on anything my own kids have misunderstood.
Amber, how is your girlfriend doing? I can’t stop thinking about her and her family.
my 2 year old and i were on the bus yesterday and he kept saying what I’m sure was “beetles” and pointing at the roof of the bus. I never did figure out what he was on about :/
LOL! How disappointing! So sweet
LOL! My daughter called my bras “boobie pants”. 🙂
hehe so cute!
My 2 year old comes over and says “you ok?” when he’s hurt himself. lol
It was so sweet, we did the Awwww and hugged him and laughed, he decided to play with the duvet, so no major drama…
We were visiting San Antonio last summer, and my daughter who was 3 at the time, was disappointed that there were no Sesame Street characters at the Alamo. she thought we had said “the Elmo!”
Thanks for asking, Karen! She is doing good. Our families spent Halloween together. 🙂
I had a similar misunderstanding. We would drive past this hotel in town and my 22 month old would say, “Mommy, look at the alligator!” I kept thinking, where the heck is she seeing the alligator?? Later I realized she meant “elevator” when we walking into an elevator and she kept saying “alligator!” The hotel had elevators you can see from the outside, going up and down.
“Call is Alishas?” So funny! And lollypop is the best insult fail ever.
The lollipop sucker one is awesome because on Halloween this year my littlest guy had a lollipop and someone said, “Is that a yummy sucker?” He took it out of his mouth and said, “NO. It a lollipop.”
My iPhone died and, given its importance as an extension of my limb, I could not go even one day without getting it fixed. So, I picked up my little two year old Emma at preschool and tell her, “We’re going to the Apple Store to see a Genius!” (The tech support people at the Apple Stores are actually called that, as in, that’s their official title.) We get there, she sees the giant apple over the door and excitedly approves me to push the stroller into the store. We wait…they fix the phone. Mommy is EX-CI-TED! But, Emma is disappointed. “I want to go to the apple store!” I said, “This is the Apple Store. We are all done! Let’s go home.” The whimpering crescendo begins, “I want to go to the apple store to get JUICE.” A moment of perplexsion…then, OHHHHHHHH comes over me. The Apple Store Genius = Apple Juice. Hm. So, we went to the local cafe and she was able to get some juice. 🙂 Meltdown averted. This time.
Awww. love this!
One more popped into my head… My now 2 3/4 year old Emma picked up the phrase, “You are most welcome,” from my parents. So, when she’s feeling especially generous and nice, after someone says, “Thank you,” She replies, “You’re almost welcome.” HAHAHA. It just doesn’t have quite the same connotation. 😉
I have to be careful of using figures of speech in my house – two year old twin boys can be very literal. I was recently in a basement room with them, and children’s gym class was upstairs – lots of very noisy jumping and running. I said “it sounds like a herd of elephants is up there.” “Elephants? I like elephants?” says boy 1. “My favourite are giraffes” says boy 2. “I love giraffes.” “Giraffes, upstairs?”. On it goes for ten minutes. Time and again I patiently explained there were no actual elephants (or giraffes) upstairs, but they insisted there really were. When we left I quickly looked in to the hall, as it was a place I hadn’t been before. BIG mistake. Two hysterical boys, crying their little eyes out because they were expecting to see elephants and giraffes. They were so genuinely upset, it broke my heart a bit.
My mom loves to tell the famous story of how when I was maybe 2.5 or three, my grandmother watched me bopping my head to some music. She thought I should learn to actually dance so she offered to teach me. “OK,” she said. “Just move your arms to the music.” So I moved my arms. “Now, move your FEET to the music!” I stopped moving my arms, and moved my feet. “Good, good…now just move your arms WITH your feet,” she encouraged. I bent over and grabbed my ankles and attempted to move to the music. “Is this right?”
lol That’s cute! I love the mistakes kids make with words too – my niece used to go in the car with her grandmother who played an old Christian song called ‘bringing in the sheaves’ and the little girl would sing along at the top of her voice: ‘bringing in the cheeeeeese, bringing in the cheeeeese, they will come rejoicing, bringing in the cheeeeeese…’
I sing Kurt Nilsen’s Hallelujah to my DS (2yrs) and now he’s started sing it too.
The part that goes:
“Your faith was strong but you needed proof,
you saw her bathing on the roof,
her beauty in the moonlight overthrough you.
She tied you to a kitchen chair,
she broke throne and she cut your hair,
and from your lips she drew the hallelujah
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah”
according to him goes:
“[something, something] poof,
saw a baby on the roof,
a booty ina moon athrew you.
Tie a kitchen chair,
broke a phone and catch a chair,
[skips a line] halawah.
Halawah,
halawah,
halawah,
halalooo ooo oo ah”
Hilarious! I love reading the blog and all the funny stories that follow-up. Next time I’m upset I am totally throwing rats too! 🙂 Can’t wait to hear what my 13 mth old comes up with 😉
one morning I asked my son if he wanted an egg. he said “i want a boiled egg mummy”… straight up pipes miss 2.5 with “I want a girl egg”. nearly wet myself laughing.
While camping this past summer, I asked my two boys (5 & 7) to come for a walk with me to the liquor store. Upon arrival, very loudly my oldest says, “I thought we were going to the Liquorice Store!”
My 2-year-old son says “that’s mice” instead of “mine.” No idea why…but it’s really funny! I picture little furry mice running around every time he says it.
Makes sense! I rejoice more for cheese than sheaves. lol
I sing the song “Baby Mine” from Dumbo to my 2 year old son every night. My favorite part is when I sing the line that ends in “goodness knows”…and my son points to his nose! 🙂
That is such a beautiful song. (and your son’s version is adorable!)
I love my friend’s memory. When she and her sisters were young they were staying in a hotel for the first time. They were running around the room looking at things excitingly. Her youngest sister opened the bedside drawer and said, “Look, we even get a holly bibel!!” (holy bible) LOL. Always makes me laugh.
When I was little in my grandmas pool (above ground) I was hanging on the side in the water with her and lifted the top of the filter . Looked at her said, where’s the filter fish?
(gefilte fish)
My little one was out digging up potatoes in the garden with his grandpa and you could see his eyes getting more and more concerned. Finally he pipes up “grandpa, why did you hide them there? Is someone trying to steal them”
Love this! My 2 year old son discovered his own nipples about 6 months ago, and exclaimed “BUMPS!” – he was (and still is) fascinated with speed bumps and any other bumps for his matchbox cars to race over…
The Kung Fu Panda panel at Comic Con would love that!
On explaining to my son that I was going to have some thing on my legs (thread veins) taken off by the doctor, he looked at me confused and said “why are they taking off your legs?”. Poor little man was worried mummy was going to have no legs,
Later that day I said I was also off to see the nose doctor and he said “when he takes the bugs out of your nose it’ll make you better Mummy.” it was so cute. And for the record, I don’t have bugs up my nose, I have troposmia.
My sister came home with some great news from her job and was soooo happy that I cooked a celebration dinner, my eldest at the time was about 4yrs old and said Aunty R CONDRAGONLATIONS!! it took us at least 5 minutes of her repeating herself almost in vain for us to finally understand what she was saying. We still have a good laugh about that tongue twister.
My 2-year-old daughter was having a hard time expressing her thoughts one day, so my husband said, “Spit it out.” She looked at him with the most confused look on her face and said, “I’m not eating anything.”
When my eldest was about 4, I said “I love you to pieces”. . . . To which his reply was ” I love you together” darn near made me cry. . 🙂
my 2.5 year old wants to know why a remote control isn’t a mountain troll… 45 minutes later… but why not a mountain troll mummy?
