Weird Things Your Kids Have Said with Kate Kennedy

The world is not especially great right now. In the midst of all the chaos and nightmare fuel, today’s episode of Thanks for Asking is an emotional palate cleanser. Nora and friend of the pod Kate Kennedy are here to deliver some silliness with the weirdest things your kids have said to you, written to you, or drawn for you. And yes, it gets very, very weird.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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Hi. Hi. Hi there.

Hi. Hi. Hey, Nora.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call-in show about what matters to you.

Hi, everybody, it’s Nora. Today is a slightly different kind of episode. I have a guest host today.

It is my dear friend, Kate Kennedy, a pop culture commentator, an author, a very, very smart person, funny person who I adore.

Her podcast is Be There In Five, where she does deep dives about pop culture, but also just, I don’t know, she’s one of my favorite talkers, one of my favorite thinkers.

I had her join me today for what I’m gonna call a little bit of a palate cleanser episode. We are living in a very heavy world right now with a lot of horrible things happening all the time. And I found in my inbox a bunch of messages from you.

I had asked about a million years ago for the creepy things that your kids had said to you or notes that they had written you. Some just unhinged things, some truly spooky things.

And I pulled them all together and I have Kate here to go through them with me today. So we can hopefully just have a little bit of a laugh. Now, what is going to happen?

What happens every time that I speak to Kate Kennedy is that we go on tangents and side quests, so much so that there is going to be a bonus episode over on the Substack, which is a full hour long crash out discussion about generative AI, creativity,

productivity, and the impact of AI on all of that that happened for the hour before Kate and I actually started recording the episode we were supposed to record. That is what happens when Kate and I speak to each other.

So that will be over on the Substack this week. If you are not a subscriber, it’s noraborialis.substack.com.

If you haven’t yet, check out our YouTube channel where, you know, there’s episodes, there’s other stuff that’s also linked in the episode description. And as always, thank you for being here. And let’s get into it.

There’s a lot happening in the world right now.

And Kate, I would say that very little of it is great. I’d say very little of it is great. And so this episode of Thanks For Asking, this is what we call an emotional palate cleanser.

This is us saying, mm-hmm, we are going to focus on some silliness. We are going to focus on some goofiness. We’re going to have a couple laughs.

And I invited you here, Kate Kennedy, because you are a person that I love to laugh with. It’s true.

Likewise. And I also love a palate cleanser. I love a sniff of the espresso beans at a Yankee candle.

I think it’s really good to just level set sometimes with some nonsense.

Yes. And I, like you, I get a lot of messages. Sometimes I’ll have an idea and I’ll say, oh, talk to me about this.

And people will send stuff in and then I’ll fully forget about it. I will get, I’ll just fall down a different rabbit hole.

And this is kind of one of those occasions because I have, you don’t have a wide range of children, but two of them are still like legal, legally children, okay? Twelve, nine, that the youngest one has always been a little bit of a darksider, okay?

Creates art, you’ve seen some of it where you’re like, all right, all right, okay. That’s an interesting little demon that you just conjured up out of your own sweet little head before, long before you would ever be allowed to watch Stranger Things.

That’s an interesting thing to say to your mother. And, okay, so I asked people to share those kinds of things with us, like the weird, maybe threatening notes that they got from a child, weird, spooky things that their kids have said to them.

And we have some real gems that I’m going to share today. We’re going to go through them together.

But you also have, like, you have a kid who’s in my, what I have to say is my favorite stage of parenting is what you’re in right now, which is like the Bear Cub stage, where they’re mobile, but still unstable.

They’re soft, they’re cuddly, they’re saying things that don’t always make sense. They’re putting the world together around them. And like, they’re just, I think, just the best.

I think that’s my favorite phase, truly.

It’s the best, because they’ll say things that you cannot place. Where they heard that, if they assembled it in their own brain somehow. And just this morning, one happened where, it’s just like so sweet.

I was saying like, tugboat, my dog. I was like, tugboats. We’re saying like, tugboats, your brother, that’s your dad.

Like pointing at things, saying what they were. And I go, and mom is, and he goes, my best friend till the end. Is that not the sweetest thing you’ve ever heard?

And I was like, yeah, best friends till the end. And I was like, that’s maybe, cause I sing, are you a jingle person? Everything in my house is a jingle.

Everything, everything.

Best friends till the end is something I’ve probably sung to him.

But I was like, that was the cutest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. And I think there’s just so many sweet moments, but there’s also things that just like make absolutely no sense. Yeah, that’s perfect.

You’re his best friend till the end.

I know.

Here’s to hoping.

Okay. Also, weren’t you, didn’t you get him like a book about feelings too, that really like stuck with him?

Oh my God. Yes. This book, Feelings Book, is everything.

I didn’t give him enough credit. He’s two years, five months old. And I think that sometimes I think he’s too much of a baby and can’t understand things.

But the way he understands things is pretty incredible. And we’ve read this emotions book and there was one that in its emotions as colors and the color orange is like feeling confident and proud.

And I was trying to think of examples of things that like make him you know, like he’s really proud of himself when he like is helpful and cleans up his toys or puts away a dish or whatever.

And the other day we were doing dishes together in his little tower. And out of nowhere, he goes, I feel confident and brave. And I was like, it’s just a line in the book.

And I was like, yeah, that’s I think seeing the connections be made and also the simplicity of him feeling confident and brave, washing dishes with me.

Oh, buddy.

I just was like, yeah, you should. Like, this is confident. This is brave.

You know how hard it becomes as an adult to do a dish?

Yeah, yeah. I’m confident and brave every time I open that dishwasher.

Every time I get anything done, I’m like, I feel confident and brave.

I feel confident and brave. I feel confident and brave. I don’t know how old Q was, but my kids love to hear about themselves as babies.

