I belong to a group we call FARTS - for F.... Area Retired Teachers Society. I put it on my calendar as FARTS. Gdtr learned to read so of course she gulped and giggled when she saw it, and chastised me a bit. It's hard to explain acronyms.

A couple of weeks ago, my Son took my 10-yr. old Grandson to a movie, where they bought the big boxes of candy. Devin bought the cookie dough drops, which I love. During the movie/eating candy, Devin lost one of his teeth. They thought it would be funny to give Gramma the box and tell her they saved her a piece of candy. I tipped it up and instead of candy, got a tooth in my mouth. Luckily, I didn't swallow it! They still double over in laughter about the time Gramma almost ate a tooth!!! I must admit, I laughed my butt off, too!

Just a couple days ago something reminded of this: My DD was three years old. We were visiting her DGM, who still lived in a house with no bathroom, just an out house.

DD decided she was big enough now to go by herself, so we let her. When she came back I asked her if everything was okay. She said,"Yes, but I couldn't find the thing you flush with." Bless her heart!

Sue

Our 5 year old grandson was opening a bottle of Orange Crush with a bottle opener and his PawPaw was saying: "Don't do it so fast...just do it hard 1 time", etc. and after stopping and looking at my husband....Joe said: "PawPaw don't be bossy"!!!!!!! LOL/LOL Don't you love grandkids?? : )

My youngest son was quite mischievous as a child, so whenever we were getting ready to go anywhere (church, Dr's, etc.) I'd always say "Nicholas, from the time we leave the house until the time you come home, I want you to BEHAVE!" Well, during his second week of kindergarten I got a funny phone call from his teacher. She told me that he would never answer when she called him, so she thought perhaps he had a hearing problem.

One day she tapped his shoulder and said "Couldn't you hear me calling you, Nicholas?" He responded "Yes, but you called me Nicholas and I'm not allowed to be 'Nicholas' at school. My mother always tells me every time I leave the house that I have to be 'Have.' Apparently my admonishing him to 'behave' translated as 'be Have' to my 4 year old!

While my son was being circumcised he peed all over the surgeon.

My older son was what I called a "runner" at 3 1/2 years old. Every time he got out side he ran to the corner as fast as he could, always the same direction. When he met the little girl next door he started taking her with him, holding her hand. Her parent put up a fence to keep her in and he taught her how to climb the fence and away they went. I wish I knew what was going through his mind.

Son, Spencer, was two when we were visiting neighbors. Mike had broken his leg and was in a cast from his thigh to his toes. His toes were exposed. Spencer eyed up the cast several times over about a 15 minute period. Then he told the neighbor, "Mike, do you know you have a hole in your sock?"

DD drops off my two grandsons (ages 5 and 13) in the mornings on her way to work and DH takes them to school. Yesterday morning I came out of the bathroom to say something to DH, while still holding my eyelash curler to my lashes (I was getting ready for work). The 5-year old said, "Oma, why do you do that?", while mimicking me. I answered that I did it to help myself look pretty for work. Then he asked why I do that, while mimicking me doing my hair. I said for the same reason I do the other thing - to help me look pretty. He asked, "You're not very pretty?" and I answered, "No, not really". He said, "But you're spotty." That I am. I have lots of freckles on my arms. And bless the little darling, he added, "I like spotty".

When my daughter was 4 I was a long haul truck driver and I would be out on the road for two or three weeks at a time. My wife was also working so my daughter normally spent the day at a daycare center, but when Daddy was home, she stayed home with me, and did we have a time.

My wife worked at a large retail store at the mall, so we would all drive my wife to work, then my daughter and I would wonder through the mall. First to the arcade where we played "bop the gophers", then across the hall to the pet store, and I gotta tell you, taking a 4yr old to a pet store is more fun than taking 10yr olds to a zoo.

We would finally end up in the middle of the mall where there was a bakery that had a coffee counter. I would get a coffee and kim would get a hot chocolate and we would sit there and talk. One day the coffee counter was really crowded, all the seats were full and there were ppl standing behind us sipping coffee. Out of nowhere, somebody in the crowd ripped a raucaus fart that sounded like a mack truck, and immediately my daughter shouted out,,,"mee's daddy farted". You can not begin to imagine how embarrassed I felt, but to this day, she and I still laugh about that.

