What a Vocabulary!

There is still sickness in my house. My 22 year old cousin caught the flu from one of us last week and was hit hard with the body aches and the stomach pain. She ventured downstairs as the kids and I ate dinner last night, saying that although she felt terrible, she was starving. Paige took over. She stood up from the table and walked over to the pantry, not too close to Jessica because she didn't want to get sick again. The conversation went like this:

"Jessica, Mommy said you have to stay away from all milk products like yogurt and cheese, and even cookies because cookies are made with butter and butter is a milk product."

Jessica looked at her and smiled and asked, "Okay, then what do you think I should have?"

Paige answered, determined to heal Jessica's sickness. "You can have some warm pop (Coke) and maybe some crackers."

"That's a good idea!" Jessica said and reached in for the crackers.

"But don't have too many because then you'll get a belly ache and puke."

"Okay." Jessica replied and started for her room again.

"Oh, and Jessica?"

"Yes?"

"You just have to persevere."

Jessica was so stunned by Paige's use of the word and smiled, wanting to hug her. Paige took a few steps backwards and said, "I'll hug you when you're all better."

* * *

Now Tony has been getting into a little trouble for using potty talk - poop, pee and stupid seem to be his favorite words. I've tried to take away toys when he uses potty talk but it doesn't work because the boy has so many toys! We were sitting at the dinner table and he was throwing his three favorite words out in the form of a sentence.

"What was your favorite part of the day Tony?"

"Playing at school." Nice, I smiled. "Stupid, poopy head." Apparently, he wasn't finished with his sentence although there was a clear pause. I shook my head, exasperated but tried to ignore it. Then a brilliant idea popped into my head.

I said to both Tony and Paige, "Say Japan." They repeated it. "Say China." They repeated and I went through a few countries. Then I said, "I'm going to tell you a new word, but it's a potty word and you can't say it in front of anyone - you can only say it in your bedroom because it's a really bad potty word." I had their attention.

Tony asked, his eyes popping, his whole demeanor turned toward me, eager, and asked, "What is it?"

I said, "Czechoslovakia!" He repeated it perfectly while Paige had some trouble and we needed to work on it. Throughout the night, when their voices began to whine, or they started pushing at each other, I would yell, "Czechoslovakia!" They would giggle and stop their crazy behavior.

This morning, the first thing Tony said to me was, "Good morning Czechoslovakia." I smiled but said, "That's potty talk..."

He smiled deviously and said, "I know, Stupid."