And love to see videos of themselves as babies. And I was showing him, like, his newborn photos, and talking about, you know, the first time I saw him and the way that he looked at me. And I said, you know, fishing.

I said, did you open your eyes and think, oh, my God, that’s my mom. I love her so much. And he goes, no.

I opened my eyes and I said, I miss my old life.

How old?

It’s like two or three, it was very little. It was like little, it had to be three, because we lived here. And I just remember-

I’ve seen so many YouTube videos about kids like this, I’m fascinated.

Okay.

I was like, oh yeah? He was like, yeah, I missed my old life. I was like, okay.

Did you ask follow-up questions?

Like, what his old life entailed?

He just said he missed his old life? He just missed his old life?

Is he misunderstanding the term old life as like something he did last week, or like, is he one of those kids still crossing over spiritual planes from a previous life?

I think he is. I think he’s an older soul. I think he’s a used model.

He’s been here before, for sure. He’s been here before, for sure. And I mean, you know, I’ve met with mediums, and they have confirmed that.

But also, even before he said that to several mediums, that he was on the other side, like, with Aaron, you know? So I think he has, like, he has, like, some sort of, you know, consciousness or unconsciousness. The veil is thin with little kids.

But, you know, we had certainly not discussed reincarnation at the time. He had gone to Lutheran preschool and learned the horrifying story of the crucifixion in great, gory detail.

The crucifixion is real scary.

He cried for his dad and his dad didn’t help him. And his mom cried and they poked him with a knife and they put a crown of thorns on his head and he bled and he cried. He was, it was, that was an upsetting story for him.

Easter is not…

Easter is a tough time in your house.

Easter is a tough time. You got a lot to do to explain to a little kid. It’s like, but also the Easter bunny is here.

And they brought you some jelly beans, I guess.

And to think of how we got from that image to jelly beans is pretty interesting.

It’s pretty wild.

Bathroom gone down as humans.

They were like, we need something. You know what? Honestly, Big Candy said we need a palate cleanser.

Okay, Easter is a little too serious. We need to liven it up. What sounds fun?

Giant bunny hiding hard-boiled eggs.

No, literally. Like, why though? That’s something I’m going to look up later.

That’s a good rabbit hole.

Please look that up right now because why rabbit hole? Things are connecting. Oh, my God.

Everything. I’m old enough to have searched for hard-boiled eggs in my yard, okay? I am old enough.

I did not know people did that.

We’ve been plastic since day one.

Yeah, we had hard-boiled eggs. And then also treat eggs, treat eggs, but yeah, you’re… Yeah, a hard-boiled egg.

Hard-boiled egg, what a treat. But honestly, it is such a treat. I love a hard-boiled egg, and so do my children.

Like, they really do. They really do enjoy a hard-boiled egg. And you know what else…

Old soul stuff. Old soul stuff, Kate. We could be decorating hard-boiled eggs at any point during the year.

We could be drawing on those with a crayon.

What’s stopping us?

I’m sorry. What’s stopping us from… If you’re gonna make hard-boiled eggs, and I now want to, why are we stopping at just the boiling?

It is true, because it’s pretty much a canvas.

It’s pretty much…

It’s a perfect canvas, and you don’t need… You don’t need the… Crayons work great.

Sorry, my dog’s going crazy.

I’m just trying to tell my husband to pipe down. Wait, what’s your dog doing? You can’t hear that?

No, no, no.

No, no, no. Okay, is the dog barking?

Yeah, sorry.

Okay, yeah, that’s… I can’t hear it. Nobody can hear it.

But also I know that it’s kind of like with kids too. It’s like someone else’s kid screaming on an airplane. I can’t hear it.

I can’t hear it. My kids whining on an airplane to each other. I’m like, you better shut your mouth, okay?

There’s an air marshal here. You will be put… Last time I told them, they were arguing in the airport.

And I said, you have to keep it together in an airport because you can be put on a no-fly list. And I threatened them. I said, anyone could put you…

That you could get put on the list. You create a scene at the airport, you and your little brother, you could be taking the Greyhound for the rest of your life.

Do they know what a Greyhound is?

I had to explain it was a bus. I said, and it’s not… That’s not as fun as it sounds.

Okay.

Well, you had to little boy, like, a bus. It sounds awesome.

I was like, I know it sounds awesome, but you would not get to Minnesota in three hours. You would get there in three days.

Right. No, I think that’s every parent. It’s like, all I want is for every mom around me to know we’re all going through it, and I don’t think anything about these interactions.

Everyone has their moments. But when it’s me, my face is hot and I’m panicking. And I think, I don’t know, yeah, it’s like, I think that there are a lot of people that don’t understand that you can’t control kids, to a degree.

Yeah.

Yeah, what do you want from me?

Right. And then it’s also like, I don’t know, I think this, the age my son is too, is like, his brain is just, like, he can’t reason. So, it’s kind of interesting just like, letting them be to a degree.

And I also just abuse it tremendously, kind of like you saying, if you misbehave in an airport, you’ll never be able to fly again.

It’s like, yeah, you know, you use the lack of development to your advantage and explain like, when the TV’s off, it’s broken. And like, I don’t know, we have a song, TV broken, what do you do? Because we sing every time, we just want to stay on TV.

Yeah.

And so but now the problem is he thinks things that are off are broken, which isn’t the right word.

It’s a slippery slope.

It’s a slippery slope. And it’s so much. Uh, yeah, you say a lot of things.

I, for a long time, had told my son that plain yogurt was ice cream, plain Greek yogurt.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You have to with food.

Yeah.

And he was like, ooh, like he’d like shimmy his little shoulders and like eat it up. I was like, yeah, it’s ice cream.

Full sweet potatoes, orange hummus. Like it’s a lot of lying, quite frankly.

Okay, I’m going to play a voicemail, let’s see if this one works.

