A Conversation on Post-It Notes

Who says that Mark and I have communication problems?  I think that we're communicating just fine.  Case in point:

Nice one, daddy!

Today I overheard Kara use an ugly phrase while she was playing in the playroom. It involved taking the name of the Lord in vain, combined with the more dastardly version of the word "darn it".

I was in the adjacent kitchen, and quickly stepped into the room to correct her errant ways. As soon as I walked into the room and said, "Kara ..." she quickly scampered behind the couch. No need to question whether or not she knew that it was a bad word! Her scampering off told me that she knew very well.

I forged on. "Kara, what did I just hear you say? That was NOT a nice word. We don't talk like that, and I don't ever want to hear you say such a nasty thing again."

Kara's response?

"Well, that's what daddy said to me when I wet my bed!"

Fighting back and inappropriate snicker, I turned away from Kara and started walking towards daddy's office saying, "well let's go talk to daddy about that right now". You know, because obviously I couldn't talk to her about it with that grin on my face.

We entered daddy's office, but he didn't turn around from his computer screen. He just said that he'd "be out in a minute to talk to us". It was then that I noticed the up and down movement of his shoulders, and the barely audible sound of laughter. Great. Apparently he had heard the whole thing, and neither of us was up to the challenge of being an adult at the moment.

We dropped the ball. For the rest of the night, all I could think of was that we dropped the ball. Kara said a bad word, and we didn't follow through with an appropriate, parent-like response.

Late the next night, as I took Kara to the bathroom for one of her middle-of-the-night trips, she smiled at me from her perch on the toilet seat. Pajamas around her ankles, hair all tousled about, drool dried at the corners of her lips. She looked up at me and said, "Mama, I'll never say God-d@*&%# again. I promise."

Well, what do you know? Lesson learned. Cross that. . . lesson self-taught, by a 3 year old.