Oh, this one is embarrassing. We were at an aquarium a few days ago and a really lovely German gentleman, who I understood to be a tourist, saw how enthused my son was to observe a tank of lobsters. He began explaining to DS about how lobsters store and lay eggs, in quite some detail and very gently.

DS noticed his accent-- lobster sounded more like "lobsta". Clearly thinking this gentleman's information was of dubious quality, DS screwed up his face and said in such a contemptuous tone, "it's not called a lobSTA, it's a lobSTER!"

Thankfully the gentleman took it in stride, but I was a bit mortified and wanted to crawl under the lobster's rock. We had a little discussion about how there are many languages, how people have accents when they are speaking in another language, and how it's courteous to overlook perceived mispronunciation by foreigners.

It felt like that episode of the Simpsons with Freddy Quimby and the chowderr/chowda pronunciation debacle.

Our DD3.1 always cracks us up with the way she phrases things.

This morning, instead of coming into our room and saying "it's morning!" or "wake up!" she says, "Hey, Mom and Dad--I believe it's morning. You should probably get out of bed soon."

Instead of asking "Can I see the pictures of the snow?" She says, "Hey, Dad--I was wondering if I could see the pictures you took of the snow yesterday."

Maybe it's not that exciting, and part of it might be the delivery, but she always sounds like this grown up talking in a toddler voice.

This morning she also surprised us by preparing us breakfast. She had set the table with bowls and spoons and poured cereal for each of us.

My 3.5 ds always says "it's good morning time" when he is ready for us to open his door. It's so cute!

Love how they say things when they're little:)

A few funny statements:
Dd4 joins her dad in his basement den and says," dad, you are like a potato. You spend so much time under the ground!"
A few days ago, she declared that 2013 was the worst year ever. When asked the reason, she said," well spring was too windy, summer was too rainy, fall was too dull and winter was too cold with not enough snow. Not the best year!"
She added that it is sad that the year begins and ends with winter.

We had a funny mispronunciation yesterday.

DS6 was talking about a dog being a descendant of a wolf.

"Dogs are like the domesticated virgins of wolves"

DD: The instructions specifically state that for each slide I have to use a picture of a DIFFERENT room in my house. At least ten slides.

{pauses}


Me: I think that because of our open floorplan we technically only have nine ACTUAL rooms in our house...


DD:

Low SES = low GPA. I think I'm beginning to see why...



Man, is she funny sometimes.

Geez, she'd be in trouble at our place, HK. We live in a loft. So other than the bedrooms, which are enclosed, everything is just open space-- that makes 3 rooms for 30%.

She's currently creating an... alternative assignment-- which, by the way, students were encouraged to do--

only I think that her version probably won't require a Robin Leach voice-over. She's using different photos of dumpsters for every slide. :evil:

Ha! This is great!

Not-quite 4yr old comes in to me and asks "Mum can I draw in this book?", I note that it's a colouring book that may not be hers but is not precious and say "Sure."

She wanders off to the other room where I hear her sit down at the table and then say to her older sister (who is playing minecraft) "Look what I've got!"...."Firstname! You're supposed to say 'You can't have that!'....In a BAD way!"

Deliberate, premeditated negative attention seeking to get her sister away from minecraft... We have a budding manipulator on our hands. Which we have known for a long time but this was particularly funny from the other room. Her sister, a far more subtle creature, just wandered in to us and had a cuddle...