Growing funny children

I've written about precious moments with my children in past blogs, but I thought I’d share some more. I hope you find a reason to laugh.

My oldest daughter had a gift for interpreting facts .  She would make random statements that were definitely interesting.

One Sunday after church she asked a very strange question. Out of the blue she asked, “Mom, what’s a doo de pen?” I had no idea what she was talking about. Then she started singing a song from church, “In Him we doo de pen.”  It was one of her favorite songs. There was a gentleman that sang this song regularly and she called him “the doo de pen man.” Suddenly I realized what she was trying to say.  The song was in Him we "do depend!” Never looked at that song the same way again.

When she was just a baby we drove from Oklahoma to North Carolina. On the way she would get fussy.  This was before car seats were required. I would  put her in the front seat (don't judge me) I would have her look out of the window and I would say, “green trees! “ For some reason it worked every time she was immediately fascinated and stopped fussing. It was a very long trip, but green trees were everywhere so she was satisfied.

Many, many years later she was riding through the city with some friends of ours. She was still very young.  This city was famous for building roads around graveyards. You could be in the middle of any street or even in the side of the freeway and right in the center was a graveyard. This was also during the time when people would mark the place of a death of a loved one by placing a cross at the site.

So, as she and this family were driving through town she blurts out. “That must have even Big van!” She was looking at a random gravesite and thought that all those people had died at the same time in a horrific crash!

Children are magicians! My youngest daughter had a flair for numbers. I tried to homeschool my oldest daughter. REALLY BAD IDEA! Kudos to those who can do it. Nope, not for me. She was way smarter than I was....not kidding.  But my youngest daughter got the advantage of listening to me teaching her older sister. One day while driving down the road (do you notice that a lot of things happened when we were driving down the road? Me too?)

Anyway, I asked my oldest daughter who was about five...what is 10 x 10? Before I could get the words out of my mouth my 3 1/2 year old daughter shouts "100!!!"" and there we have it friends. Her favorite game was for me to make up math problems. Yep, unfortunately for her, I was not really good at math, but hey, I tried. Genius number two.

Then came genius number three!
My son has always been like a sponge when it came to information.  I knew he would be an “outside” of the box “ thinker when he was just a child. Some of my first evidence was when we were driving in the car.  He started making this sound, randomly. “Whoosh “. He was too young to talk so it was left to our imagination to figure out what he was doing. We were stumped. He kept doing it every time we got in the car.

One day I heard a car pass us on the freeway. My son said, “ whoosh “. The puzzle was solved. All that time he was mimicking the sounds of passing cars. What?

It gets better. One day he was taking a nap. Still young enough to be in diapers. It was awfully quiet in his room.  Usually he let me know he was awake by jumping up and down in his crib. I’d hear a lot of squeaking and knew he was awake. This time it was way too quiet. Went to check on him and somehow he’d gotten a hold of a diaper and the box of wipes. He had exceeded the weight limit of his diaper and wanted to be changed.  So, he took off his diaper, smeared the mess all over the room and tried to put on a clean diaper. He made a huge and smelly mess, but hey now I have a story to tell.

The genius continued. He started memorizing random things.  . One day he shouted out , “ stop messing with my mind!” I don’t know what the product was but I laughed so hard that I almost couldn’t stop.  I'm not sure what that commercial was selling but he would randomly repeat the entire commercial while in the bathroom. I wonder if “ stop messing with my mind.”

His favorite TV shows included “ The Price is Right”,” Wheel of Fortune”and any basketball game .  At one point he knew the names of every team, where they were located, what their capital cities were and could name some of the players.  This was before kindergarten.

So, there you have it! Three genius children. They are fully grown now and are way too far away from me, but I often hear their laughter or see their faces when I drive down the road or I hear a child repeat the lyrics wrong to a song. I love them with all of my heart. They always made me smile, they still do. Thanks kids! You know who you are!