And a creepy thing that my kiddo said was he was like probably around two and he had never met his great grandma, the husband’s grandma who basically helped raise him and she was a super important part of our life and he was in, I was pregnant with

him when she died and we were in the room with her and we just joked that their souls met. He had not really seen pictures of her or anything, we didn’t really have pictures up because you know life, you don’t put pictures up sometimes.

Anyway, we went to her old house where the grandpa was still living and he looked up at the chair and they started laughing a lot as a baby.

When he was like two or three and he could start articulating things, he saw a picture of her and he goes, oh, I know her. And we were like, yeah, that’s grandma Rosie. How do you know her?

And he said, oh, she sits in that chair a lot. And that would not have it literally happened. So he clearly associated her with the chair.

And it was just kind of a creepy, but also it felt like good creepy, if that makes sense.

Yeah. That’s reassuring creepy. That’s reassuring creepy.

And okay, so something actually similar happened after Erin died, Kate.

We were in our house and like under the, Ralph was underneath the dining room table and we had a sofa, Ikea sofa, the guy that like folds out into the bed, that it feels like cardboard.

It’s one of the least comfortable couches in the world, but I loved it. Hot pink L sofa that like folded out into a full size bed. And Erin was always, when he was out in the living room, he was there.

He was in, in that area. And Ralph was underneath the table and he looked up and he goes, Papa! And like stood up and like hit his head.

And then was like pointing at the couch and like saying, Papa, over and over. And I like knew, I just knew. I was like, okay, yeah, yeah.

Like you’re seeing something. It was like, it was like he had, he was like reacting to a presence truly.

Oh, for sure. I think too, and I think the thing that makes me believe that kids are seeing these things is hearing, or even like my own grandmother, like right before she passed away, she was talking to her dead siblings, like they were in the room.

And I think at the beginning of life and the end of life, you’re just slightly tuning frequencies and have access to something else that the people of the world, or deeper in the world don’t have access to anymore.

And how sad too, that like kids probably don’t remember those moments because they happen when they’re like so young and so close to being born. But that’s really beautiful.

And like that, I love, yeah, reassuring creepy things that just make you realize we’re all connected, never born, never die. We’ll see each other again.

Like I think that those things, those stories always make me like, even though I would might add in that moment, be a little spooked, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Yeah, I like that. Okay, I have another one. Here we go.

The creepy thing that my child just said recently was, can we go to the park where people get buried and then they die?

He was talking about a cemetery and he wants to go play in a cemetery.

Cemeteries are, it’s a lot of real estate, it’s a lot of open space. It’s a park, it’s not not a park.

It’s not not a park. Can we go play at the park where people get buried and then they die? Order of operations, only slightly off.

Oh, I didn’t even pick up on that.

They get buried and then they die.

Yikes. That’s funny.

I just want to check it out.

I just want to check it out.

Seems seems like a blast.

Some people really love cemetery. I’m not one of those people, but some people like to go and jogs through them and stuff.

I wouldn’t jog. I don’t know why that feels slightly disrespectful. But I’ll tour.

I was raised by a cemetery lover. My mom will pull over in a small town. She wants to take a gander.

She wants to look through our cemetery. Anywhere we are, she’s at the cemetery. We went to Rome this summer, and I went to the Cemetery of Ecotelica, the not Catholic Cemetery, and really beautiful, really beautiful stuff there.

I gotta say, there’s a few things I’m not interested in when I’m like being a tourist, and someone’s gravestone is one of them.

I also will not climb a Duomo. There is always a rooftop bar with the same view.

And you can see the Duomo. I don’t need to, I don’t need to.

The Duomo is a core part of the skyline. You want to see it when you’re in the skyline.

And you’re not seeing it, you’re not seeing it. I didn’t climb the Leaning Tower any either time that I was in Pisa, because I was like, I want to see it. I don’t want to be in it.

That would be insane behavior to climb inside the Tower of Pisa.

People did it.

Am I?

Four, two thirds of my family, I almost said four, six, two thirds of my family climbed it.

And Ralph and I were like, see ya.

It’s like, it’s leaning.

It’s leaning. It’s already, like, we don’t need that. We don’t need that.

Okay, so you’re not going to go to the cemetery with me when we go to New York City.

No. Okay.

Just getting that clear. Okay. And when I come to Chicago, you won’t be taking me to a cemetery.

Am I right?

I live near like a huge one that a lot of people really love that I’m pretty sure people jog through. But now that you’re saying that, the disrespectful thing, I’m like, well, yeah, it’s kind of like being a bad neighbor upstairs.

Why are you clomping on everybody beneath?

You can walk through quietly. You can peruse. We went through a beautiful…

I have to find this clip. I was taking a video in a cemetery in Portugal this summer, and Q goes… I mean, there were a lot of the little kid ones from a hundred years ago who still make me cry.

And Q goes, what would you build if I died? I was like…

Oh, God. See, I’m not ready for these conversations. I was like, okay.

It’s like all excited out.

He’s like, ooh, look at this one. Wow, his parents really loved him.

I feel like also those types of questions when they start, my nephews or niece would ask me… It’s almost like you can ask someone that’s not your parents the questions you like want the scoop to.

And I feel like there came a time of like, what is the meaning of life? What happens when we die? And the way I froze, I almost need to like have some predisposed responses to some of these questions because I find…

Yeah, sometimes the hardest thing is to explain something simply.

Oh, you know what I love to do, especially as a parent, I love to say, what do you think?

Yeah. Or it’s like, is Santa real? I mean, I believe in Santa.

Not everybody has to believe in everything.

Yeah.

But also it’s a lie.

But also, yeah, it is a lie. It is a ruse that we are all upholding. My kids are not believers, Kate.

Like my kids would not. They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t.

And I had to have that conversation with Q especially because he’s the youngest of four. A youngest of four is so different than a lot of his, you know, peers in the classroom are oldest children, you know? And I’m like, you’re not the same, okay?

