Budding Comedians

3-year-olds can be quite the cut-ups. Their sense of humour starts to emerge around this age, and they know it. Humour is a form of intelligence, and it's pretty fascinating to watch it develop and share laughs with one's budding comedian.

(Well, the first few hundred times...)

Do you have a little funny man or lady in your house? There are 3 key elements to master if you're to be proficient in 3-year-old comedy, at least from the research I've conducted:

1. Huge numbers. Ridiculously big or long or numerous things are automatically hilarious; and the bigger, the better.

ROFL... a billion carrots was funny, but a googol-- now that's comedy! Imagine that many carrots!

I heard a few kids in the strawberry fields recently competing over how many strawberries each would pick. Thousands of strawberries. No! Hold on. HUNDREDS. (Yeah, sometimes the numbers don't actually get bigger, but you just have to go with it).

I'm told that, when I was 3, I used to tell the "How many men does it take to change a light bulb" joke in a similar fashion.

"I don't know. How many?" my humouring parents would say.
"THREE!" (Pause for laughter) "No, wait... FOUR!"

The numbers didn't even have to be big in my case. They just had to be numbers, apparently.

2. Nonsense words, in our case largely resulting from activities like singing songs with all the lyrics starting with the same letter.

Bold BcBonald? THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE! LOL!

The possibilities are endless...
You could brush your teeth, or you could MUSH your MEETH!
You could rinse your hands, or you could PINSE your PANDS! (Hmm. That kind of does sound funny)

One day he called me Bamba instead of Mama, and he was quite pleased with his sharp wit. I was worried that would be my forever name. Thankfully, the novelty wore off.

I often initiate, or at least participate, in such silliness. Once all the way home we made up variations of "Okey Dokey Artichokie", and many sides were split.

(Good Lord. Give me an adult to talk with! Now!)

3. Toilet humour. It's not quite there yet, but it's starting. The other day, there was a conversation that went as follows:

Pooptoilet.

And it starts. And this is going to last until... wait, how old am I? OK, never mind.

Comedic timing needs a bit of work, I admit. Sometimes you can hear the wheels turning as he summons up the most hilarious statement he can conjure, as the audience waits with bated breath.

He knows when he's being funny, too. He points out the funny things he says. Just like his dad.

And now we're about to head East for a visit with the grandparents, and you know grandparents often have a different threshold for what's funny than parents do when it comes to the kids. He's going to have an audience, and the family going to find it all hilarious, just like they do during our Skype calls.

Yes. Just what a budding preschooler comedian needs... encouragement!

___________
P.S.: I showed Big Bro all these cartoons as I drew them, and he busted a gut. He knows good jokes when he sees them. Especially since they're largely his.

Diggers and Dump Trucks and Cranes, Oh My!

Vehicles and heavy machinery... they continue to delight and amaze. 

We have new-home construction going on behind our house, and I tell you, it's hours of free entertainment. I can put the kids in front of the window and go out for a pint get ready in the mornings. I'll even find myself pulling up a seat to watch the backhoe dig enormous holes or the crane lift huge sections of roof onto the houses. 

Thursday mornings are exciting times in our house, too. Forget the ice cream truck; here comes the garbage truck! I wonder how many little boys they see on their routes, standing in the driveways in their jammies?

There's just something about vehicles, even if I already admitted I don't always get the fascination. At a recent playdate, the Cozy Coupe had to be put away 'for a break' due to 3 boys constantly trying to mash into it like clowns in a Volkswagen (OK, that fascination I get. I'd try to get in, too, if I could fit, and propel myself Fred Flintstone-style around the house. Brrmmm!).

Little Bro, cuddly as he is, never took to one stuffed buddy like his Big Bro did (who amassed a small town of buddies). He does, however, love to always be holding a vehicle, one in each hand. Usually, one of them is his favourite school bus, and the other he likes to mix up between a digger, car or some sort of truck, depending on what the occasion dictates. Looks like Edward Scissorhands, but with cars. 

One day we went out for the afternoon, and he held onto those cars with a death grip the whole time. I could see the deliberation at the playground, where he wanted to climb, but his hands were full. The tough life of a toddler.

With that, I give you my  rigmarole ritual for dressing such a toddler. You have to be quick, though, or suffer the wrath.

P.S.: Don't try to stuff the whole vehicle-and-fist combo through the sleeve. It'll be just as big a panic when it only fits halfway.

Story Time

I am a firm believer in reading with kids, pretty much as soon as their eyes can focus on a book.

I loved being read to as a kid. Richard Scarry's Nursery Rhymes was an old favourite-- including the Two Cats of Kilkenny, who fought and fit and scratched and bit until instead of two cats, there weren't any. The giant who intends to grind the Englishman's bones to make his bread. The fellow who went to Taffy the Welshman's house and beat him on the head with a marrow bone. I remember them all fondly to this day (no nightmares or anything).

And now I love reading to my kids, and they love to be read to. Mostly.

Big Bro can't get enough of story time and hearing his favourites. He loves being read to so much that he insists on finishing any book we start, even if it's one of those ones you realize halfway through is a dud (at least for a 3-year-old, or at least this 3-year-old). Take, for instance, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. I'm spouting endless lines about Wumps and Zanses and yellow gox box socks or whatever the heck and thinking, Good Lord, this doesn't even make sense to an adult, he can't be liking this. He won't let me off the hook, though. He's hanging on for all 50 pages (or however long it is. Feels like 50).