My two year old speaks both Italian and English. So on the 4th of July we were having hot dogs and she had never had one. So we explained to her in Italian that it was like a sausage (salsiccia). So she then translated and mixed languages and it came out as a salsiccia puppy. We just about died from laughter.
i remember when i was little my dad used to work in a factory… one day my mom had to collect him after work with me taggin along in the backseat… Looking at the building, i got curious as to what happens inside so i asked my dad what did he make in the factory.. His response was ‘i make money’.. I think i was about 4 or 5 at the time and i took what grown-ups said as fact… So i was convinced for years that my dad made actual money in the factory.. I’d imagine all the pennies being made and i was so delighted about what a cool job my dad had, i used always tell my friends just to be sure they knew i was derived from coolness…only to find out when i was about 10 that he actually made aerosol can thingys… u can imagine my disappointment
I remember my friend thinking the Lord’s Prayer said “Deilver us from Mable” instead of “deliever us from Evil”. Her neighbors name was Mable. lol
My son is only 13 months so we so far just get him yelling “DOH DOH, GUH GUH!” and wagging his finger. That would be his imitation of my husband yelling at the dog… “No no, Gus Gus!”
A funny from my own childhood… apparently when I was little I would say “Fucky Eye Chicken” for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Even better, my little brother would call construction trucks “Big Fucks!” I don’t know WHAT my parents were talking about in front of us when we were little but it is very suspicious.
And when my sister-in-law was about 7&1/2 she said “it’s very human out today”. We live around Houston and she’s heard the word Humid ALOT in her life. Sometimes when it’s really humid out I still think “oh the humanity!”
As does my almost-4-year-old daughter. 😀
Thanks for your posts, they always make my day and are so far from crappy!
ps/I still tear with laughter daily at your pirate story post…we’re in the midst of endless princess stories at the moment.
HAHAH! poor guy!!!
When we stop at the gas station, my husband usually says something along the lines of “Twenty dollars, regular, cash, please”. My kids, 5 and 2, only absorbed the last bit… so whenever we pull up at a gas station and roll down the window, they start shouting “Cash, please! Cash, please!” Tonight, for no good reason, they started shouting this at the pizza parlor. Never a dull moment!
When my oldest was 3 we talked about our weekend trip to a “beach house” with friends. After it was all over my disapointed son asked when we were going to see the beach house. I explained that we had been there all weekend and when he still seemed confused I said “what were you expecting?”
He says “You know, a beach house! Like with shells, sand, glue and a door knob.”
This was a joke in a very early episode of Friends. Monica’s teenage boyfriend said it
My friend’s daughter mistakenly thought her privates were called a “view” because every time she’d be sitting in her nightie watching tv or something with everything on display, my friend would say “nice view!” LOL Love your blog, even though my kids are 18 and 20. brings back great memories…
I vividly remember my mom telling me there were 10 blocks in a mile one time and I pictured my little blue square blocks lined up end to end. I was amazed at how many miles long my street and driveway were.
Hahaha, We used to stay in a hotel a couple times a year and my son called it “the alligator house, with all the doors”
BAHAHA! I love it! “Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear”
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
I asked my daughter if she wanted an egg salad sandwich and she said “Yes.” and after a brief pause, “But without the salad.”
My 3 y/o daughter LOVES the new Maroon 5 song “Moves Like Jagger” except she thinks it’s “Moves Like Jacket.” My husband asked her what “moves like Jagger” meant and she said “Like when you move your zipper up and down.” Silly kid.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE your blog. All the comments are super cute and fun to read. I can’t think of any cute word misunderstandings that my kids have done or do at the moment but they make me laugh alot! One thing I noticed is when I ask my 4 year old daughter to summarize a story she always has the most interesting way to recap a story. She gets straight to the point and im always intrigued by what stood out to her the most.
The most recent one comes from my just-turned-8-year-old son:
I explained to him that his aunt was married once upon a time, but she got divorced.
Son: (gleefully) She got a horse???
While Skyping with my sister and 3 yr old niece, I said: “Oh, my screen keeps freezing up!” My niece replied: “Hang on! I’ll turn off da fan!” She’s so literal. 😉
OMG I love that song, that is so cute! Amber, aren’t you married to the original drummer of Maroon 5?
My almost-3-year-old got to go trick or treating for the first time this year. He would ring the doorbell, wait expectantly, and then yell “CHICKEN TREAT!” when the door was opened.
My nephew thought Minneapolis was minnie apples. Her other aunt lives there and when they talked about it she thought she lived in an apple orchard!
The radio station my husband listens to has very smarmy DJs… So one day their statement following a song was “Man…those cats can really cook!” Few months later, we’re visiting his brother, sister-in-law and nephew in Florida, driving to the beach he relays the story. My 3 year old nephew pipes up from the back, “Cats can’t cook!!” We reply with, “Yes, James, we know.” and he gets very indignant and insistent, “Cats CANNOT COOK!” Still cracks us up.
28 years of experience in child care, I have so many of these. One of the girls I watched couldn’t say Captain Crunch with out Cr at the beginning of Captain. I’m embarrassed to say we all had a few days of fun asking what her favorite cereal was.
My oldest son ripped one of his books when he was about 3 and I put it up on the dresser until I had “a chance to fix it” A few days later he came to me with a ripped paper and said “Mommy do you have some chance to fix this with?” He thought chance was tape.
I am 4 years older than my brother, so I remember quite a few things from his childhood.
Motorcycles were “modo-hahas” Our uncle, his godfather, came over on his Harley one day, and my brother got so excited to see uncle Doug’s modo-haha. Until then, we weren’t sure what it was.
A hammer was an “at-doe” We got that one quickly, because he would bring his little toy hammer to my dad when he asked for the hammer.
A friend of the family has a daughter a year older than my brother. She called me “A Cold” my name is Nicole. She called my brother, André, Ha-Gee. I still call him ha-gee on occasion.
I once told my daughter (2 yo) that she could have her snack once we got “on the road” so right after we back out of the driveway she asks for her snack. I told her “no we are not on the road yet” she was very confused and asked “are we driving on the sidewalk”?
Also I love asking her to name her princesses. We have sleeping beauty, cinderella, and snow wipe 🙂
I used to call a bikini a “be skinny”, cuz you know, you have to be skinny to wear them. Also, a thimble was a thumble, which I still think is a better name.
The 2 year old that I watch in addition to my own two calls me Kiss Him, instead of Miss Kim.
My husband wanted to take my daughter fishing and they went looking for worms to take fishing with them. When she found one she picked it up and asked it if it was ready to go fishing with her. Of COURSE, she thought the worm would hold a rod too!
But I think my favorite belongs to a little boy I met through some friends of friends. They were moving. I asked him where, and he said very excitiedly, “To where Peter Pan lives!!!!” I gave his mom a quizzical look, and she informed me that they were moving to The NETHERLANDS!!
When my oldest was almost 3 I asked him what he wanted for dinner one night and he said, “Turtle Beanies.” Luckily he was able to show me the leftover tortellinis in the fridge or I probably never would’ve figured that one out!
I’ve learned to call Pandora Radio “music” or something instead of Pandora. I say “Let’s listen to Pandora,” and my two year old daughter hears PanDORA (as in the explorer, also known as baby crack, according to my sister). Then she proceeds to cry when I turn on music and doesn’t get to watch her favorite show. “Mommy, watch Duh-duh-dora please!”
heehee, we have always had earthquakes where i grew up and apparently when i was very small after one i misunderstood and thought there were Earth Quacks living under my bed shaking it. I apparently used to run and jump into my bed so the Earth Quacks wouldnt get my feet….!
