KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS!

Given that I had so much fun writing the two kids in my March release, Second Chance Dad, I thought it might be fun to share a couple stories about raising my two boys. I’m happy to report that they are both now grown and still living thanks to my strong willpower in not killing them.

My youngest son, Justin, was about four when I was trying to teach him and his brother to pick up after themselves. I had held strong for an hour that they could not go out and play until the Legos were picked up. They were not happy.
Justin procrastinated for awhile then strolled into the kitchen where I was cooking and looked up at me with those big blue eyes and said, “You’re getting pretty old.”

I shook my head and said, “No, not really.” I was twenty-eight.

My sweet little blond-headed angel flashed those dimples and continued, “But you’re going to die pretty soon, right?”

In spite of the above story, my youngest son was the sweetest, most loving kid. His older brother on the other hand...When my oldest son, Jeremy, came out of the womb--and I’m not stretching the truth here--they laid that baby on my chest, he arched his five pound, premature little body, looked at me with that steely blue gaze and pretty much said, “I’m not sure who you are, but just so you know, I’m in charge.”

Jeremy was ADD and able to out-logic me by the time he was two. I was on a first name basis with his kindergarten teacher just trying to get him through school. After a particularly bad day, I was trying to talk to him about his unacceptable behavior. He asked how I knew what he’d done. Not wanting him to realize that his teacher was snitching on him, I answered, “A little birdie told me.”

A week later he finally learned to ride a bike. We lived in an extraordinarily kid friendly, small town neighborhood where all the moms watched out for the kids. Jeremy was out front riding his bike with very strict boundaries set that he could only ride as far as one house down each direction. There were kids everywhere as usual, but when I went outside after a few minutes to check on them, his little blue bike was in the middle of the street, but no Jeremy.

The other kids looked around and said he’d just been there. Needless to say, I was frantic. I felt like the worst mother ever. Myself, the other moms and a couple teens that were in the crowd started searching. He was shortly located a couple blocks over where he’d followed a friend he knew from school. He was only missing a few minutes, but all moms surely know the terror that went through my mind. When I got him home, I tried to explain how frantic I was and that he couldn’t just take off like that. Mommy didn’t know where he was and I was afraid.

He looked at me with those penetrating blue eyes and calmly asked, “So why didn’t you just ask that little bird?”

Any other cute kid stories out there?