It wasn't always that way, though. Story time with Little Bro, now 1.5 years old, brings back memories of trying to read a book while he repeatedly flips back to the page with the car, turns the page before you find out what's in the Great Green Room, or just plain packs it in two steps into the Barnyard Dance. If you haven't piqued his interest, that book's outta here.

I Love You Through and Through is just such a book that he often declares is at "The End" before it's over. Come on, it's cute! What's the matter, sentimentality not your thing? Fine, I say, YOU pick what we'll read, then.

"Beebee!" He says, waving around Where is Baby's Belly Button. Again.

Well, spoiler, kid, her feet are still behind the cat. Never ceases to get the rapt attention, though. Again! Again!... Sigh.

So, I guess there are some choices in our selection that can enchant a toddler. You just have to pick the right ones.

I remember wanting to draw the above cartoon when Big Bro was that age, so I'm guessing that's just what a blossoming love of books looks like when you're one and a half.

Say "Cheese"

I'm not teaching Little Bro to say "cheese" when I take his picture. I've learned my lesson.

My older son is a gorgeous fella (if I do say so myself) with beautiful brown eyes and the longest eyelashes you've ever seen, but ever since he's been told to say "cheese" for the camera, all my pictures of him turn out like this:

Great. Instead of his handsome smile, I get Threatened Chimp. I won't have a souvenir of what his smile was like, but I will have a record of what all 20 of his teeth looked like.

I'll try, "Show me a happy face," but that just results in an enthusiastic, jaw-wagging "Cheeee-yay-yay-yay-yayse", which results in a big ol' wide open mouth, so I get teeth AND tonsils.

Never mind. The candid ones are better anyway.

"The Little Things"

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/robert_brault.html#jGbbBEewD6vUeuP5.99

 "Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." 
-Robert Brault

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/robert_brault.html#jGbbBEewD6vUeuP5.99

Every Mother's Day in recent years, I've drawn my mom a cartoon card depicting a good childhood memory. Usually it involves my usual humour and self-deprication, but also with a little bit of sentimentality, because I've always been a big sap about these things. I appreciate all the more what my mom has done for me and my siblings now that I have kids, and I figure I'll tell her that now, since kids don't always say it at the time.

My best memories of growing up were always those "little things" that are actually BIG things upon reflection, which I think is true for most people. 

One of my very favourites is on those snow days (back when they existed-- remember snow days?) Mom would be just as excited that we didn't have to go to school as we were. She couldn't wait to tell us and spend the day with us. On such mornings, we'd all pile into my parents' bed with her to chat and joke around in our jammies for a good long time before getting up.

She remembers this too, but other times I'll remind Mom of these kinds of things, and she won't even recall that she'd done them. Just goes to show how certain things stand out to kids that you may not realize at the time.

I hope my kids will grow up and have good "little things" memories with me, too. Curious as to what they'll be. Maybe they'll share with me one day what stood out to them, if they're at all big saps like their mom.

Me, my sister and brother enjoying a "Snow Day" with Mom

Can't Take Us Anywhere

Sometimes it feels, for us parents of young kids, that you can dress us up but you can't take us anywhere.


As I mentioned in my last post, I was set to present at the 2014 Blog Out Loud event last week, and realized I had food colouring-stained hands from doing science experiments on the front sidewalk with the kids. Great! Way to make a first impression (as this was to be my first--but hopefully not last--  kick at the can). I mean, I'm blogging about being a parent, but let's not look TOO much the part. Why don't I just show up in yoga pants while I'm at it.


Luckily, I got most of the colour off in time and only had to worry about a regular old bad hair day from the rainy weather.


But it got me thinking of how this was not the first time one of the adults in our house has tried to be professional out in the world, but ended up inadvertently wearing evidence of kids nonetheless.

click to enlarge

Ha ha. Those stickers seem to stick to anything! Except, of course, the original surface they were stuck to, which was usually the kids' faces. They fall off and lie in wait around the house, hitching a ride on unsuspecting adults' clothing like Disney-themed burrs.

Has anyone else inadvertently worn the "I have small kids" neon sign on their forehead (or the back of their pants, or wherever) when out and about? If so, when I see you at the store, should I tell you if you have paint on your ear or post-hug kid handprints on your behind?

I just know I'll be at a big, important interview or something one day, realizing too late that my short-sleeved dress shirt reveals the sleeve of stamp tattoos I let Big Bro give me the day before.
"Can I take your coat, Janet?"
"Ah, no, no. I'm a bit chilly. I think I'll keep it on, thanks."

I tell ya. Can't take us anywhere.


____


If you missed Blog Out Loud last week, here are the selections that were read. Really great variety of topics and perspectives! I was thrilled to be a part of the event. Check it out.


There's also a great review on the International Writers' Festival site here which mentions Cartoon-Coloured Glasses. "A pithy post of prose and pictures", it says (pithy is a good thing; I checked). Delighted!
It also likens the audience's experience of Blog Out Loud to being at Costco on a Saturday... which I assume means there were a lot of samples of great things to be had-- not that it was full of aggressive jerkfaces and you couldn't wait to get out of there (That's 'Costco on a Saturday' to me).

Blog Out Loud Tonight!

Hi all! Just a quick post to remind you all that Blog Out Loud is tonight. This is a first for me. I'm so excited to be a part of this event and reading alongside some great Ottawa-area bloggers.

Check out the fantastic write-up on Cartoon-Coloured Glasses. Sheer comedy gold, it says! I'm so flattered. Can I put that on a resume?

If you're looking to say hello, I'll be the one with the blue-stained hands. Probably shouldn't have done an activity with food colouring yesterday.

Hope to see you there!