So funny!!! A couple weeks ago my two year old (while we are on the road to Walmart) says she is hungry and wants a cheeseburger. So I say, “Oh, like at McDonalds”. She paused for a few seconds and says, “Mommy the cows go MOOO”! Very confused, I say yes they do/ Thinking to myself, oh no she knows the cheeseburger is a cow, how am I going to explain this one. Still thinking about it a few minutes later, she yells out, “E-I-E-I-O”!!!! Ha, I am relieved at this but how she remembered this song when its been probably several months the last time she heard it, and not only that, but that she just put all that together. Immediate Facebook update right there!
Oh, I just remembered another one … When he was about 3 he was helping me start dinner. I said, “Let’s see … do you want to have Asparagus?” He started laughing hysterically. When he saw my confused non-laughing face his eyes got HUGE, his face dropped, and he said, “Mommy! … What IS a spider goose???”
This is a little sad but my neighbors doggy died several months ago and my neighbor was telling my 2 yo why she wasn’t walking with their other dog. My daughter looks at her and asks her “do you need to go charge her”. I had a lot of explaining to do that day.
Oh! That reminds me of before my oldest was two. I had taken him to Walmart to get hangers, BUT the way he pronounced hangers sounded EXACTLY like the N-Word. He was trying be so helpful … “See any (hangers) Mommee???” “No find any (hangers) Mommee???”
The kids had received Barnes and Noble gift certificates for their birthday. My oldest was so excited to go spend it. As a mother, I was so happy he was so interested in picking out books. We got there, picked out some books to buy, and were getting ready to check out when he asked if we were going to go to Barnes and Noble yet. When I explained that we were at Barnes and Noble he was very upset that it was just books. He was expecting farm animals. I can imagine how exciting it must have been thinking that he was going to be able to buy a cow to bring home, and how upsetting it was to find out he only got to buy books.
YES… our son was so exicted to go to his first baseball game, when he was around 3.5. He talked about it all day, but when we got there, he looked around and said, “So… where do I play baseball?” It never occurred to us that he wouldn’t understand that he’d be *watching* the game, not playing it. Poor guy. Fortunately, this was at PacBell Park; they have a little t-ball field set up, so my son got to play after all. Also, he (still, at 5) thinks the name of the team is the “Go Giants.” xoxo
You know, I read this blog post and thought “gee, hasn’t she already done this joke? I know I read this, in cartoon format, very recently.”
Took me awhile to realize it wasn’t here… It was in my daughter’s Click magazine! A recent issue had a comic story on the very same ferry/fairy misunderstanding!
So it must be a pretty common one. 🙂
Anyway, my own story is from my childhood. Apparently when I was 2.5yo, leading up to Christmas all I could talk about was ‘toy corn’. I wanted ‘toy corn’, I was adamant about ‘toy corn’, I was passionate about ‘toy corn’.
My parents were flabbergasted… they had NO IDEA what I meant or what I wanted, and they were terrified that come Christmas morning, with no toy corn under the tree, I would be devastated.
Well Christmas came and I was very pleased with my presents, and ‘toy corn’ was never heard from again. They never did figure out what I meant by it, and I don’t remember either. My best guess is that it’s the little corn-shaped corn holder pin things, we had some and I remember loving them ‘to pieces’ (and ‘together’ heehee) so maybe I wanted some of my very own. Or maybe, and I confess this had not even occurred to me, maybe it was a mispronunciation and the thing I wanted had nothing to do with corn at all!
OMG out of all the comments here, this is the one that made me laugh the hardest!!!
My son used to ask me, “Can you help me get my dressed on?”
*Ahem* just a nitpick, it’s Leonard Cohen’s song. 😉 Though many have covered it, (some exceptionally well too), it’s still ‘his’ song — especially if it’s just you singing it not and not playing another version of it.
It’s like me singing a particular tune and calling it “Anne Murray’s lullaby” instead of Brahms’.
I think Cohen would love your son’s version too. 🙂
Our kids call it a lowway too!
There’s a chain of restaurants here called “Eat’n Park”, which we go to fairly often (I’m sure you can see how this might get confusing.) Whenever we go our almost-3-year old always asks if we are going to the park once we’re finished eating. He just thought we were going to eat and then were going to the park. I hate disappointing him like that, especially since we usually can’t go to the park afterward. Now we just call it the “Smiley cookie restaurant,” since then we don’t have the confusion about the park, and he likes the cookies.
Thought of another one. I can remember the first time I heard (or noticed) my parents say “I changed my mind”. I can’t recall if it was mom saying it about herself, or saying to me, like “oh, did you change your mind?”
But whoever was doing the mind-changing, I distinctly remember being very confused by the phrase. How can you change your mind? It’s inside your head. You can’t just swap it out for another one.
I can totally imagine my son asking something similar, or asking if she needed new batteries.
One more I have to share. One day my 3 yo saw the street sweeper going down the road, and asked what it was. I told him it was “sweeping up the road.” He said, “But then what will we drive on?”
This made me think of when my son asked what my breasts were, but he always called them “rests” which is more appropriate when you are two!
But he was really appalled when I said we were having chicken breasts for dinner! That is such a funny mental picture to me!
This is my FAVORITE of the stories! oops!
Love it. My boy has been confusing ‘robot’ with ‘row boat’ resulting in him singing ‘Row row row your boat’ everytime he wears his robot shirt.
Oh I have another one. I thought bath robes were called “robons” because I was told to go get my robe on. It still sounds natural to me.
My blog was once shared by a big fancy Facebook page with gobs of fans and somebody commented that my blog was alot like the crappy parent blog. I had no idea what that meant and was not sure whether or not to be offended. Then I found you, and I can say that I’m happy to not be offended. P.S. I know it is kind of weird when people leave you comments saying “I’m just like you or we could be best friends in real life.” So, I’m not going to do that….but I might think it…maybe 🙂
My parents used to send me out of the family den when watching Westerns and other movies quite often. They would tell me “You have to leave. There will be violence.” Or “There’s too much violence.” To my child brain/language processing, I heard the word “violins”. As most dramatic violent movie scenes were accompanied by loud string orchestration in the soundtrack, I went along with this. However, sometimes the soundtrack did not include any violin/string music. I would complain loudly out in the hallway “But I don’t hear any violence/violins!” and would be told to trust them, it was there… years later I explained to them and they laughed.
This is funnier for those who are familiar with the town names, but with enough explanation, you can see the humor, too.
First of all, note my first name.
One day not long ago, my 3.5-year-old daughter and I were talking about names of streets. We were at her grandparents’ house, and I told her that they live on Cadiz (KAY-dees) Road.
She looks at me and says very seriously, “It’s not your road, Mommy, it’s Granny’s.”
I about died laughing.
Of course, when I tried to tell her that again with her grandparents around, she wouldn’t take the bait and repeat her cute line. Sigh.
Hi, I followed the link from TFB, and I totally love what I’ve seen of your blog so far. In fact, I added you to my blog roll. Hope you don’t mind. I really love your ‘crappy’ illustrations. Very cool idea. Can I steal it?
Anyway, when I was 5, my Mum took me to the cinema for the first time. She read me the names of two movies from the newspaper, and I chose “The Land Before Time”, which I misheard as “The Lamb Before Time” I chose it because it sounded nice – a cute little lamb. Well, obviously the whole thing was about dinosaurs, without any lambs in sight. At the end Mum asked me whether I enjoyed it, and I said “Yeah, but where were the lambs?” She laughed and explained. I still didnt really get it… stupid name for a kids’ movie anyway.
