Little Kids Are Awesome

I interact with little kids quite a bit, mostly because of the whole daycare thing. When they're younger, I spend a lot of time trying to make sure they don't hurt themselves, or doing things like teaching them to walk. But once they learn to talk and gain control over their basic motor functions, that's when the real magic happens.

Now, before I start getting flamed, I'm not trying to make fun of the munchkins. I talk to them, and they respond. I watch them, and they act on their emotions. It's just that they're little, so their conceptions of the world are off, or they mis-speak. Either way, the results are often hilarious. For example:

• Kid: "I want to play with Sam"
  Mom: "Sam's not here, he's at work. Do you know what he does at work?"
  Kid: "Eat noodles"
  
  I have no idea where that came from, but I apparently have an awesome food/taste-testing job that I don't know about.
  
• Kid's mom: "Hey [kid], come here"
  Kid: "Not now, I'm busy"
  Kid's mom: "What?"
  Kid: "I'm busy"
  
  Mind you, this little girl was two years old at the time, and happened to be playing with a tea set at the time. Apparently one of the two parents said that in front of the kid, and the kid picked it up. Needless to say, the mom was not amused.
  
• (kid does something mischievous)
  Mom: "hijo de tu madre ... "
  Kid: "tu madre!"
  
  For the non-Spanish speakers, the first one is roughly equivalent to saying "son of a ... " If you really wanted to swear, you'd switch up the last two words. As it is, it literally means "son of your mother," so it doesn't mean anything bad.
  The kid's response, though, means "your mom!" He was just parroting what he heard, but by leaving off the first two (harder-to-say) words, it became hilarious.
  
• (My coworker plays a voice mail she got out loud)
  "Mooom. My older sister was being mean! You need to come home and hit her. Right now."
  
  Man, that kid's going to be a handful. Ordering his mom around to get some payback? I'm half-picturing him ordering a hit from a back room.
  
• Mom: "[Kid], you need to take you medicine"
  (The kid shakes head vigorously & covers mouth with both hands)
  Mom: "C'mon, you know you have to"
  (still covering mouth with one hand and shaking his head vigorously, he uses the other hand to point at the kid next to him, in an attempt to divert the medicine)
  
  It's misguided, but that's sheer genius. How many of you have actually tried to pawn off medicine-taking on someone else? Or even thought of that as a course of action? That kid's going places, I tell you.
  
• Me: "Cool, a school bus. You know what color it is?"
  Kid: "Red"
  Me: "What? That's not red, that's yellow. Have you ever seen a red school bus before?"
  Kid: "Yeah, all the time."
  Me: "Oh yeah? Where?"
  Kid: "In my backyard"
  
  I'll give him credit for creativity. The lying, not so much.
  
• Kid: "I want my osito. Sam, can you help me find it?" ("osito" literally means "little bear," she wanted her teddy bear)
  Me: "Sure, what color is it?"
  Kid: "Blue"
  (I spend ten minutes hunting for a blue bear, but come up empty. Hoping to mollify her, I grab a white one)
  Me: "I couldn't find your osito, but I got this one for you instead ..."
  Kid: "Osito!"
  Me: " ... um, let me teach you about the colors"
  
  Kids can sometimes learn the words for colors a lot faster than they learn to distinguish said colors from each other, apparently.
  
• (I'm asleep, and the kid starts banging on the door to my bedroom. After a few minutes, I get up and walk outside)
  Me: "Good morning"
  Kid: "Good morning! I was making noise!"
  Me: "..."
  
  I was either too groggy or too amused to do the whole "yeah, but you probably shouldn't do that when other people are sleeping" thing. To this day, I'm not sure which of the two it was.
  
• (I walk in to a room to see the contents of a drawer have been spilled)
  Me: "Hey, what happened here?"
  Kid: "Mess!"
  Me: "Yup, it's a mess. Who's going to help clean up?"
  Kid: "Tia!" (that's what he calls my mom)
  
  This was one of the ones where I had to check my chuckle. You gotta correct 'em when they start being selfish like that, and laughing doesn't help convey the message that their actions aren't good.

All in all, the kids add to the fun around here.