Selected Quotes from the Queen of Quips

Well, WAY too much time has passed since my last K entries, and my brain can scarcely hold any more of them without writing them down!

She wakes up talking, talks all day, and talks herself to sleep. She's pretty much a non-stop font of conversation. She's got a lazy "S", a "w" for an "r" and can't quite say "Ls" or "th's" distinctly, but we know to never discount even statements that might not be clear at first because this girl ALWAYS has something relevant to say.

So, here goes my list. Hopefully, any that I'm forgetting will pop back into my head before they dissapear forever!

• Back while we were in California at Christmastime, we made a trip to Sea World. K found the experience enjoyable, but the thing that REALLY captured her interest was the Killer Whale show. Sitting up the nose-bleed section of the bleachers, we had a decent view, and the show was set against a darkening sky. At one point, the whales did something that really stunned her. Eyes wide, and in her highest falsetto, she said to B, Mom, and me, "Ohhh!! Look what I found!!!" You'd almost have to hear it to know how funny it truly was! She sat there in rapt attention the whole time!
• While at Sea World, I happened to see a shrub called "Sweet Breath of Heaven." I thought that would be a good addition to my collection of old-fashioned-sounding exclamations, so I asked K to try it out. Instead of saying "Sweet Breath of Heaven." she paused for a moment and then shot me a punky look. She said, "Sweet Breath of... Mel!" Then, she laughed and I laughed, and she said, "Sweet Breath of David!" Then "Sweet Breath of Giovanni!" I have no idea why she decided to substitute in the names of our family members, but she knew it was funny and laughed heartily!
• K and I sometimes like to watch a show called Charlie and Lola, a cartoon about a little boy and his younger sister who is "small and very funny." In one episode, Lola could not bring herself to part with some shiny red shoes that she'd outgrown and no other shoes would suffice. A couple of weeks after we'd seen that episode, K was luxuriating in a pair of her own shiny red shoes ("Oooooh, they're so Pwetty!") I asked her, "So, are you the Queen of Shiny Shoe Land?" She looked at me seriously, and said, "No, I am not." I asked, "You're not? Well, then, who is the Queen of Shiny Shoe Land?" She said, resolutely, "Lola is!" It took me a minute to even grasp what she meant! Mind like a steel trap!
• Last week, I wanted to take advantage of a break in the crappy weather we're having and take K to the Zoo. With the struggles we always go through to get her dressed and through the potty-sitting routine, our time was ticking away before her nap and the time I needed to start work. So I said, "OK, I want you to march upstairs so we can change your pants and get going to the Zoo!" She sat down, staunchly, on the lower staircase landing, crossed her arms, and said, "MOMMY! I am NOT a PUPPET!" I almost flopped over! It wasn't until I finished laughing that I realized she'd watched a show where there had been puppets that were marching! I thought it was pretty profound, all in all!
• We went to our local Lutheran church on Palm Sunday and took a seat in the church, awaiting the arrival of the procession of congregants who entered bearing palm fronds. As they entered the church, K burst out, "Here comes Jesus! Here comes Jesus!" Throughout the service and the sermon, any time Christ's triumphal entry was mentioned and even at the mention of God, K would proclaim, "Here comes Jesus! Jesus is coming up next!" or "Here comes God!" She really enjoyed the music and was good, if a bit to over-hyped-up during the service. About 3/4 the way through, she opened a hymnal and started singing, "Jesus loves me, this I know!" in full Ethel Merman strength. I think it infused a little livliness to the sermon that might otherwise have been absent, though it made me feel a little more Pentecostal Revival vibe than Lutheran sobriety!
• When we were in California for Christmas, K's great-grandmother, Nona, wanted to make sure she had a lasting memory of the Nativity story, so she brought her own nativity set over to my parents' house so that she could tell the story to K. K loved hearing about the little baby Jesus in the manger, the angels singing, the Mommy and Daddy, the animals and the Wise Men. Flash forward a few months, and K and I were driving in the car, doing her favorite thing - listening to music. There's a Sting song called "Fill'er Up" that mentions an epiphany had by the song's protagonist. He steals some money to try to start a better life for himself and his girlfriend, but the angels admonish him that he shouldn't "Fill'er up with sorrow and with pain" but should "Fill'er up with Jesus and fill'er up with light" instead. Every time we hear that part, K will say, "They're talking about Jesus! Nona taught me about that!" :)
• On Easter Sunday, we went with the Jodys to another local church - far more progressive and unstructured than the Lutheran church. K enjoyed it, too and was even better behaved and quiet the whole time. The one thing none of us liked was that their sound system balked at a portion of their program that involved a video broadcast, and it made a terrible sound! A few nights later, we were having a big thunderstorm and a major BOOM shook the house just as K was settling into sleep. She awoke, frightened and crying, so B went in to comfort her. He told her that the thunder couldn't hurt her, that God made the thunder. He told me that she said, "God is loud. I don't like it. God was loud at church, too!"
• The other night, we were eating dinner. K had a bowl of fruit salad and, for whatever reason, decided that a wedge of apple looked like a little mouse. She said, "Oh, Look! It's a baby mouse! (picking it out) He is SO CUTE! Oh, look, he is SO tiny (in a squeaky voice, and holding it in her hand, gently and lovingly). Of course, B and I were busting up! Finally, she said, "He needs to go back in with his mommy and daddy now," and back into the bowl he went!
• Excuses heard while trying to change K's diapers or training pants or trying to get her to sit on the potty:

