Category Archives: kids say the darndest things

Do bears poop in the woods?

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Whenever Tony wants to answer “yes” to an obvious question, he always retorts with  “Do bears poop in the woods?”

Yes, bears poop in the woods.  But not today.

A friend of mine (and neighbour) had told me that she had found bear poop in her yard a few days ago.  Since we live in an area close to the river, it is not uncommon for wildlife to muck about our yards.  She had a bear living in her yard last summer and it had to be trapped and relocated.  She was not impressed with a new bear friend moving in.

We live in a col de sac, up the road from my friend (who lives on a river-front lot).  We have never had much more than deer roam our yard and decimate our shrubs out front. Today, however, I would have gladly taken the deer.

While making supper, I hear Sashimi call out: ” Mommy!  There’s a bear in our yard!”

Incredulous, I say “Are you SURE? No, there can’t be.”

I looked out the window, saw nothing, then ran outside to check it out.  Smart, I know. Sashimi and Keesadilla both screeched at me “GET BACK IN THE HOUSE!!  THERE’S A BEAR OUTSIDE!” but I figured it was probably just a big dog or something.  I scoped out our yard, then walked to the end of the driveway to see if I could see anything. Then I heard something clanging on a chain-link fence.  I looked over to a neighbour’s house, one yard between us, and a bear popped up and looked at me.  HOLY CRAP IT’S A BEAR!!  And I a pretty sure the bear though “HOLY CRAP IT’S A HUMAN!” because we both bolted a lightening speed.  He scampered back under a bush and resumed clanging on the fence.  I dashed into the house and cried “You were RIGHT! It IS a bear!” Then sat down and hyperventilated a little bit before resuming making supper, which was probably burning on the BBQ by then.

Me: Well, I have to go finish bbq-ing supper.

Keesadilla: NO!  Don’t go outside!  There’s a bear in our yard!

Me: The bear is gone, now. Don’t worry.

Keesadilla: I don’t want to the bear to come in my house and my yard!  Hmph! (arms crossed and stern expression).

Me: Kees, bears can’t open doors.  It won’t come in the house.

Keesadilla, grabbing his lightsaber: I gonna shoot the bear, Mommy! (makes shooting sound effects for enhanced effect).

Sashimi: You can’t shoot a bear with a lightsaber.

Keesadilla: YES I CAN!

Me: No, you can’t.  And you are too scared to go outside and shoot it anyway.  The bear can’t get in our backyard where I am cooking, so it’s ok.

Sashimi: But you’re cooking fish and bears eat fish!!  What if it comes to our yard to get the fish?

Keesadilla: YEAH!  WHATCHA GONNA DO MOMMY?!?!

What did I do?  I called Sustainable Resources to report a bear and a very nice officer came and talked to me about it.  I think he may have thought I was cute because he gave the boys free passes to the minigolf course for “telling your mom about the bear” and then gave me one, too.

The minigolf course is not in bear territory.  Otherwise I don’t think Keesadilla would go.  Unless he golfed with a lightsaber.

Smells like sweet pickles

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Tony is upstairs making batches and batches of pickles, and while I enjoy the smell of brine as much as the next gal, I am retreating to my blog (hello?  Anyone still out there? No?  Aw, bad bloggy Sarah neglecting her blog for so long).

Things that are happening right now:

  1. I am nearly 14 weeks pregnant.  Yippee!  Hurrah!
  2. There is only one jelly-bean fetus in there, as confirmed by two separate ultrasounds.
  3. I have been having a pretty good pregnancy.  Not too much nausea, some fatigue, which seems to come in spurts.  My appetite is insane, and I am having a passionate love affair with 11:00 pm snacks, including, but not limited to, bologna and kraft singles sandwiches, two things I normally do not keep in the house.
  4. Kees has discovered that he is a 2-year old, and should act accordingly.  Most of the time, he is still a good little boy.  Other times, however, I just want to put him in his room, close the door, and wait for him to turn 18.
  5. Kees speaks in sentences now.  He is a truly bilingual child, and when he doesn’t quite know the right word, he just adds “ee-nay” (or for you francophones, “-iner” to the end of words he does know.  This is how we get sentences like: “Kees bonkiner pied again.”  What does this mean?  Kees bonked his foot again.  See, he does not know how to say bonk in French, but surely, since all French words end in -iner, adding that sound to the word bonk MUST be right!
  6. Sacha is freaking smart.  The other day, he came up to me and said “Mommy, I have a hypothesis.”  I asked him what his hypothesis was, and he replied “My shovel looks like a grader shovel, so it should pick up rocks.”  When I asked him what the word hypothesis means, he said “a hypothesis is a word that you can test out.”  Not bad for a 3-year old!
  7. Sacha still relies on Daddy to go to sleep and stay asleep at night.  Not too sure how we are going to get over this hump (again).  We had him broken of this habit, but then we were on holidays, and sharing beds in hotels, and now we are back to square one.  The only issue now is that we have to get him sleeping alone because Kees is getting ready to move out of his crib into a twin bed.  And where is this twin bed?  On the bottom of the bunk bed that Sacha currently sleeps on.  Kees sleeps all night.  Sacha does not.  Sacha needs to start sleeping all night so he can move to the top bunk and Kees on the bottom.  This must be accomplished well before the baby comes (I am due at the end of Feb) because baby will be taking over Kees’s room.  All part in parcel with having a 3 bedroom house and 3 kids.  I  have thought of putting baby with Kees, but that would involve buying another twin bed…LeSigh.
  8. Tony is learning the art of home preserving.  He is currently making pickles, sweet pickles, and has already made pickled beets.  I, on the other hand, have made about 50 jars (those little 1-cup jars) of various jams and jellies.  Oh, and I waded into pressure canning territory and canned 7 quarts of spaghetti sauce.  Now, I am taking a bit of a break from canning until the tomatoes are ready and Operation Salsa kicks into effect.  I made roughly 30 pints of salsa last august, and I only have 3 left.  Salsa is a vital condiment in our house.
  9. Sacha is turning 4 this week, and I have promised him a dinosaur party complete with dinosaur cake.  This will be a feat if I can pull it off…cake decor is NOT my forte.
  10. We are  T-17 days from our New Brunswick trip! Just Tony and I.  No kids.  For 6 whole days. I am really excited to go, nervous about leaving Sacha (Kees will be fine) and so pumped to see my friend Lynn! I searched online today to see if I can bring my knitting needles on the plane, and I totally can.  YES!! I cannot sleep on planes, so I may as well make socks!
  11. I am rewatching the entire LOST series.  In bed before I go to sleep.  I know, I am a nerd.  It really is better the second time around knowing how it all wraps up.  And yes, there WAS foreshadowing even in the first season.
  12. I am in need of a good read.  Suggestions in the comments are appreciated!

