Saturday, February 28, 2009

"What De Het?"

All parents of small children know they need to be careful what they say, as their children are sure to repeat it. The first time I was faced with Dear Daughter repeating my words was when she was about 20 months old and just finishing her potty training. She started to parrot "Oh crap!" one day, and I decided that even though "crap" isn't such a bad word, I wasn't sure I liked my 20 month old child saying it.

And yes, I said 20 months old and finishing potty training. Before you revere me too highly though, I'll confess that my boy-child (now three years and two months old) is STILL trying to get the concept. He understands it. He can do it when he wants to. He has been known to tell me he needs to go (even number two) while in public and make it to the toilet in time without any accidents. However, for some reason he has still not decided that he is ready for this to be a permanent and full time arrangement. Lately he has been running to his bedroom and closing the door and pooping in his pull up and then staying in "hiding" in his bedroom. Apparently his reasoning is that somehow I will never discover what he has done and he can just hide it forever. This reasoning falls apart though when he gets tired of carrying turds in his pants and begs me to change him.

But I digress.

Somewhere along the way Dear Son has heard me, and prolly his dad too, say "What the heck?" Now there are certainly much worse words to be said and much worse things to hear your young child parroting back. And if you've read my spot for very long, you know that my language is not always especially "refined" despite the fact that four letter words are not common place in my vernacular. You'll remember that phrases like "pissed off" do not offend me, nor do words such as "ass." It would stand to make sense that "What the heck?" does not bother me either. It is, however, amusing to hear my barely three year old son in the back seat of the car seeing something intriguing outside his window and stating with great incredulousness, "What de het?"

I've been a bit absent in the past weeks (months!). The drama in my professional life had become all consuming. But fortunately I am stepping out of that now and into something new. The new direction has also been a bit consuming as I have had an incredible amount of redirecting and reorienting to get in order. My feet have still not quite landed, but I'm seeing more clearly and feeling more centered. I can best sum up the past six months of my life in the words of my boy-child: "What de het?"

3 comments:

Riahli said...

Ha ha, I've had my share of Oh No you didn't just say that, man do we need to clean up our vocabulary situations. My husband had a horrible habit of saying Damn it, which drove me crazy. One day a while ago he was getting frustrated trying to fix something and let that fly in front of Bubu who had just turned three at the time. Bubu copied him and we all had a little chat about how daddy shouldn't have said that and such. Well a few hours later we were going somewhere and I was buckling in the babies, Bubu looked at me real calmly and said matter of factly, "Buckle me in damn it." OMGoodness! Needless to say I went off on my husband, later, and he has not let that choice word fly again, at least not around us. Wish I could say the same for Bubu.

Glad to hear things are falling into place for you.

Lori said...

Glad things are starting to settle down with the job. When you hadn't been posting I figured you had more important things to take care and would be around when you could. Too funny about your son! I call my little people, my little repeaters!

CaraBee said...

I don't curse a lot, but enough that I need to start watching my mouth a little better. I know we're just around the corner from my little one dropping the f-bomb as she mimics her mama.