F**t stories? When DGS was around 3 we moved into a small town known for its many local diaries, so when the first time he came to visit...as we drove nearer and nearer to 'our town' this little voice excitedly said "Nanny, Nanny...I think all the cows farted at the same time!!!!" I lost it, and was glad that we were very close to home after a two hour drive and needing a potty stop.

My 3 yr old daughter was building her vocabulary and a few cute/humorous words were included. A butterfly became a "flutterby"; A catepillar was a "patterkiller"; and the most difficult was hamburger. It was "hamgerbur". We'd work on the proper pronounciation until she could say " hamburger". She could repeat it twice, and then, 2 minutes later, it was back to "hamgerbur".

Roll forward several years and now this daughter was learning the multiplication tables. For an unknown reason, 6x7 gave her more difficulty than other entires in the table. I'd quiz her and eventually ask what is 6x7. She'd hesitate and answer 42. I'd respond, "Correct!", and then ask, "What is 7x6?". She would say, "I don't know".

Roll forward more years and now this daugther has a little cute 3 yr old of her own, and this GD of ours is building her vocabulary. One day, they were treating themselves at Burger King and little GD was given a paper crown. Mother explains, you have a crown, but GD insisted, "No, its a castle hat."

My granddaughter is 5.The other day she heard someone say they were lactose intolerant.Later she asked me,"Nana,what is BLACK TOAST intolerant?"

I can never hear enough baby or little people stories or look at baby pictures! With 6 grandchildren, I have plenty but I think my favorites are from our one girl who is now 16. She is still quite funny and witty (without even trying).

When she was about 3, she was noticing all the different styles of sandals that people wore and she said to her Mom "why do grownups only have 3 toes"?

Three year old DGD Anna and I stepped outside early in the morning, to see the deck all wet. She asked if it had rained, and her uncle told her it was just dew. So she turned and went back in, announcing to all that it had "dewed" over night. Twenty-five years later, and we are in real need of a good rain, I look out to see if we got any over night. Then I tell myself, "Heck, it only dewed."

Recently we saw a commercial on t.v. that showed some little girls extolling the virtues of a brand of bandaid. Grandson, aged ten, thought for a minute and then said: "Those aren't boys; how'd THEY get cuts??"

DS to 4-year-old GD: I love you Sophia!
GD: I love stairs!

Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to tell you all how I got my screen name.

When my daughter was 4 I was a long haul truck driver, driving a Mack truck and hauling steel & pipe. We were living here in W.Massachusetts and I got a load out of Youngstown, Ohio on a thursday and consigned to Boston,Ma the following Monday, so I stopped by the house for the weekend.

About 5am Monday morning I was getting ready to pull out to make the last 90 miles to Boston and my daughter woke up. She wanted to ride with daddy in the big truck so I thought,why not, I would be back home in about 5 hrs and if she got tired she could crawl up in the sleeper so off we went.

As many of you know, the emblem for Mack trucks is a bulldog and my CB communicator name in those days was "Puppy Dog".

Now you also have to picture the fact that I was about 8 tons overloaded and about 30 miles east of our home there is a very long steep hill to climb. There I was stearing by keeping my belly pressed against the wheel while I was shift through 15 gears with two gear shifts and before long we were down to 40mph way over in the right lane. My daughter sat over there looking at all the cars passing us on the left side and she says,,"Daddy, today you are a LazyPup!".

When I got home I told my wife what she had said and instantly that became my new CB handle, which then carried forward to the computer.

When my youngest grandson was about 2 years old, he and his Daddy came on Saturday to ride the combine with Papa. Well, he decided the combine was to big and noisy so he stayed in the house with me. His Daddy used to ride for hours when he was his age and went riding with his Dad.

My kitchen cabinets have carousels on both corners. One had a small gap on one side. I said, don't put your fingers in there or they might get pinched. He looked at me, put his fingers in the gap and said "ouch".