"I can't come over there... my bottom is too kwaazy!"

"I can't walk there. My feet not working anymore. I lay down on this mat!"

"I can't sit on the potty. I am TOO big!"

"I can't. I am singing now."

"Because I DON'T!": this can apply pretty much universally to anything she doesn't want to do.

"Why because, Mommy?"

"Who's singing this?" "What's her name?" "What is this song called?"

• Some of her favorite phrases:
  
  To B: "You're not going to work, are you?

What a mommy and daddy do: "Keep you safe and warm"

• Repeating what Max says - it's a big passtime for her:
  "Maxxy say, 'Go! Go! Go!' and 'Grass! Grass! Grass!'"
  "Maxxy say, 'Go! Go!' and Jennifer say, 'No... We're not going now.'
  Sung to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus": "Maxxy in the house say 'Go! Go! Go!"
  "Maxxy yelled and Jennifer covered his mouth, like this" (demonstrating the technique)"Maxxy says 'Mamamama!'" (grabbing my head and putting me in a kid headlock. I like it ;))"
  
• Watch TV little bit, OK, Mommy, while you sit down and drink your coffee?!"
  
• "You like this sound? You like this sound?!" (thumping, hitting, clinking, tapping, and otherwise noisemaking on items)
  
• "Mommy like some?" It sounds like a question, but it's an offer you can't refuse. It will just get more and more insistent until you capitulate.
  
• A week or so ago, she TWICE put her hands into her dirty, poop-filled diaper. I was alerted to this fact once at night and once after her nap, by her saying "Mommy, I have poop on my finger!" Kind of makes your blood run cold, doesn't it? So, I expressed my extreme disgust that she would do that - having gotten it on her bedding as well as on her crib itself! I told her that was sickening and she was never to do that again. Since then, if we express strong sentiments about something, and, especially if we're quizzing her about something we have instructed her not to do, she will say, "No, I not do that. That would be big sickness!"
  
• Regarding Ursula the Sea Witch, at the time of her tranformation into an all-powerful evil being: "She has BIGNESS!"
  
• Taking a walk with B on a cold day, K and B decided to pretend as if they were at the Zoo. When they came home, she told me all about the creatures they saw: "Monkeys in the trees! And gorrillas! And tigers!" It was so imaginative, and she told me so convincingly, it was incredible!
  
• Her knowledge and recognition of music is pretty incredible, and would be so even if she were 10 years older! She can usually tell you the name of a song or its artist, if she gives it a little listen, and she will request the music she likes by name. Tonight, she got very miffed with me because I wanted to listen to The Innocence Mission's "Glow," but she wanted to hear The Proclaimers instead. It actually had her almost in tears until we promised she could hear them after my song finished. We were listening to something the other day, and she recognized before I did that the song was "Weird" Al's "All About the Pentiums"; Last week, she was on a kick of requesting "Amish Paradise" and "I Want a New Duck." I usually figure that, if she can request it by name, she deserves to hear it!