I had told my 2.5-yr-old that after his nap we were going trick-or-treating. As soon as he woke up, he asked to go “fisher-treating” (Fisher is a boy in his preschool class). I explained it didn’t involve Fisher and was “TRICK-OR-treating,” and he was staring at me intently, nodding his head. He then announced he was ready to go “trick-or-treating, like a fish.”
Following the fish(er) theme…a couple weeks ago we saw a man fishing in a local creek, the first time my son had seen a real, live fisherman. We point out the fisherman, and my son says, “Like in Runaway Bunny”. And we’re saying, “yes, yes!” The whole rest of the day my son kept talking about the man fishing for bunnies. No amount of correction could convince him the man was fishing for anything else.
Just tonight, there was a Praying Mantis on our front steps. I called in for my almost 3 yo to come see it. He came out and I told him what it was and we talked about it. Once my husband got home from work, my son told him he had to go back outside to see the Praying Amandas.
I’ve got a similar story… I was walking the dog (and the kids) one day when a driveway sealing company had been through the neighborhood. There were cones at the end of several driveways to keep the cars off, and my then 3-year-old asked what they said on them. Well, I told him they said “Magic Seal” (the company name). “Where?!? Where?!? Haha! He was looking for, of course, a magic seal. What a disappointment! No magical animals, just some tar. Sorry buddy!
This is great- my kindergarten son’s school is doing the anti bullying campaign– for which he thought he needed to wear orange– to watch ….wait for it …. The bull fighting. Matador and all.
Think I really upset my daughter one time when I told her we were going to a doll show (where people display antique dolls and bears etc). She was rather disappointed when we got there to find the dolls weren’t dancing and singing…
I remeber as a child my father showing me the submarines at the base. I could never see them cos I was looking for ROUND YELLOW things…not long dark grey ones!!!
My five year old counts down by saying “Ready… seg-get… go!” I can’t seem to convince her that it should be “get set” 🙂
Ha ha, this happened to us this summer. We were on vacation and asked our almost 4 year old if he wanted to go the maritime museum and explained to him that we’d get to see ships. Well it wasn’t till later when he started asking me about when we were going to see the space ships that I realized we hadn’t been specific enough! We ended up going to a cool little farm instead. 😉
That’s too cute! 🙂 At least you found a way around it!
Love your blog! It’s one of my favorites and always cracks me up! I don’t have kids yet but my mom loves to remind me of the things I said when I was a small child. Her favorite misinterpretation was when she told me that my uncle was going to Seattle in the morning and I asked her “who’s Attle?” I thought he was going to see Attle in the morning. Ha! This same uncle (Jim) I used to call Uncle Dim since I couldn’t pronounce that J sound. Poor guy!
Oh no I forgot the BEST word mix up my son ever had. (I hope no one is offended by this). I had just potty trained my son and thought it would be smart to give him the proper names for certain body parts. So one day when he was going potty I told him that part of his genitalia was called his “testicles” (yeah I still can’t figure out why I decided to say this). He just looked at me super confused when I asked him to repeat the word he responded with, “No mama ocpopus (octopus) have tentacles”. I think I lost my balance I was laughing so hard.
LOL. When my daughter was a toddler she got gas and grass confused, they sounded the same to her so of course she thought they were the same thing. One day I was working in the front yard when I noticed her pulling grass and shoving it into the gas tank on my car. AHHHHHH I freaked out a little and asked her what she was doing… she replied “I put gas in your car mommy” with a huge grin on her face. She thought she was doing me a favor. Thankfully she didn’t have the cap removed and there was no damage to my car.
When I was a little girl my mother taught me to say the prayer “Now I lay me down to sleep” at night. One night (I don’t remember) I asked my mom why I had to change my name when I said my prayers. Apparently I was saying, “Now I, Amy, down to sleep…”
My 2 year old daughter was playing with tools from a toy tool set, and started walking around and hitting things with the plastic hammer, saying “Ham! Ham! Ham!” each time she hit something. Finally we figured out that she interpreted “hammer” as something that “hams”!
I overheard my five year old daughter singing, “Make new friends, but keep the old ones. One is silver and the other’s mold.” When I tried to correct her (through stifled laughter) and explain that it was “gold”, she informed me that “That doesn’t make any sense, ’cause old stuff gets moldy!” Good point…
When I was small, I was very excited about going boating one day. I was very disappointed to find myself in a dusty church hall with cardboard booths and a bunch of adults standing in line to write on a small piece of paper and stick it in a box. Voting is not boating!
On the note of misinterpreting songs, when I was young i was convinced that the 3 kings were from places called ‘Orie’ and ‘Tar’…”We three kings of Orie and Tar…” Haha, I still laugh at my confusion. 🙂
As a young child, I thought to impeach someone meant to throw peaches at them until they were completely covered in them (a terrible waste of peaches), I also was sure that the signs indicating road work zones (begin road work/end road work)were protest signs. My best friend believed that stocks were cows, and she decided she wanted a brown one. lol!
Oh my goodness! THat made me LOL! SO cute!
LOL!!! 😀
OMG! LOL! SO cute!
ESOSEBALLY! I can totally hear it! LOL!
LOL! How cute! But yes, I’m sure disappointing for him, lol. 🙂
My little sister would always say, ‘i don’t want shampoop in my hair!’
Oh, thank you! Clearly I love your blog too 😉
HI, My daughter when she was 2 would point out VW beetles and say “funny car”. We would say “vw bettle” then she would say “lady bettle funny car”
This went on for the next 4 years with everyone calling the lady bettle funny cars from then on.
Lol! I bet your speech was really good, too!
Oh I remembered another one, better than anything my kids have said I think. A mum at school told me recently that she lost her temper with her 3 yr old daughter and instead of continuing to argue about who was in charge, told her ‘Meredith, this is MY dictatorship!’
She says Meredith looked at her and without missing a beat replied, ‘No Mummy, this is MY potatoship.’
lol. My bad. We like Kurt Nilsen’s version so it’s the only one we listen to. I did know that though, just forgot.
🙂 He sings Runaway by Del Shannon too, but get 99% of those words right lol.
I just wish I could catch him on video. He stops everytime I push the darn button. *headdesk*
aaaw! Soo cute!
THAT”S hysterical!
Just last week, my 2 and 1/2 year old asked, “Daddy, are you going to have a boy cheese and me and Mommy have a grill cheese?”
Yes! This is from when I was a child. When my mom would take us out with her to “run errands”, we would whine, “mommy, when are we going to see Aaron??!!” (our cousin, who lived 2500km away. I remember being strangely confused as to why my mom never said we were going to visit Aaron’s sister Lisa too, but didn’t put the pieces together.
Another one: when the Gulf War was happening in the 90s, I remember being very concerned and a bit confused why my mom wasn’t more concerned that there was a war happening so close to grandma’s house (she lived near Guelph, Ontario).
The funniest thing is that I knew in both cases that something didn’t make sense, but just went with the only interpretation that I understood.
Hilarious post. I csn’t wait to have kids to get to experience this kind of hilarity 🙂
Once, when I was picking up my then 3-year-old son from his grandma’s house, he was playing with a toy gun. I must have looked a little alarmed (it was his first toy gun, and I was a little peeved that grandma had bought it without asking me), so he quickly said, “Don’t worry Mommy, Grandma said that I could only shoot it at targets and Wal-Marts.” HA!
Love it! My daughter couldn’t say her brother’s name (Evan), so she called him Ah-Dah. I still call him that sometimes. And when Evan was little, he couldn’t say “donut” so he said “do-wah.” We still call them do-wahs.