You have heard too much stuff. You’ve seen, but even as a baby, where we’re all like committed to the magic of his childhood, he would not believe in Santa. He was like, no, no.

He was too busy missing his whole life.

He was too busy missing.

He’s already been here before. He opened his eyes. He said, God damn it, take me back.

I don’t want this, this, her. God, you got to be joking, you’re kidding me. He’s like, oh, so now you’re going to try to tell me Santa’s real?

Guess what? I’ve already been here. I already know the truth.

Don’t deliver presents to me and tell me they’re from an elderly man who came down our chimney. When we clearly have a gas fireplace insert. Get real.

Get real. How would he?

Get real.

How would he? Oh, he just kicked through the glass? Okay.

Hey, Nora.

This is Samantha in North Carolina.

I am calling with a creepy kid story. When my daughter, my first child was about three, she’s 12 now, she would get up at the butt crack of dawn, of course.

So we got her a little digital clock and tried to tell her that if it said 630 or any number greater than that, that she could come and wake us up. Obviously, she didn’t really get that.

But one presumably morning, because it was still dark, she came in and woke us from a deep sleep. And I said, okay, well, did you look at your clock? What time does it say?

What’s the first number? And she said, the first number is six.

I was like, okay, okay.

What about the other two numbers? And she said, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, and she kept repeating it until I screamed and just got up and got out of bed.

The Catholic in you wanting to perform an exorcism. That is spooky, especially to keep saying it.

Okay, here’s the thing. Here’s the thing, though, is that would freak me out. So sometimes kids just are, like, they’re a little spooky.

They can be spooky beings, okay? But the Catholic in me, especially as a young, as a kid, I would have said, get that girl on exorcism. I would have been freaked out.

But now 666 is one of my favorite numbers. Big into, big into, you know, and numerology, recency bias, confirmation bias, all of those things. But 666 is a powerful angel number.

I’m gonna tell you what it means because I have that 666 necklace, and every time I have a video of it, somebody, I get a comment that’s like, what are you doing, you little devil girl?

And you have a one-eyed book. Like, you are just so Illuminati coded.

I do, I do. I also found recently all of the screenshots from when something happened. It must have like been put into some like bizarre part of the internet.

But I was getting comment after comment about like how I’m in the Illuminati, what I’ve done to get there. And I was like, if you think that I am in a secret society that controls the world, and this is how far I got.

Oh, right.

Not a great poster child for the Illuminati.

Like, you know, rule number one, no one in the Illuminati has a podcast.

Yeah.

Sick burn. Sickest burn. Kate.

Yeah, she’s got an independent podcast, real Illuminati stuff, okay? She’s part of a secret cabal running the world, and you know, they do it. They make her produce her own podcast every week, okay?

And then she asked you to try to self-finance it with Substack or Patreon subscribers. So yeah, you could say she’s pretty powerful. Okay, 666 is a chance to reflect, check in with yourself, look within and realign your energy.

And that is what that means as an angel number. And it’s something that has a bad reputation because the biblical meaning is the number of the beast, but that’s mostly unwarranted. The spiritual meaning is an encouragement to refocus.

Seeing 666 tells you to pay closer attention to any fixation you currently have on earthly problems and details. An obsession with getting everything right and taking things too seriously is a distraction from the bigger picture.

So that is all your daughter was trying to tell you.

Which is incredibly deep and meaningful. I mean, I wish it wasn’t in such a menacing tone, but she got your attention. I know.

Wow. That would spook me. I’m not going to lie.

But you’re right. 666 has maybe gotten a bad edit because isn’t the beat the whole thing with the beast, too? He like is more of a symbol of imperfection, which also isn’t something that like we as humans should be like scared of and reject.

Like he wasn’t a divine being, but the biblical stuff just doesn’t translate the same.

Yeah, I am, you know, as a Catholic. I don’t know. And I didn’t read that Bible.

The priest read it.

You guys are bad into revelations.

Told us what was in it.

Okay.

I perused it. I perused it, but yeah, I’m not, I’m not. I really don’t, I don’t know.

I don’t know what’s in there. I don’t know what’s in there.

Yeah, it is fascinating how revelations forward my experience in like Protestant evangelical places was. It’s like all they think about is the rapture. Yeah, I feel like the…

Yeah, I think evangelical you would have been more freaked out about this than Catholic me.

Right, yes.

And I think also like, I think since Catholics do exorcisms or like historically did exorcisms, it makes it seem like a real thing that like has to be done and like children can be possessed.

And I kind of actually wonder what the origin of that is too. But like, and anyways, regardless, I was just watching the Ruby Frankie documentary on Netflix and she thought her kids were demons and it’s a whole thing.

But I think it’s important that we acknowledge that kids do say the darndest things. And yeah, they don’t read too much into it. Reading the good part, like you said, of what might be a different interpretation of that.

Yeah, yeah.

And also like if your kid tells you, yeah, I was already born here and this life is a disappointment to me. Okay, big deal. Big deal.

Don’t let that hurt your feelings, okay? Don’t let him, okay? He didn’t mean it, okay?

He just meant, yeah, I really enjoyed my old life and I wasn’t super jazzed to see that I had to come back and do it again as a baby. Okay?

Yeah.

With a podcaster.

With a podcaster.

Okay.

I’ve been here and it was a little bit better. That’s all I’m going to say. It was a little bit better.

All right.

The creepiest thing my kid ever said when she was, I don’t know, one before she could really, really talk.

She came up to me in the middle of the day and just said, God’s not real and walked away.

Did she say how old her kid was?

Like one-ish?

Fascinating.

Hey, hey, so watch out. Teddy could start to have his own existential crises and bring them to you, and that’s what that child is doing. That child probably just learned the story of Easter and is having a hard time with it, okay?

