Last night, I was reading a really funny story about Steph the Bookworm‘s son Caleb, which I’ll let her tell on her own blog if she chooses. It made me flash back to when my boys were little, and all the silly things they used to say without realizing:

From the song “Instanbul (Not Constantinople),” Laurence would sing, “Even ol’ New York was once New Hamster Dance.”

There was this mound of dirt at the local park when my family lived in Cuba City, WI, and many kids used this mound as a mountain or volcano. We used to call it the volcano, and once, when we told Morrigan we were taking him there, he said, “I don’t want to go to the small-cano! I want to go to the BIG-cano!”

We used to buy cheap-brand country spread, and Ambrose – who spoke late and had a difficult time with sounds for a very long time – told us that the spread was “a koosh ball in the water.” We thought we were misunderstanding him, but eventually he pointed to the photo on the spread and repeated it. Sure enough: koosh ball in the water, to his eyes.

Ambrose was also the one who used to tell people we were growing “Hallelujahs” in our yard. They were calla lilies.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to when Laurence began speaking. He was 13 months old and had been saying random individual words for months (he was very early!), when he popped out with a fully constructed and clearly spoken sentence: “This is a cracker.” He punctuated each syllable with a pat on the place where he wanted us to put some crackers down for a snack. He then proceeded to say “this is a cracker” all the time, only he shortened it to “this is crack” and later just to “crack?” while pointing to various things. So, you know, this got repeated at the doctor’s office, at church, in the grocery store… 😀

Also Laurence, looking at an Apples to Apples card when he was a little earlier: “Who the heck is Saint Bernard?”

For years, Morrigan refused to use the word pilot, instead choosing to use “airplane driver.” He even went as an “airplane driver” at Halloween one year.

Laurence yelling, “No I amn’t!” as his own play on contractions – which I’ve since discovered is actually in use in Ireland, though definitely not in the US.

And one of my favorites, before I leave this for the day. Back in fall 2008, we took our boys out for ice cream and the song “No Rain” came on overhead. When we got home, I decided to show the boys the music video. Laurence didn’t really pay attention. Morrigan kept repeating a few questions over and over without giving anyone a chance to answer. (“Why is she running away? Where is she going?”) But it was really Ambrose’s reaction that I remember clearly. At one point, there’s a close-up of the little bee-girl twirling, and as that came up, Ambrose spoke up spontaneously: “She’s beautiful!” Remember that Ambrose hardly ever spoke, and at this time, he was only six years old. I remember thinking just how lovely it was to be young and free of the trappings of society’s idea of “beautiful.”

There have been many others over the years, but those are the ones that popped to mind this morning. Every day, I look back on my facebook memories, and I’m glad that at one point I started keeping record of all the fun and interesting things my boys said. I’m glad that before then, I had a few years of personal blogging where I kept a record of family stuff, including this sort of thing. Now if only I had some for the years between Morrigan’s birth and when I started said blog in 2008…sigh. I have to rely solely on memory for that!