The kids heard us talking about someone who “got fired”. How could we have been so careless? So, there was some trauma … but, on the bright side, their job performance improved.
My dad tells this story: When I was little, he was going to the hardware store and I was so excited to go with him. I was bugging him to death saying, “Daddy, when are we going?!” Finally after hearing it so much he said to me, “Now, just hold your britches.” He went about what he was working on with his back to me and realized I had been extra quiet for about 5 minutes. He turned around and I was standing there holding onto the legs of my pants!
That is precious!
My 3 y.o. was devastated when she learned that there would be no Barbies at the barbecue party. (Although technically, there would be barbies at an Australian one–still not the blonde-haired plastic bonanza she was envisioning, though).
Language issues are the best! (http://www.momintwocultures.com/2011/10/conversations-we-have-at-our-house.html)
Also, when I was little and someone would play “peep eyes” with me, I always assumed they were saying “pea pies.” I thought a pea pie sounded disgusting! I am ashamed to admit that I only realized it was actually “peep eyes” about 5 years ago. I am 35.
My 2 year old daughter and I make smoothies everyday after her nap with a stick blender. We name off the ingredients as we put them in – bananas, blueberries, yogurt, milk, etc. I always say, “Grrrrr” before I turn it on so the noise doesn’t scare her. One day I was pumping a bottle for my 5 month old before leaving. Older daughter whipped her head around when she heard the pump come on. She watched me for a bit then asked what was coming out. I told her it was milk for the baby. She walked away, came back a few moments later and said, “Mama making baby smoothie?”
I’ve got so many of these but my latest was when my just turned 8 year old (so grown up now) came into the kitchen to tell me he was looking at some jokes on a childrens website and felt uncomfortable. I praised him for coming to tell me and was secretly pleased at his online safety knowledge. I asked if the jokes were rude as I started to go and check and he said ‘Oh no, the jokes are fine but my brother’s on the seat so I have to stand and my legs are aching.’ -Hmm…who told him if you’re uncomfortable online , tell a parent?
love it, reminds me of when I told my son “don’t push my buttons” and he started to check his body out to find said buttons.
My son did something similar…he used to put his arms up and say “carryu? carryu?” So I’d say, “You want me to carry you?” And he’d say, “Yes! Carryu!” It was all one word/action in his mind!
Not a misunderstanding, but a funny thing my son said… He likes to throw things (mostly balls) down our stairs… When he was probably 2.5 he stood at the top of the stairs and threw balls down. Then he kicked one and I yelled at him (as we have a no kicking balls in the house rule) and he stopped what he was doing and said, “I’m not kicking – I’m throwing with my feet.” The look on his face and the tone in his voice still makes me laugh!!! 🙂
When our (now 13yo) daughter was 4, she learned “Go Tell it on the Mountain” at preschool around Christmastime. At her premiere performance in our living room for the grandparents she insisted (to the point of tears) that the last line of the song was “Go tell it on the mountain … that Jesus Christ is four!”
My nephew has adopted the phrase “I burp-a butt!” Whenever he farts. If you try to correct him, he will argue vehemently with you that he did NOT fart, but that he burped his butt.
There is a chain of convenience stores in the area where I grew up called “Country Fair.” Imagine my disappointment when my parents mentioned we would be stopping at the Country Fair and then we pulled up to a 7-11 type store.
My all time favorite was my now 7 year old asking as a 4 year old if she was “being have” instead of “behaving” (we had gone to a restaurant and talked about our expectations before we got in). SOOOO cute! That expression lasted for like 6 months. I never wanted to correct it.
Today, my 2.5 yr old son (who talks like he’s 4) loves to eat “hanga-boogers” = hamburgers and tells everyone that mommy works in a “hopsital”. Makes me heart smile. I wish they never grew up.
I had to laugh about the “voting/boating” misunderstanding because that happened to us as well last year when my daughter was three. I picked her up from school and said that I needed to go vote. She was saying something from the backseat that I couldn’t quite decipher but seemed very excited about going to vote. So as I’m voting, my daughter is talking about how she’s going to paddle – I’m still clueless at this point. After we get “I Voted” stickers and are heading back to the car, she becomes all upset and is crying and I can’t understand a word she is saying. Finally, she tells me that she wanted to vote too, so I explain that voting is something mommies and daddies do. She starts screaming that she wanted to paddle. Mind you we are still in the parking lot at the polling place which also happens to be a police station and tons of people are getting in and out of their cars. It finally dawns on me that she thought we were going boating and that she would get to paddle.
When I was young an Alanis Morriset song had the lyrics “it’s not fair to deny me the cross I bear that you gave to me” & I thought the exact same thing “cross-eyed bear” I always pictured her boyfriend taking back a stuffed animal he had given her. To this day I still sing it wrong on accident!
My little one was having issues with this on Halloween, too. I have more pictures of him trying to give his candy to the people answering the door to give HIM candy than any other type. He was also a little confused about why everyone had HIS pumpkin-the same $1 plastic one from Kmart.
My daughter went through a phase of insisting on wearing her winter coat backwards (i.e. with the zipper in the back). If you asked why, she would say that she wanted to be a turkey. My husband and I had no idea what she was talking about, but my daughter has a way about her that defies questioning. It was over a year later that the answer for why she was doing this finally dawned on me: it stemmed from a Sandra Boynton book (Blue Hat, Green Hat) where a turkey couldn’t figure out how to put his clothes on correctly and, you guessed it, he put his coat on backwards!
Okay so my daugher (2 years old) and my nephew (3 years old) are best of friends and have this kind of weird obsession with backhoes, trucks, anything big like that and moves stuff. Anyhoo, so we are driving one day and we pass by a transport, and my daughter shouts from the back seat ‘Mommy, Big Cock’ ahaha I was like OMG. What did you just say. Trying figure out what she is trying to say and I don’t really give her an acknowledging response so she continues to say this until finally I make the correlation that she was talking about the Transport, and acknowledged “Oh,, Big Truck.. yes very big TRUCK” ahahah
When I was little I thought you’d have a “froggy Christmas” not a foggy Christmas. I woke up one morning (not on Christmas) and my dad said it was foggy outside, and I got all excited expecting to look out the window and see Santa on a throne with two frogs jumping on either side of him. I still have that mental image burned in my head. I think I was only 3 or so but it’s a really strong memory!
Heehee.
When I was little, I remember my parents telling me we were all going to Wally World. I distinctly remembering being ridiculously excited, and wondering what to take. We usually went on long car trips, so I got in the car and settled back, ready to be in there for a while, wondering what kind of amazing rides were at Wally World.
.. Then we pulled up to the parking lot at Wal-Mart. Thanks a lot, guys. Talk about disappointment.
I remember when I was about three or four, my mom’s way of telling me to go play was to say, “Go chase a rabbit.” I took it literally and I remember a few long afternoons of looking around in the back yard for a rabbit to chase. The other day I told my 3-year-old daughter to go chase a rabbit and she looked at me with a skeptical look and said, “Mommy, there aren’t any rabbits to chase around here.” I guess she’s a little bit more with the program than I was at that age!
in reading class, back in fifth grade, we read the beginning of a story about bert and ernie. our homework assignment was to draw a conclusion about what we read. i took the instruction most literally and i drew my conclusion, stick figures and all. i remember the look on my teacher’s face when i turned she review it, she tried so hard not to crack up and pee her pants.