Over and out, bitches.

Miss-Gedo

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Kees is a very chatty two-year-old.  He talks himself to sleep, he talks to himself in the morning, usually just rattling off all the people he knows: Mommy, Daddy, Sachy, Vayvay (Memere), Gedo, Jake, Élise, Minou minou (his stuffed sheep).  Kees is functionally bilingual, as he translates almost everything he says, for example, if his food is hot, he will say “Chaud! Hot!”  If he wants to go to the river to look for jet boats, he says “Boat! Bateau!”  He speaks in minimal 3-word phrases, often with a verb and a predicate.  Or a verb and a subject.  Or a subject and a sound effect: “Truck CWASHSHSHS!”  I also am starting to see the cleverness behind his babble, and have realized that he is not my innocent baby anymore; he has a brain, and is very adept at using it for humour.

The other day, the boys were playing in the garage, Sacha on his bike, Kees pushing his dump trucks around (and crashing them into me and Sacha).  Suddenly, Sacha looked up and pointed: “Oh NO! A mosquito!”

Kees looked up with hope: “Gedo? Gedo?”

“No Kees, not Gedo.  Mosquito.  Mosquito,” I repeated, laughing to myself at his interpretation of the word.

“Miss-Gedo?” Kees said with a giggle, while Sacha and I howled with laughter at Kees’s verbal antics. Seeing that we were amused, Kees continued:

“Miss-Gedo! Miss-Vayvay! Miss-Vayvay!”

Oh, that Kees-man.  A play on words and he doesn’t even know it yet.

Kees

Happy

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There are many  little words that a mother longs to hear from her baby, growing into a toddler and now a preschooler.  Kees’s vocabulary is growing at an exponential rate lately.  Coupled with the fact that he imitates nearly every word we utter, both in French and English, he is a little vocal machine: he tells you when his food is “hot! chaud!” or when he sees a “boat! bateau!”, or that he wants to go “house, maison.”  He likes to state as many things as he can in both languages, just to be sure that both Tony and I understand exactly what he wants.

The other day, while Sacha was in preschool, Kees and I went to visit my Baba.  We were having a conversation about food (or something similar, although I am pretty sure it was about food) and Kees came crawling into my lap and kept iterating something over and over.  I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was saying, since I was still talking to Baba, so he grabbed my face in his little hands and made me look at him.

“Ma ta,’ he said, which is his approximation to “Je t’aime” which is “I love you” in French.

‘Je t’aime aussi, Kees.”

Then he hugged me and buried his face into my shoulder and said “Happy.”

And that made me the happiest I have been in a long time.

The Gender-Identity Crisis Part 2

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While driving to Walmart last week, Sacha suddenly piped up from the backseat: “Mommy, I think I gonna marry a boy after all.  I gonna marry Kees because then I can have a Smart Car faster.”

Stunned, and somewhat perplexed at where this was coming from, I had to get the basics out of the way: “Sacha, you cannot marry Kees. He is your brother. You have to marry someone else who is not your brother, or cousin, or mommy or daddy.”

Sacha: Oh. Well, I still think I gonna marry a boy so that I get my Smart car faster.

Me: Sacha, you don’t need to be married to have a Smart car.

Sacha: But who would sit next to me?

Me: You could choose whomever you want. Kees, Daddy, Maman, Jacob, Stef, anyone. You get to pick.

Sacha: But I still think I gonna marry a boy. Because then I can get the Smart car faster.

Me: Sacha, why can’t you get a Smart car if you marry a girl?

Sacha: NO, I get one FASTER if I marry a boy because boys can’t have babies in their tummies.

I had to think for a while before I continued, trying to piece everything together in my mind. Finally, it all clicked together.

Me: You want to marry a boy because then you won’t have any kids.

Sacha: Yeah, because if I have kids, there is no backseat for them in my Smart car. So if I marry boy, I won’t have kids and then I can get my Smart car faster!

Although based on somewhat erroneous assumptions, you cannot argue with that logic.