No, I think that’s what I’m so interested in.

Would that person have heard somebody say that in passing, or are they coming up with it?

And I also think that’s what’s really interesting about kids, too, is you’ll say something a million times that they can’t seem to remember or recall, but then you’ll realize they remember one hyper-specific thing from three months ago.

And you just never know what they’re picking up on, which actually reminds me of something funny Teddy said over Christmas break, which was, I was explaining to him how he used to live in my belly at one point.

And I guess I told him this, but I don’t really remember over-focusing on it. But I was sitting next to him in his crib and he was going to sleep.

And I think that was once a lot of the funny stuff is said too, when they’re like kind of going to sleep and talking to themselves. And he said in his baby voice, like when he was in my belly, we went to three Taylor Swift concerts.

First of all, I was like, buddy, you cannot tell people, flex on the Aris tour like that. People are really upset about Ticket Scarcity. Yes, we did.

We did.

Taylor Swift concerts when you were in my belly.

Okay.

And if Taylor Swift had found out that pregnant women were there, she would have found a way to double charge on the Aris tour. Okay. She would have found a way to say, well, your baby, your fetus actually can’t listen.

Okay.

I always hoped he would like kick, you know? Yeah. But never, not at once.

He said, I’m here to just listen objectively and then I’ll decide how to respond later once I’ve had time to really like digest this experience.

Thank you. Thank you. I remember, oh, this is another, it’s like, it’s sweet, creepy, I would say.

But I was explaining to Q, too, like, you know, that you lived inside of me thing, which is so weird. Sometimes you look at them, especially when, you know, now he’s like nine and he’s just like all limbs.

And I just think like, oh my God, at one point you were like folded inside of me, like a little tiny lego.

And you 3D printed it.

I 3D printed you. And that’s why our teeth are falling apart is because they took all of our… I’ll see them.

Okay, our bones are going to crumble into dust because really they self-assembled. They just like a…

Yeah, they’re biological parasites.

They are. And beautiful, beautiful. And like, and that Ralph had been there and that the baby I lost had been in there.

And he goes, oh yeah, they left me notes in there. Like, they left me notes. As I go.

Okay, okay, okay.

He also calls the pregnancy a lost dead baby.

I was gonna say, Nora, as a person who’s lost more than one baby, I’m like the paper trail in there.

I mean, I’d actually be interested to hear. Yes. As morbid as it is, I’m like, if you guys have exchanged information, by all means, share more.

I mean, I think we discussed this, the kimerism, which is the way that, yes, your genes pass on to your children, but your children’s are in you forever.

And that has been such a comfort to me too. So they are a part of you forever. Even the babies that you lost are a part of you forever.

And I think that’s so beautiful. And I was like, oh, what did they say? What notes did they leave you?

It said, see you on the other side, brother.

Which makes sense, because they wouldn’t see him again.

Okay.

Wow.

See you on the other side, brother.

What if he was like, yeah, because I’m trying to think of like, it’s also funny to say notes too, not that they like talked, but like he left behind.

He left behind a note, wrote on the wall, said.

It’s like burgers posted. I’m sorry. I can’t.

Don’t hate me.

See you on the other side, brother.

That’s really sweet. That’s something that would give me comfort.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s so sweet.

I think it’s so sweet. Okay. Yeah.

A little weird one. Okay. We got another weird one before we take a little break.

Here we go.

Hi, Nora. My name is Meg. I’m calling from California.

I saw your post about unhinged things that kids say. It is one of my favorite things in the world. My son, who’s 12, recently was holding my hand across the parking lot, unprompted, which was very sweet.

And then when we got to the sidewalk, he let go of my hand. And when I asked him if he was done, he goes, yeah, well, I was just walking an old lady across the street. And now I have to hit him with a car.

I also just love, I love when kids say unhinged things, and then you tell your friends about them, and then your friends start using those sayings and incorporate them into daily life. And it sort of evolves.

Like, I just love a big friend group where everybody is in on the joke of a kid saying something nutty.

Like, one of our friend’s daughters, when she was in the car and was listening to music, she didn’t like what they were saying, would just whine, different one.

And so now, anytime any of us, you know, would like to have a different selection than what is being presented to us, whether it’s, you know, a drink or a song on the radio, whatever, we just go, different one. Because they’re really the best.

A little bit. That’s funny.

Different one.

I like that. I have an iPhone note where I write like a lot of this stuff down because it’s so easy to forget how funny, like anytime something is like so funny or cute, it hurts, I write it down.

Because yeah, not everything makes it into a bit, but might be deserving of it.

Oh, well, I think I used to do that. And I organized it by kid at one point.

I actually haven’t kept up with this in recent years, but I used to keep a note on my iPhone too, which is called belly laugh.

Because the older you get, the less you experience the sensation of laughing so hard it hurts and like not being able to stop laughing.

And I found I wanted to write those things down because then I would look at them often and it brought me so much joy. Like you easily forget belly laughs.

Oh.

Okay, we’re gonna take a quick break and we’ll be right back. Okay, so I love the idea of keeping track of what my kids say.

People used to have baby books, but mine personally doesn’t have anything in it because my parents lost interest. I was the third child, so that makes sense.

So I’ve also tried to keep track of these things, but apparently I haven’t written in it for over a year. But there’s this from 2024, and this is like when we got our hamsters. And one immediately died, Gus, and was replaced by Gus too.

And it says, Tonight, Q said that he feels bad for Bernie. That’s one of the hamsters. Because Bernie’s brother died, and Bernie is just a little guy who’s been through a lot.

That’s true.

It’s true.

It’s true. He really has. Give me a Teddy.

Oh, I feel like it’s like there’s some that are objectively funny, but most are just not.

It’s like inside joke. You know what I mean?

Oh, sorry. It’s just an inside joke between you and your toddler.