My 6 month old is too young for me to have these stories yet, but I can’t wait…here are mine though…
Mys sister thought “Onward Christian Soldiers marching as before,” was “Onward Christian Solderis marching out the door” – we changed it to marching out the window as well just for fun. Don’t get me started on her thinking suposedly was suposably well into her 20s (I just corrected this a couple of years ago!). Love this blog!
I have a cousin my age named Sharlene who is and always was very tiny. Sometime in elementary school, she had a school project where she had to write how tall she was. Most kids guessed their size. Sharlene took off her tiny shoe to measure, and she concluded that she was 10 FEET tall. And for years the other kids knew her as “Shaq.”
My 5yo tells me about things that happened “in the sun when I was boren”. (Yesterday when I was bored.)
We just had the same situation with my 6 year old about a month ago. We also went on a Ferry boat and I don’t remember exactly what he was saying, but he kept saying something about the Fairy and I was totally confused. I FINALLY realized we were talking different Ferry’s/ Fairy’s… 😉
That same day we took the kids hiking in the woods, which we’ve never really done before. Later he asked if we could go on a ‘bear hunt’ again. For some reason he calls hiking in the woods ‘a bear hunt’. So he asked his older brother, who hadn’t joined us that day if he would also like to go on a bear hunt with us, and of course his brother was like… Whaaaattt?? LOL…
The picture of that fairy boat is really funny. Your blog is just awesome.
My son is on the autism spectrum and takes everything very literally. One day, when he was about 5, I was playing Legos with him on the floor while dinner was in the oven. I got up and he said “Mama, where are you going?”. I told him “I’ll be right back. I’ve just gotta keep an eye on the pizza.” He totally freaked out! I think he thought I was gonna actually pluck my eyeball out and put it on the pizza. This was about the time we realized we needed to focus much more in speech therapy on teaching him about strange idioms people say.
My husband must have been the first one to mention Miami to our then 2 year old daughter because two years later it’s still ‘Daddy’s Ami.’. Correcting that one is surprisingly tricky. No, it’s MY Ami?!
My 3 year old nephew got upset with my Mom this summer when he heard her tell his Mom that she was going to take him to a kiddie pool that afternoon while babysitting him. He told her “Nana I not getting in no cat pool!” It took her a while to figure out that he was hearing kiddie as kitty. Once she explained that she meant a small swimming pool he was good to go. 🙂 But boy did he think that swimming with cats was a dumb idea!
My grandma told me once how my cousin (who was 3 at the time) had been running around the house singing, “We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new ear!”
Today I took my 16m son for a walk and he kept saying “uh oh.”it took me a while to figure out that it was because the leaves were falling to the ground
Awwwww! I just melted with cuteness.
Did you ever learn to dance? LOL
When my kids try to do something that has the potential to harm them I will sometimes tell them that I love them too much to let them do it…such as play with knives and such. I asked my 4 year old one day how much he loved me (thinking he would tell me this much with his arms held out) when he told me he loved me one much. Get it? Too much, one much? Clever little tike.
My husband was explaining that one theory as to why the dinosaurs went extinct was that a meteor hit the earth and created a huge dust cloud that made the earth too cold for the dinosaurs to live.
My son now things a huge “Meat Eater” dinosaur (with four fins) crashed into the earth and created a huge dust cloud that killed off the dinosaurs.
So sweet.
I was telling my friend about how my husband calls at bedtime to say good night to the little one if he’s working late. She had said “daddy I miss you” and as I went on to describe, my hubby said he “melted”. My little one then was confused, “daddy melted”?? Love that one 🙂
I remembered another. We always insist that our kids hold our hands in parking lots. My son, always a do-it-myself kind of kid, used to clasp his hands together and yell “No! I’ll hold my own hand!” Love that kid 🙂
When our older daughter was two, we flew to Seattle to visit friends and family. This was her first big trip, so we really sold her on it in the preceding weeks, hoping her excitement would ease long trip from the East Coast to the West Coast. “We’re going to Seattle!” was repeatedly daily for weeks.
The day after we arrived, and were walking out of Pike’s Market, she turned to me and we had this exchange:
kid: “But where is Addle?”
me: “Who is Addle?”
kid: “I thought we were going to ‘See Addle.'”
My son LOVES trains. Always has. One of his first three words was “Choo choo.” When he was two and I bought him an Elmo potty in hopes of getting him used to the idea of sitting on it, he asked what it was for. I told him I got it so we can “potty train.” He got all excited that there was a train involved… he was a bit less enthused when I explained what I meant.
I love your fairy boat! I want to ride on a fairy boat, too!! 🙂 Ferry boats? Nah… not quite so exciting.
My MIL remodeled her house and turned a room into ‘The Library’ she was very excited about this, made a big deal about she and the kids ‘retiring to the library’ a week later I said to the kids, ‘let’s go to the library’ we got there and my 3 yo stamped his foot and yelled, ‘where is gramma?!’ he was none to pleased.
My 10 year old is just getting the hang of that word, he calls it “hostipal”
!
That’s hilarious! And makes total sense too, why didn’t I think of that!!!
thanks Amber. She’s always in my thoughts. I hope that doesn’t sound weird…
I remember when the first Subway restaurant came to our small town and I got to go with my friend’s family. When we got to “subway” I was thoroughly confused when it there was no train and we ended up in a subshop. I was so confused by the process I ended up ording a pizza sub and when the lady asked what I wanted on the sub I thought I must say something! So needless to say, I ate my pizza sub loaded in mustard.. yuck!
My son is convinced that a “meat eating” dinosaur came flying from space and hit the earth, creating a dust cloud so large that it killed off all the dinosaurs. My husband has tried to explain that it was a Meteor, but my son is not convinced.
My son says “no I am’t”…this being the opposite of “yes I am”!. I always thought this was so clever of him, and adorable, so I never corrected him. Now he is 6 and in Grade 1 and I am working to undo the damage I have done to his grammar! Haha! And now his 4 year old sister says the same thing! Lol! Another favorite I haven’t had the heart to correct is “constructions”, meaning “instructions”, a lovely hybrid borne of using INstructions to build Lego CONstruction vehicles. And just one more for you: “chompsticks” … used to eat Sushi of course! Frankly, I think this makes much more sense than Chopsticks!! Who does any chopping with them? No one … But they are great for getting some chomping done! Yes, the English language has never been so enjoyable as when it is heard from the mouths of out babes!
We have an area of town named Sugarhouse. When I was little I was so excited when my dad asked if I wanted to go with him to some stores there. Images of edible gingerbread houses danced before my eyes. I was even a little afraid that a witch might try to catch and eat me like in a fairy tale. Much to my disappointment Sugarhouse was just a bunch of stores (clothing, computer, etc.)
When my now 19 year old cousin was 3 we asked him to say grace one night at a family dinner. He very seriously touched his forehead and said “in the name of the father” then moved to his chest saying “and the son” then one shoulder saying “nd the holy….” then he quickly touched his other shoulder and looked up in surprise exclaiming “hey guys….I got 2 holies!!!”
My husband was out in the garage and texted me to send one of my older sons out to help him. “Daddy requests your presence in the garage,” I said to my 8 year old. About 30 min later he came back in the house, looking very disappointed. He looked at me and exclaimed, “You said there would be presents in the garage!”
My dad told me, when I was about 3, that we were to travel to Miami. I was very upset, because I didn’t even know who his Ammy was!
My 3 year old calls “porcupines” “pokey pines”.