We spread our children out...far...this was a few years ago..my 17 year old son(the baby), asked me ever so casually if I was going to have any more babies....at 53 I thought it was nice that he thought I was capable...but...
NO!! WE CLOSED THE GATE ON THAT AFTER YOU WERE BORN!!
Good! he says! I was kinda liking being the youngest...
As if he had to tell us that....
Seems he had heard me tell DH that the doctor had put me on birth control pills for other problems...he just didn't want me to have any more babies...
our oldest was 35 at the time...

Snowbound for the winter my ex was overseas, I realized that I had to curtail watching afternoon TV when my youngest, who when he spoke his first full sentence said, "This is Macdonald Carey and these are the Days of our Lives"!!

My five year old took one bite of an apple, then set it down and walked away. DH picked up the apple and said "Sweetie, what is this?" And Sweetie answered "Daddy, it's a apple".

Some great stories! ... and I can't think of any to add, sorry.

So, indolent canine ... when your daughter was born ... you gave her a name ...

... and, after a few years - she returned the favour!

And Nanny 98 ...

... I wasn't aware that in some small towns there were way more people keeping "diaries" than in just the average, run-of-the-mill kind.

(If one can't think of a "dairy" joke ... one should milk whatever becomes available, I always say).

ole joyful

A couple of weeks ago I was moving my stove to clean under it. My GGS is 13 and was helping. He picked up a baggy with something green in it. "Grandma, is this your weed?" I had to do a double take, never in my house. Nope, that is catnip and not something you want to inhale. Obviously one of my naughty cats got a hold of the bag and was messing around again.

Technicolor.

Inhaling catnip will not hurt you in any way. Catnip is actually a variation of the mint family and when growing wild it is very difficult to tell it from peppermint or spearmint.

When I was a kid there was a large patch of all the mints growing along the creek behind our milkhouse and Grandmother used to collect all three and dry it to make herbal tea.

All three plants are about the same size and have the same shape of leaves. To complicate it even more, they all smell about the same. The only way I could tell the three apart was the Peppermint has a purplish color on the stalk while the Spearmint stalk is dark green and the catnip stalk is a pale green color.

All three make an excellant tea

Jemdandy -- I think 'flutterby' is a much more logical name than 'butterfly'. Our DS called them that too. He had a logical mind. Once I served him a dish of soup, cautioning that it might still be too hot to eat. He said, "I'll let it warm off." (Isn't that much more logical than 'cool off'?)

DH and I still refer to the pulsating sprinkler as a 'binker', and sometimes we slice an 'abacado' into our salad.

As a child, my mother solemnly sang the old hymn that included, "Gladly, my cross-eyed bear."

When DGS was 3 years old, he came inside the house and told me he had a rock, a mail and a turd in his pocket.
I laughed so hard when he took a little stone, a nail
and a little toad from his pocket then put them on the floor.

My DD, who is now 46, used to make us laugh....
We came home after dark one evening and the kids were tired. DH was having a problem getting the door open and finally he did. DD stepped inside and said "Turn on the light." Trying to teach this 5 yr old manners, I said "what do you say?"
Her reply: "It's dark. Turn on the light."
And another time, one of her brothers was going something not allowed.....in a loud voice she said "Stop it....even I am not allowed to do that."
Her nickname now at work is The Princess.

When a friend stayed with her grandsons one week-end, she worked on her crochet.

The younger one watched solemnly for a moment & commented, "I never saw anybody do that in person before."

I can't remember where I heard this, but it sounds like it could have been Carol's 'Princess'.

Mother discovers a broken lamp in the living room. As mothers so foolishly do, she asks, "Who broke this lamp?" The boys provide the usual, "I dunno." Their baby sister gets indignant: "Who knows? Who CARES?"

My daughter just posted this on her blog:

Rainbow
As Doug is driving the kids home today, they see a rainbow. Allison says, "I'm going to call mommy on my phone and tell her that God made a rainbow."

