Today's Post Is Brought To You By The Letter F

It's been an eventful week or so...nothing to write home about, but who writes letters these days anyway?  We've been a quasi single parent home lately since the husband has been (and will be) travelling quite a lot, so I think the kids try to put on their best behavior to help me out.  And by best behavior I mean, biting siblings, screaming matches, the beginnings of refusing to take naps, back talk, temper tantrums..you know.  Behavior fit for a visit from the Queen.  Oh! The best was the learning of a new word.  Sadly, it wasn't the non-talker who decided to start speaking, no it was the older sister who decided her vocabulary was not colourful enough. 

I was standing in the kitchen putting some dishes away while the girl played nicely in the living room.  She asked me a question, and I wasn't really paying attention (as usual since we could set a record for number of questions asked in a day) until she asked me again.  Now, her repetition of things is nothing new, so I may have ignored the question another time or two except this time her question almost made me drop whatever dish I had in my hand at the time.  I wasn't sure if I should laugh, cry, pick my jaw up off the ground or just keel over...but I picked my jaw up, held on to the counter, looked her in the eye and said, "Excuse me?"  To which she nonchalantly looked at me and said, "Mom? What's a ___ (rhymes with truck, duck, luck, puck...you get the idea)."  Since I continued to stare at her for what must have been forever, she decided she would just keep asking until I answered her.  I had no idea what to say!!  At first I was sure I had just misheard what she said, so I made the mistake of asking, "a what?"  and she told me.  Plain as day.  Then naivety set in and I said, "you mean a fork?"  Nope.  A ____.  I lost track of how many times she actually said it, but let's just say if she had been in a movie, it would have been rated R.  After I was able to convince her it wasn't a real word, I was more concerned with where she heard it from.  She first tried to blame it on her brother, but since he really only says "mama", I figured that wasn't true.  Her answer was that it was just in her head.  She never budged from that answer all night.  Thankfully, she has not uttered that word again.  I choose to believe that since she is into discovering rhyming words she must have been going through some "uck" words and the alphabet and...voila!  The Christmas Story live in my living room.  I am just waiting to get pulled aside at her school or in church to discuss her new vocabulary!!  Oh kids.  They say the darndest things.  Maybe Truman's first word will be something as awesome and he's just waiting for the right time to drop that bomb.

Hopefully it's just a phase.  They say everything's a phase, right?  It can't last that long, can it?  Maybe it's because it's winter and we don't get outside much.  Or maybe it's too much Yo Gabba Gabba?  Nope, they teach you to NOT bite your friends.  Well, whatever it is, if you hear my 3.5 year old curse you out like a sailor...please don't hold it against me.  I'll just blame it on pregnancy brain.