I feel like so many of them were just cuter than they were objectively funny. But one of my favorite things that is very much like an experience of a type B mom is he kept talking about his favorite song and trying to sing it and describe it.

And I was like, I don’t know what this song is. And he was like, he was dancing to it. He’s like, I want to hear my favorite song.

And then one day, let me play it for you. This noise came on and he said, that’s my favorite song. And I realized, I must do this a lot.

If this is my son’s favorite song, hold on.

That’s his favorite song.

It’s Find My iPhone. I can never find my iPhone. So sometimes I’ll see him in the corner, kind of like shaking his hips, bugging him, being like, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

I have a video of it too, I’ll send it to you. It’s really cute. But it’s like, yeah, it’s got a beat, and when it plays over and over and over.

Oh, it’s a good song.

It’s a good song.

And for all the ways he didn’t move to any of Taylor Swift’s life’s work, her whole entire catalog, he really grooves to find my iPhone.

I have, Kate, as soon as we are done here, you have to go find your child and play this song for him and record his reaction to it, because this song used to get Q going, like just activated, and it’s called Raining Tacos.

Nice.

It’s in your worm, it will get in your head. There’s something about it. As a toddler, he’d just be like, hmm, hmm, hmm, like just all neat, it’s just like loving this song.

It’s brilliant, Teddy will love it, but also nothing gets a kid going quite like Imagine Dragons, Thunder.

Oh, sometimes Imagine Dragons, I’m like, guys, it’s cool.

It is cool. It’s cool, okay. They are a powerful, they make powerful music and it makes people feel powerful and it will make Teddy feel strong and brave.

Do you remember when the Imagine Dragons lead singer was performing shirtless in Male Athleisure that one summer and no one like knew who the front man of Imagine Dragons was, but he’s like really cute?

No, I don’t remember that.

I mean, I don’t remember it.

Why would that be a universal experience? Well, I enjoyed Summer of 22.

Kate Kennedy, the sentence you just said was, do you remember that summer when the lead singer of Imagine Dragons was performing shirtless in Athleisure?

I’m going to send you a video.

Do you remember the summer? Do you remember the summer that was defined by the lead singer of Imagine Dragons performing shirtless in Athleisure?

Because something I find interesting is the ubiquity of some artists, yet having no idea what they look like, could you spot a member of One Republic?

Kate, I think the people on Earth who have the best life are the other guys in Maroon 5.

Oh, I was just about to say that, but I didn’t want to interrupt you.

I was going to say the bassist in Maroon 5.

They get the money, but they could be, if you showed me any man on Earth and said he’s in Maroon 5, I would believe you.

Have we had this conversation before? Because I think about the other guys in Maroon 5 constantly.

All the time, all the time. And I think wherever you are, I hope you are making the most of the hand that you have been dealt, where you have hit after hit after hit and full anonymity. That’s a gorgeous way to live.

That’s a gorgeous way to live. And if you are a man who wants to perpetrate a scam, tell people at a bar that you’re in Maroon 5, no one’s gonna check. No one’s gonna check.

Wow.

I’d be saying that. You’re so right.

If I was a man, I’d be telling people I was in Maroon 5, but instead I’m a woman who’s six feet tall and I tell people I’m in the WNBA.

I feel like the cultural capital of being in Maroon 5 held a different value, like pre-moves like Jagger. She will be loved, like early stuff, but don’t you feel like they turned a corny corner?

Yeah.

Yes, they did.

Yeah.

Yeah, they did. I would say, I would say, when I’m praying on you tonight, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There’s something about them that almost became, I couldn’t discern them from like Robin Thickey.

Robin Thickey?

Is that how you say his name?

Robin Thicke? Thickey? Aaron Thickey?

You know, the, like, the blurred lines guy was making the same music as Maroon 5 for a while, I feel. Like, it all felt like the same.

Yeah, I agree. I think they just leaned into, like, easily digestible, like, crank out pop that, like, does well for its universality, but, like, doesn’t really have distinction.

And I was at, Courtney and I were watching this, like, band play recently, and they were only playing, like, Sinatra, like, Etta James. They were playing, like, really, like, a lot of jazzy stuff, a lot of, like, old crooners.

And then there was, like, one song we knew, and we were like, we didn’t know we knew Sinatra. And, like, they were just playing in that style, a Maroon 5 song, and it completely worked, and it was completely indiscernible. What song?

It was, was it, how does Sugar go?

Oh, it might be Sugar. Na na, and maybe, won’t you come and da da da na, da da da da da da, da da da da, need a little sweetness in my life. That one?

Yeah, but I feel like I would recognize it.

Do you like that song?

Now I do, now that I just sang it.

I know it’s kind of like Hey Soul Sister, we can rag on it all day, but it’s just like random tacos. My pelvis.

Yeah, I can’t control what happens when you’re Hey Soul Sister, okay. I just can’t, I just can’t, I just can’t. Okay, we’re gonna play this because I actually don’t know if I put the right voicemail until we’ll see if this is a thing, okay?

Because I think I only have like one more voicemail.

It’s okay. Palette calendar needs to be right and tight.

Hey Nora, I am just responding to your Instagram post about an observation that our children make. My mom died when my son was 10. He’s 15 now and we were on the way to school and I was just thinking about my mom.

And I asked him, I said, do you miss grandma? And he goes, yeah, I do. He goes, but I don’t think she would be happy here right now.

And that just put it all in perspective for me. Such a insightful child and that old soul for 15 and he’s right. My mom would not be happy with the state of the world right now.

But that’s my observation that my son made at 15 is smart old soul.

Okay, thanks.

Oh, that is an old soul. That’s so sweet.

That is nice.

I don’t think she’d be happy here. I think she’s where she probably wants to be, you know?

