I had good intentions for a fun Christmas gift for my husband, but I slacked and it didn’t get done. I’m thinking it still may happen though, because we’re still IN the twelve days of Christmas, right?
Right.
I think…googling…Nevermind, the twelve days of Christmas ends on the 6th, so I don’t have time. Well, it’ll be a Happy Middle of Dreary January gift. And since he reads this, it will not be a surprise at all.
I’ve made some mugs before with snarky quotes about how much coffee is needed in the mornings, but I read a Facebook post here by Momastery (a good read if you really need to waste some time) about how they give people mugs with funny quotes kids have said that year.
This is a fantastic idea. You can apparently get them professionally made, but I’ve just gotten some of these markers and written on a regular old mug.*
Here are the two that my husband is getting when I get my act together and write them. (Well, here are high quality mockups, because, of course, I haven’t actually made these.)
Those of you who have read my old blog will recognize the stories, but they’ve stood the test of time, so I think they deserve a mug.
Quote #1: Morons
A couple years ago all my husband, Jason, kept teasing our then-seven-year-old. In an effort to tease Jason back, my son yelled, “Daddy, you are a moron–with a cow!”
Which made Jason and me die laughing. First of all, we’d never heard him say moron. And then “with a cow”? What?
We laughed and laughed and Jason and I called each other morons with cows for about the next, um, couple years. But we did pull it together and after finding out our son didn’t know what moron meant, we explained the word and that he shouldn’t call people that and don’t use words you don’t understand, yada yada. You know, all the good parenting things we had to say to make up for our first response.
Which leads us to the conversation I had with my then-four-year-old daughter:
Me: “I know Daddy and I were laughing about it, but I don’t want you to call people morons. It’s not nice. Do you know what moron means?”
Daughter: “No.”
Me: “People would use it to say someone wasn’t smart. That they were stupid. So I don’t want to hear you calling anyone a moron, ok?”
Daughter, shifting a little and looking confused: “Well, ok, Mommy…But then what do we call the morons?”
And I died laughing and had to leave the room.
Quote #2: Kghunk
The other mug will reference this:
My four-year-old son and I were in the kitchen the other day when he looked at me with the blazing hot intensity of a million suns and said,
“Hey!”
He was using that oddly macho-man voice that he uses. It’s somewhere between a mafia hit man and a disgruntled, middle-aged, German businessman. “You like khgunk?”
I stared at him blankly.
He continued to look desperately at me and then pointed at me too. With a crooked finger. (Because he never points with a straight finger. It’s always hooked so you really don’t know what he’s pointing at.)
“You like kkhgguunk?!?!”
He was SO intense and I had SO little idea what he was talking about.
Me: “Gunk?”
Son: “No, Kunk!”
Me: “Kunk?”
Son, looking aggravated, “No! KKKUNK!”
At this point I’m laughing because it doesn’t usually take me this long to figure out what he’s talking about. So I start 20 questions.
Me: “Is Kunk a food?” We are standing in the kitchen, after all.
Son, looking at me like I’m stupid: “No.”
And he gives me nothing more.
Lightbulb ON.
Me: “OOOOH! A skunk! I forgot you won’t start words with ‘s’! Skunk! No, I don’t like skunks. Because they smell yucky.”
And he grinned at me. “Me no like kghunk either.”
Quick, you must make a mug for a Happy Middle of Dreary January gift. What will you put on it?
* So far the ones I made have lasted over two years and wash them in the dishwasher multiple times a week.