Now, realize, Allison only has a play phone... nothing real for a 3 year old. :)

Moni

Does a great niece story count? This happened about 10 years ago, when she was 7. We were on the way home from a movie, and I asked her about lacrosse, as she had just started playing in a league(She recently got named an All American in Lax,so she has come a long way, lol) Anyways, she proceeded to tell me about what position she played and I responded with my understanding of what her position was responsible for doing. She then exclaimed. "Aunt Abbey, that is great. See even old people can learn new things". I was about 50 at the time, didn't feel particularly old, lol, but I did get a kick out of her perspective.

Abbey

Along the same lines as wantoretire...

My husband said I was eating out too much, spending too much money. We fought and fought about it, but the only thing that convinced me was my 2 year old son (at the time) who, after I'd gotten into the shower, had set up an entire place setting on the couch. Forks were were they belonged, the knive, a spoon, even a bread plate, with the bread on it. Ugh! I still laugh about it, but dang it, he was proven right.

The mention of a shower reminds me of two of my childhood friends. They lived next door to one another, back in the days before people locked their doors, and the neighborhood kids ran in and out of one another's houses.

Stevie and Marla were about four. One summer day Steve had searched all over for Marla, finally going upstairs in her house, looking for her. Marla's mother was taking a shower when the shower curtain was swept aside: "Hi, Mrs. E., where's Marla?" Mrs. E. said Marla was out with her dad. "OK, thanks," said Steve, and out he went.

I had my GD for the afternoon and it was just the two of us. She was the cutest little blond-headed sweet thing! She must've been around 12-13 months old and not quite steady on her feet, but we had a mirrored-top coffee table and she loved looking at herself. One time she bent over too far and bumped her forehead on the table. She looked at me with her little face clouding up, so to divert her from crying, I hit myself on the forehead and said, "Ouch!" Well, she thought that was hilarious and let out this belly laugh that I would never thought of her capable. So I did it again--another belly laugh and she said, "Oh Mi-Mi, Oh Mi-Mi". From that day on all the grands call me Mi-Mi. And it's special.

Another funny that happened today. I was at Alyssa's house and was sitting for a long time. I finally got up to go to the bathroom and of course I was hobbling. When I came out of the bathroom I was still hobbling and Alyssa is in front of me, walking just like I was. It was too funny! She picks up things so quickly. She is saying four word sentences now, doesn't take her long!

Sue

These are very sweet stories..

My great niece said the other day as I was getting in the back seat with her. "Poor old Kathy" Now I am a very active almost 60 yo and not "poor" in any way!

She is a princess for sure and I am not used to that. Took her to a park and she raced across the grass to the big slide/climbing unit. There were 2 boysssss there which she didn't like. She blocked the slide from them and then whined when they pushed by. Geez. I told her to move, but she inherited some stubborness from somewhere - lol.
The boys took things into their own hands and nicely moved her.

Coming back, she was scared and said she couldn't walk back through (the exact same grass and clover) because of the bees. So I did a bee check and she walked across.
Next thing, she was digging in the dirt looking for treasure with the metal detector and picking up worms - there's hope yet!

When DD was small she watched me dress, and admired the bra I was putting on - it had a touch of lace on it.

Later at the grocery store she announced to the bag boy "Mommy is wearing a really pretty bra today". I nearly died, the poor teenage boy almost died from blushing. Then DD said "No, really, she does. Go on mommy, show him!". I did not, thank you LOL.

Another time she saw a cashier wearing a hijab and asked me if her hair was wet, because she was wearing a towel on her head. I explained what it really was, and that it was a religious symbol etc. etc. She really seemed to understand and that was that. But later, as we left the store, she yelled out to that cashier "Good-bye! And I am sorry you have to wear that towel on your head!".

When she was REALLY small, she decided that she did not like vegetables, and all vegetables were PEAS. She was offered a sample of pasta. She peeked into the little cup and saw the veggies mixed in and said "No tak-you. It a pea!". She was always very polite LOL.

She was (still is) fussy about food especially anything new. She had eaten plain pasta before, but I had cooked bow tie noodles this time. She was suspicious. I told her it was the same as the other noodles, just a different shape. She carefully licked the edge of a bowtie, and shuddered. I was so mad I had to STAND ON THE PORCH! Her and DH still get a kick out of that one.

Dances.