Yeah, like if women become priests, your uncle would not…

No, he doesn’t want to be a part of that world, okay? He doesn’t want to be a part of that world, okay. I’m going to send you a text so you can read this text that somebody sent.

I feel like I should read the context first.

Sure.

When this person turned 40, her kid said, well, mom, you’ve got 17 years left.

Her dad died at 57.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

But I remember thinking about death that way. My dad had said something when I was little about how the people in his family die young, and I just remember being like, okay, the countdown begins. Great.

Like, yeah.

A thousand percent. Your perception of age is so skewed when you’re young.

Yeah.

And you think 57 is like elderly, only to realize you’re like a baby.

I’ll always feel like a baby. Yes. A hundred percent.

Being in my twenties, I remember just like seeing people like maybe in their forties at a concert and being like, who told you about this?

No, literally.

Like, we’re on the same email list from the venue. Like you’re not better than so. It’s like, how did you, and how do you know about this?

Who invited you? Because you’re a mom. So I don’t really know why you’re here.

Okay. Okay. I’ve wanted to read you.

Okay. Weird things that my six year old asked me is, when is anyone’s name going to die? Usually a grandparent.

Awkward.

I remember being super, the first time you learn about death, you are really fixated on it. And it’s really hard to under, it’s still hard to understand.

Like, but for an anxious or sensitive child, it becomes really hard not to like, see everyone as a ticking time bomb.

Yes. Yeah. I also, maybe two summers ago, Q goes, so when grandma and grandpa die, can I get their iPad?

Listen, succession.

I mean, succession, the highest stakes.

Who’s getting the iPad? I mean, I’m not the eldest boy, but I would like the iPad.

That is an interesting question, though, because it’s good to settle our affairs early and often, because that’s the highest asset they could imagine inheriting.

Yeah. They’ve got their eye on it. It’s a full size.

It’s not an iPad mini. It’s a full size one. Okay.

I’m sending you underage.

Mom, what’s that smell as I’m getting out of the shower and he’s on the toilet? I’m not sure, buddy. Maybe your pee?

No, I think it’s your vulva.

What?

Anatomically advanced. I’m so curious for the context of this. Had you just talked about this, or I guess is the point you have no idea how they’re making that connection.

The point is you have no idea how you’re making this connection.

I mean, I don’t think either of my children, my little kids know that name or would say vulva. I don’t think they could identify a vulva, so I find that very advanced.

For a while, you get it confused with uvula. It’s like a whole thing.

I have done that numerous times as an adult. Uvula needs a new name that’s simply too close. Same with cortex and cervix, too close, and I did mess those things up in sixth grade, out loud.

And then I argued with my science teacher.

Your frontal cervix hadn’t formed.

I said, it’s a cervix. She said, nope. I said, pretty sure I’m right.

I love the confidence.

That’s confident and brave.

I think you mean cervix. Handa, you actually made a mistake. You meant cervix, not cortex.

Thank you.

Why is like, why are anatomy terms like so hard to remember? Like I couldn’t tell you what the VAS deference does and what the deference with between that and like some other scrotum adjacent part is.

I don’t know all this stuff.

So, okay. Yeah. You don’t know either.

No.

How did you even learn those words?

I think in like family life, like in anatomy.

Wow.

Explaining like sperm. Well, now I feel better because I’m just really not that interested in male anatomy, for one. And two, I had to learn everything about my body when I did like froze my eggs and stuff.

And wow, there’s a lot going on down there.

A lot.

It feels a little none of my business sometimes.

Anything that happens inside of my body is none of my business. When they want to talk to me about my cholesterol, I say that’s so inappropriate. That’s so…

That’s inside of my body.

I think they’ve got it under control.

Yeah.

Why am I intervening?

I don’t know. I also don’t ever want to hear the word gut.

I don’t want to hear gut health.

It’s such an unpleasant word for me. If you called it something else, I might engage with the topic, but I don’t want to hear the word gut health ever.

That’s how I feel when like exercise, adult exercise people talk about their booty.

Oh.

I just really… No. It’s, yeah, it’s too, it, I think it, yeah, it feels infantilizing and just weird to me.

But I will say, you do have to get comfortable with a lot of words when you have a kid. So I used to be like so profoundly anti-bathroom talk, but you can’t really get around it.

It’s related.

These things are related. Like, you know, first, your kids say weird things, but then they’ll also like, you know, they might draw things, they might write things out. And so this is a passive, aggressive note for you to read.

It says, it’s like a school paper, like, prompt, like, what am I, what I am thankful for today?

And then it says, I am thankful for my parents. My mom set up our front yard for Halloween, and it’s not that great, but she tries. This is me trying, I mean, yeah.

Effort is important to record. This is actually like, I love this energy for a child to give, to be praising of effort and not execution.

What she tried.

Isn’t that so funny? Okay, this is, okay. When my daughter was six, she was sent to her room because she was having a tantrum.

Five minutes later, she came out and threw this down the stairs. She’s 20 now. It’s a crumbled up piece of paper.

It’s been unfolded. There’s an angry face, teeth out, two, like a V for the angry eyebrows. And all it says is, big fat mom.

Oh my gosh.

Whoa. That is like, I wonder how old, did she say how old she was when she did it?

She’s like five years, six years old.

Oh my God.

People are so hard on mom.

People are so hard on mom. She tries. She tried, okay.

She tried to do Halloween. It’s not that great, but she tried. Okay.

This is a note that was on somebody’s child’s door.

No bossy, life-controlling parents allowed without… Permission?

Oh, knocking, yeah.

No bossy, life-controlling parents allowed without knocking and then getting permission. And it’s written in the, like, this child is, it’s hardly legible. Everything’s spelled wrong.

But the fact that, like, life-controlling is on this paper and he can’t read or write. You know what I mean?

No bossy, life-controlling parents are allowed in this room unless you knock and you’re given permission. Thanks. Thanks.

