The other night, I took a break from hacking at my keyboard to Skype with my two-year-old nephew. Mostly, we made faces at each other and blew kisses and talked about which animal says what. A bat, by the way, says “flap, flap.” Naturally. Better yet, a bunny says, “rabbit.”
Like I said, he’s two. He’ll get there.
“Ask him what a cowboy says,” my sister prodded as she wrastled my six-month-old niece into her bath towel.
“Okay! Owen? What does a cowboy say?”
“Yee haw!”
I clapped. He clapped, too – proud of his aging auntie for totally getting it that everything he does is brilliant and delightful.
“What does a pirate say?” I asked, again following my sister’s lead.
“Arrrrrrgh!”
You have no idea how entertaining that was for me – almost as good as the time we programmed – er, asked - him to repeat lines from Goonies. “Sloth love Chunk!” Priceless.
“Try robot now,” she said. “It’s hilarious.”
I did. In response, Owen was quiet. I tried again.
“Owen, what does the robot say?”
His answer was quiet at first, a little uncertain. I missed it completely. After some motherly encouragement, he piped up in a perfectly robotic soprano,
“Kill the humans.”
Oh, man. If this is how it’s going to be, I can’t wait for motherhood. I’m going to be so evil good at it.
P.S. Did you know you can subscribe to This Fish Features RSS? You can! And when you do, then you will know when there’s hot, fresh-from-the-oven content (which I hope will be weekly, at a minimum), including Book Club announcements.
I LOVE the robot one!!
That is freakin’ cute! Glad that you and your nephew are so compatible!
Too funny! If you ask my two year old what a bunny says she’ll say “hop hop”.
Oh, you have no idea what’s coming. Next time, ask him what ET says…
Cute! In our house, the bunny says ‘boinga boinga’.
oh girl…2s ahhhhMAZing but the sarcastic fives are so much better! Because they don’t really know when you are being sarcastic so they flip on the sarcasm like you are the dumbest thing in the world and they are the smartest…..Yeah, not so good when the teacher calls but still funny
This is awesome. I wholeheartedly agree with your sentence “if this is how motherhood will be.”
In our house the bunny says (wiggle nose with finger). And this is what I tell every first-time pregnant woman I know: I don’t want to discount the hard work that goes into parenting, because Lord knows it can be tough. But it’s also really, really fun and sometimes downright hilarious.
I am so happy you relaunched the blog. I’ve read your blog for years and, aside from your amazing wit, one of the things I appreciate the most is that you don’t overdo it with too many fancy graphics and distractions. It’s more down-to-earth. Love it.
So cute!!!!
wait till you get to feed him bits of lemon! my mom caught me doing this when my daughter was a year old… it was hilarious her whole body shuddered…and that face! my mom yelled when she walked in on me doing it, but my Barbara kept reaching for them… she still loves lemons.. (she’s grown now, so you see how these memories stay with you)
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know a lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do with some pics to drive the message home a little bit, but instead of that, this is fantastic blog. A great read. I will definitely be back.