Four yrs ago, we were patiently waiting in our local Wholesale Club Deli line (yes, that means a long one). I let my kids (then ds8, ds6.5 & dd4) check out the meat in the case while I stood back watching and savoring some peace. A few minutes go by and ds6.5 comes running up to me, “Mama, **’s sells LION, come look!!” He then proceeds to enthusically pull me over to the case to show me………….yes, the pork loin!
LOVE that story and LOVE Crappy Pictures!
I have a daughter with autism who is almost 8. When she is taking a bath, she asks her brother to leave so she can have “private see”. When my son, who is now 6, was a preschooler he used to make up names for things that he didn’t know the right word for based on what he saw them do. He used to call the faucet a “water fall” because the water fell out of it. And in the interest of giving each of my kids equal treatment, my 14 month old currently calls every animal he sees “kitty”, including that little caterpillar on wheels that rolls out at the beginning of Baby Einstein videos.
I love those. My younger daughter refers to accidents as “askidents”.
I shouted to my daughter to ‘come and see how pretty the sky is’, she came over to the window and looked out, puzzled, she asked “which guy?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or be troubled that my six year old thought it was normal for me to be checking out guys with her!!
My 3 yr old always comes in and says “Its time for waking up” 🙂
When we were getting ready to go on a grandparent-organized cruise of the Caribbean, we were prepping my 2-year-old son with all the details about how we would fly to Miami and then get on a big ship etc. In asking questions about the plans, he said, Mommy how big will the boat be when we get to Your Ami?
My 4 year old son informed me that I was Bat Girl and that Daddy was Gayman! My husband and I chuckled and then tried to find out what Daddy’s super powers were, to which he replied ” you’re in charge of the games Dad!” Arhhh, Game Man!
Its not so much a language misunderstanding than a total different view of how the world works. We drove past a petrol station which had closed recently. My 5 yr old asked ‘why did they close mum?’, my response was something about money to which he responded ‘I think they closed because they were making too much money. They didn’t know where to put it all, their house was full and they had nowhere to sleep so they decided to close it and make it into a sandwich shop’
In the mall today my son wanted to go on the “elephant” ( while we do live in South Africa we don’t have those in the malls 🙂 ) Only once we were out of the store did i realize he meant the elevator!
My three year old calls himself “you” and refers to his own things as “yours.” It confuses everyone who isn’t used to talking to him… I think it’s adorable and hilarious!
My younger brother’s name is Aaron and he used to have the same confusion! My mom said one day, when he was about 4/5 years old, that we were going to be running errands, and he asked why he had to run and couldn’t go in the car with us!!
One weekend we told my 2-year-old that we were going hiking. She started fussing and saying “No hiking, don’t want hiking” and so forth. When we eventually got to the trail and said we were going hiking, she looks at me and says “Argh!” I suddenly realized she was remembering a Backyardigans episode and thought we were going to be Vikings.
A little before that time we went to visit my parents. My Dad told the 2-year-old we were going to go down to the beach. She gave him a confused look and then looked at me and signed “peach”. She wound up very pleased with the beach, and continued to ask to go back with the “peach” sign.
Our older daughter (now 3.5) says, “I wanna hold you” when she wants someone to hold/carry her. She started saying it this way when she was just starting to talk, and I swear I will cry the day she says it the correct way.
A more recent misunderstanding was just a week ago while we were trick-or-treating. She was walking especially slowly, so I said, “Come on, pick up the pace.” She immediately stopped walked and began scanning the ground for “the pace” she could pick it up.
I was really disappointed when I was younger because my teacher told me she was taking us all to the lavatory. I expected to go to a cool LABORATORY with beakers and test tubes and cool experiments.
Jenna
callherhappy.com
In kindergarten, I drew a picture of a house and colored the ground pale green. I told my teacher I picked that color instead of dark green because the people in that house “didn’t plant any crabgrass.” She told me people usually didn’t want crabgrass, and I told her I had heard my mom say to my dad, “If it weren’t for the crabgrass, our lawn wouldn’t be green.”
My nephew was relieved that he got to wear a tuxedo and not a bear suit to his Grandma’s wedding since he was the “Ring Bear”!
i was so sure he meant mosquito. haha
When I was a little girl maybe 4 or so I went to church and they played the organ and sang old timey hymns that I didn’t understand the words to.
Well, one song in particular I didn’t understand what people were singing and I couldn’t read the hymnals. I SWORE they were singing “I climby vine”. I thought for sure the song was about Super Mario 2 where they climb up the vines. haha. I would get all loud singing it proudly during church “I climby vine!!!”
aww thats sweet. smart kid.
When my daughter was 6 she used to call elevators, alligators, so when we were going to use one, we were going to ride the ‘alligator’!
I remember as a preschooler being really disappointed by plant nurseries and nursery school, because I’d seen a baby animal nursery and a baby human nursery, and it just wasn’t the same…
When my youngest was newborn, she could not stay awake to nurse, due to the epidural anesthesia, so we rubbed her feet to keep her awake to eat. So I gave my son, then 2 1/2, the job of rubbing the bottoms of his baby sister’s feet while she nursed. “Rub her feet!” I told him.
I later heard him proudly telling an adult friend in the Elmer Fudd accent he had at the time (w’s in place of r’s), “This is my baby sister. She has rubber feet.”
I almost woke up my little boy giggling at that! That’s hilarious! 🙂
Similar story. We have two malls, one with an elevator and one is a strip mall. It’s been years but we still refer to the big mall as the “alligator” mall because that’s how my son knew the difference. One had an elevator (alligator) and one didn’t.
My oldest used to always say “no bus adobe” and it took us forever to realize he was saying “no buts about it”. 19 years later and we still say it!
sooooooooo adorable
Told DD that we were off to Wales to see some friends. Half-way there, we discover that she thinks were off to see some whales!
We were doing our routine clean up before lunch, in our playroom. I was trying to teach my little ones the importance of putting things back where they belong.
I used to hand my kids toys and ask “where does this go?” My then, 2 year old son used to reply “BONG over here” or “BONG right there” and point with his little finger. I loved that.. 🙂
When i was 4 or 5 my mom was taking me to a baby shower for a friend. I was really disappointed when she explained that I wouldn’t be able to help give the baby the bath/shower.
We live in Utah and were going to Idaho for a family function (5 hour drive) we drove past an “I Hop restaurant” 5 min into the drive and my 4 year old points and shouts “Look theirs I-da-hop!” lets just say it was a long disappointing ride to Idaho 🙂
My older daughter used to say “poo” instead of “who”…this was hysterical in many sentences; but my favorite was when she would ask – “Poo did that? Poo’s there?”
Another family favorite was (with Todd instead of God)- “Oh my Todd! What is going on with these toots?! I keep tooting and it’s making my butt nervous!” 🙂
We were having a mouse problem and when my husband caught one on the trap he said soemthing to the effect of he killed a mouse and our oldest daughter started crying hysterically. She was all upset because “Daddy killed Mickey Mouse!” (She was 3 at the time) Too cute!!
That’s hilarious! I can remember any misunderstandings at the moment, but I literally laughed out loud at yours.
I have younger sister (14 years) and when she was about 3 she was REALLY into the Barney movies. At the end of the video they always had info to join Barney’s Fan Club. It said “Get your parents permission and send your name and address to 12345 Barney Place”(or something like that)I remember she looked at me with those big blue eyes and and said “Oh, which dress do you think we should send him? My red one or the one with the polka dots?”
To this day I wonder what her little mind was thinking…why that big purple dinosaur wanted one of HER dresses? 🙂
hahaha!
My little lad, when he saw a picture from my wedding day, said: “That was when you got Worried, wasn’t it mummy?” Bless him!