I am so not equipped, not ready for the high conflict part of parenting.

God, I love, I love a note.

I love getting a note. And I started, Q has iMessage on his iPad.

Like his own?

His own, his own little iMessage on his iPad. But you know, he’s, it takes a lot for him to text. Like it takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of effort.

He’s not the best typist on a QWERTY keyboard. And so it’s, it’s a lot of, it’s a lot. And he, so when I got this text message from him, I knew that it had taken him a long time to type it out.

All caps. Mom, we can’t play any video games today. Three exclamation marks, three question marks.

We can’t play any three exclamation marks, three question marks. Then he figured out how to do that thing where you can like finger spell on the, like draw on it.

So this appears and it says, not any, all caps written in this little, this little handwriting, exclamation question mark.

It’s like he’s talking to customer service.

He really isn’t, he’s not happy about it.

He’s outraged. Everyone has to learn how to process, everyone has to learn the hard way. You can’t process your outrage out loud at the person you’re outraged at.

No, no, no, no.

And then he texted me, dad won’t let, and just imagine, he’s got to type this out so slowly. Dad won’t let me and Ralph have cookies and we ate all the stuff on our plates. Can you text him to let us have cookies?

One minute passes, all caps. Look mom, text dad to let us have cookies.

I love the look mom. Look.

Look mom.

Also, what a fascinating parenting world where like dad says something, so you text mom to influence dad, to get your out. I mean, fascinating.

So fascinating. I was like, okay.

Has that ever worked where they’ve been like, hey, can you tell dad to stop being so life controlling? And then you text him and stop being to life controlling.

I try not to do that because I know it’s bad, but I wrote some of them like, yeah, have the cookie.

No, like I think being on the same team is like, in addition to the compromise thing, kind of one of the pits.

You got to be on the same team. But sometimes I’ll be like, just go out there and give them a cookie and be the hero. Okay.

Do you want to go down for the cookie today? Just go give them the cookie. You go give them the cookie and be the hero.

Okay. I said no TV, okay? You can go in there and say, I talked to mom.

Okay. We’re going to watch an episode of TV. Okay.

That’s what we can do. This is my favorite one. I text, Dad is being mean to me.

I hit the back of my foot on his big boots. Then I said, ow, dad, please don’t leave your giant boots in the middle of the hallway. Then he said, if they’re so big, how did you not see them?

Exclamation mark.

It’s a great point, dad.

Big old boots. Please tell him to apologize.

Please.

But also, he’s not wrong. It shouldn’t leave your big old boots in a walkway.

Which is something he’s always telling us. So like, yeah, it’s, yeah, I get it. I get it.

Okay.

But like, But I love, I love like the thought process of like trying to kind of make it insulting. It’s not just the issue of the boots. It’s like, and…

Big old boots.

Big old feet.

And they’re red wing boots.

They’re stiff. You know, they’re like, it doesn’t feel good to hit your foot on a red wing.

Can we talk about how men’s boots, could you take longer to put them on? Oh, my God. We need to go outside right now and do something.

I have to wait 10 minutes for you to lace up a boot.

You’re lacing them up, you’re taking your sweet time, lacing them up, tightening them, making sure they’re not too… Oh, now they’re too tight. Okay.

No wonder you’re annoyed to take out the trash.

I would be too if I had to lace up and lace down every single time.

Get some Skechers, handless. Okay, whatever they’re called. Skechers step-ins.

Okay.

Yeah.

Hands-free shoes. Get your man some hands-free shoes. Okay.

Okay, this is actually a note that’s still on somebody’s pinboard that somebody is Cheryl, one of my favorite influencers, if it’s Tuesday. She still has this on her pinboard. It’s like 30 years old at this point.

It’s a note from her daughter that says, I should not punch my brother because two wrongs don’t make a right. Okay. I should not have pinched him, which I didn’t until I was sick of him kicking and punching.

I had to defend myself somehow. It’s not like I’m just going to stand there and let him punch me. I couldn’t have told mom because his elbow was in my face.

If there has to be a punishment, it should be no dessert. Dessert is a very important part of the day for me. I look forward to it every day.

And if we have to decide on one, just don’t pick Graham’s idea of punishment because he isn’t always right. Sorry, Alexandria.

Dang. Receipts, timelines, screenshots.

Timelines, screenshots.

That’s so relatable to be a girly with a justice complex who loves a sweet treat.

Yes.

Yes, I hit my brother. No, it wasn’t right. Yes, I had to do it.

Here’s why. Yes, I’ll accept a punishment, but only a very specific kind. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And the thing you told me to do, to tell you, was logistically, like it was physically impossible.

It actually wasn’t possible because I was getting hit.

So hope you take all that into consideration. Also, this letter was like folded and delivered, and I really, really do love that. Like I have to, you know, you have to save a screenshot.

You gotta find a screenshot. You gotta paper, you just keep, you know? And it gets tucked away into a box and you can find it later or not.

But I do think that there’s something kind of lovely about getting a note that a child has angrily written out in pen, folded up and delivered to you as though it’s like a certified, this is certified mail, and I want to make sure you get it.

It’s also funny to think about like going through a memory box and you think of the kids like, Butterfly kisses. And then to open a crumpled note, this is Big Fat Mommy. It’s like, oh, was I not a delight?

Sorry.

Sorry. Sorry about that. That’s it for our episode today.

We will have a link to Kate’s podcast, Be There In Five, in our episode description. But honestly, you can just find it by searching Be There In Five. It’s great, you will love Kate if you don’t already.

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You can do that monthly, annually, or as a supporting producer who gets their names in the credits and credit where credit is due. This episode was produced by Marcel Malekebu coordinated by Grace Barry.

Our opening theme music is by Geoffrey Lamar Wilson. And our closing theme music is by my youngest son Q, who was featured heavily in this episode.

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