Last week I told my kids that we needed to go to Kohls later that afternoon, and my son was unusually excited about this shopping trip. When we pulled into the department store parking lot he yelled “no, I want to see Cole and Maxy!” He thought we were going to his friends house!
My daughter loves the Christmas and especially that really old ‘Rudolph’ stop-action musical. The best part of the night for us is when she’s singing along with the ‘Rudolph’ song and sings the line ‘and they shouted out with gleaves’!! We asked her what gleaves meant and she said it means the decorations on the leaves of the trees. Out of the mouths of babes.
This is my friend Rosalie’s story but I love it so I’m passing it on.
Rosalie was going out for the night and would be home after her daughter was asleep. Before she left, Rosalie said to her daughter, “When I get home, I’ll come into your room and kiss you lightly.”
Her daughter said, “No, Mom, kiss me darkly.”
🙂
My comment has disappeared :/
I haven’t removed any comments. You have to click “show more comments” about 3-4 times now to get to the end of the comment thread.
LOL, worried!
My son has Cerebral Palsy and his speech is affected. He says “hosipitle,” “Colowamo” (Colorado) and a bunch of other cute things My dd couldn’t pronounce her “f” for the longest, so she would say she wanted “coppee” or “Decap” when we went to the coffee shop.
When I was in second grade my class had a Guinea Pig that we all got turns taking home on the weekends. My little brother (not yet in school) was even more excited than I was about the fact that the Guinea Pigs were coming to OUR house that weekend. It was all he could talk about. When I got home that Friday I was all proud to show them to him. He ran up all excited, took one look at the Guinea Pigs and exclaimed “THOSE AREN’T GUINEA PIGS! THOSE ARE GUINEA RATS!” and stomped off. He wouldn’t have anything to do with them all weekend.
We were going to the Dogwood Festival (living in NC we have a lot of Dogwood trees, and in the spring when they bloom there is the Dogwood Festival, which is basically just a street filled with vendors selling local stuff and some food, etc)…Anyways; we get there and my 3 1/2 yr old son keeps looking around and around as we are walking from booth to booth….Finally he says:”Mommy, where are all the dogs at?” and I’m like: “Huh? Dogs?? What dogs??” and he says: “Mommy, you said we were going to the Doggie Festival!!” LOL….Doogie/Dogwood, I ended up taking him to Petsmart afterwards so he could see all the dogs for adoption there….(Thank you Petsmart!!)
OMG! Hilarious:-)
You can imagine the disappointment.
When I was about 7 my mom told us we were going to a Game Park. I couldn’t wait – a whole park filled with games to play. It sounded incredible. To my deep and utter disappointment, it was a place to look at animals. I was glum the entire day.
heh heh So cute! My son (3), asked me to get his “robon” out of the bathroom. It took me a second to realize that he was asking for his robe. 😉 After his bath, we always put his robe on!
That is so adorable
My all time hands-down favorite little kid language mistake: My friend, her husband, and 4 year old were watching tv. Suddenly they heard a loud BANG! and the power went out. The husband said, “Oh, I think a transformer just blew!” The next thing they knew the 4 year old was muttering something in fear. They got a little closer and realized she thought Transformers were outside fighting. The best.
lol like when I was a kid and I had to go to a “slide” presentation. It sounded WAY more exciting in my head than what I actually ended up sitting through.
My 3 yr old, believe it or not, has already addressed with me the issue of “where babies come from”. I told her when a boy and girl are in love and get married, then they can have a baby and start a family (yes..I guess i am old fashioned). So the other day we’re playing house, we get married, as usual- I am the groom- and then immediately she lays on the bed to have her baby. After the baby “pops out” she says “Okay, let’s get married again so we can have another baby. So she thinks it’s the wedding that makes the baby 🙂 Cute.
Hmmmm…that’s a bit pervy. Barney wanting little girl’s dresses…
My son isn’t old enough to talk yet, but from my own childhood, I remember my mother telling me we were going to Goody’s *the clothing store* and I was highly disappointed that they sold clothes and not cookies.
We took the Ferry from MI to WI when I was little and my mom had told me I was going to be able to meet the capin of the ferry taking us across… Yep I was under the same impression as your child was. I was so happy I was going to meet a FAIRY captin LOL.
My daughter said she didn’t want to eat Thai food because she was a girl and only boys wear ties!
When I was little, my parents were taking me to a public pool that also had a “kiddie pool” which I apparently took to mean that I would be swimming with cats–I heard “kitty pool”. I also thought there were children in water towers. We would drive by one and my mom would say, “What’s in there?” and I would happily reply “Children!”
My 2.5 year old loudly proclaims “D N!” at the end of stories. And a few weeks ago I wanted to get some craft supplies so told him we were going to quickly go to Michael’s to buy paint before heading home. He was so happy, it should have occurred to me…when we got to the store he looked very confused and was like, “Uncle Michael’s store?” My brother Michael lives in Germany and has met Jack 3 times, but I guess he made a big impression!
i read years ago about a mother who pointed to a photo of Princess Di in a magazine and told her daughter, “that’s Diana, the Princess of Wales,” to which the little girl looks at her quizzically and said, “I don’t remember seeing her at Sea World.”
My parents were taking me to a “Cat Show.” I expected dancing cats. There were just cat breeders sitting around with their cats in cages. It was horrid.
The other day, my friend’s 2-year-old said she wanted some milk. Her dad said, “OK, but it’s gonna cost ya!” (implying he wanted a kiss first.) She looked confused and then coughed a couple times. He said, “No, COST, not COUGH!”
I don’t know if it’s one of those, “You had to be there” kind of situations, but I thought it was so stinkin adorable! 🙂
My mother told me I was going to the doctor to get a physical. As we were leaving, I said, “When do I get my physical?” She replied, “You just had it!” I, of course, having not seen anything remotely resembling a frozen treat, insisted, “No I didn’t!” When she finally figured out what I’d been expecting, she laughed, and of course, bought me a fudgesical. 😀
After eating a snack, I told my son not to get down and touch anything because he was sticky. Reply: “No I’m not.” Of course he was, so I thought he was just being obstinate. Turns out, he had a perfectly logical explanation to back up his side of the argument: “I’m not sticky. I haven’t played with any sticks today.” game. set. match.
Tonight I took my 2 year old for a blizzard at Dairy Queen. On the way over, I asked him what kind of toppings he would like in his blizzard. I started to give him choices. ” you can have reeces peanut butter cup, Kit Kat, M&Ms, oreos…” and with out missing a beat he informs me “I want kitty cat ice cream momma” 🙂 I’m still laughing over it.
I was at a wedding once where the ring bearer walked down the aisle turning towards the guests and roaring. He was very serious the whole way down the aisle. After the ceremony when asked why he was roaring, he very plainly (with a look of “duh” on his face) said, “I’m the Ring BEAR”! Haha. Awesome.
When I was about 4ish and my brother 3ish, I went to go take some photos, some with my grandma. These are still as far as I know called “glamour shots”
So I get back from my mini shoot lol and my brother asks me if they hurt. I probably punched him.
When my nephew was three years old he asked if he could have some cat shoes. Repeatedly. Owning a cat at the time, we wracked our brains about where he came up with the idea she had shoes somewhere. After much back and forth I finally asked him to show me where the cat shoes were. He took my hand and led me to the kitchen pantry, where he promptly grabbed a can of… cashews.
I just had a baby and the first time I was nursing him I told my 3 year old that I was feeding his baby brother. He became very serious and concerned for me, saying he didn’t want Sonny to eat my boobs!
He also calls his piggy banks Penny Banks. Love that 🙂