Like other toddlers, Baby Girl has the uncanny ability to pick up on every word that isn’t quite appropriate for her to say. Even if she hears it just once, her radar goes off and she adds it to her lexicon.
Bilbo had just swiped Baby Girl’s snack off the table, and after yelling at him, she said, “Bilbo a dummy!”
I’d be irritated, too, but that was a bit harsh. “We don’t say ‘dummy’ Baby Girl, that’s not nice,” I told her. “Did you hear someone say it at school?”
“No, Mommy, I hear Daddy say dummy,” she answered.
“Ha ha! It wasn’t me this time!” Little Man, who has been getting lectured over certain words he’s taught Baby Girl, exclaimed. “Oooooooh, Daddy is in trouble! He called Bilbo a dummy when he wouldn’t come inside last night.”
I called Sam in to explain the situation and ask if that were true, figuring that he’d take a hint and say that he shouldn’t have called the dog a dummy.
“Yeah, I called him a dummy, because he is a dummy. He wouldn’t come inside when it was raining.”
I sighed. “But is that a nice word to use when talking about our dog?”
“It’s true.”
Little Man giggled. I sighed a bit louder and gave Sam the look.
“Baby Girl, Daddy shouldn’t have called Bilbo a ‘dummy.’ That wasn’t nice, okay? You don’t go around calling people dummies,” Sam told her.
“Dummy,” she said, with a grin on her face.
A little while later, I was helping Little Man with his homework. He had a thick math packet to complete from when he was absent. I helped him through it, but not without him trying to drive me crazy by getting out of his seat every five seconds to check on something or pee or get a drink or see what Baby Girl was doing with the tablet or to get a snack… It didn’t help that Baby Girl kept interrupting us with her list of demands. “Mommy, you get my milk, please. Mommy, I want a cereal bar. Mommy, I want my favorite sucker. Mommy, I want a THAT.” (When she’s not sure what she wants, she’ll ask for a “THAT” and wait for me to suggest things that she could possibly want.)
“Y’all gonna make me lose my mind up in here, up in here. Y’all gonna make me act a fool, up in here, up in here. Y’all gonna make me lose my cool, up in here, up in here,” I sang. This was better than saying other words.
“Ooh, what song was that?” Little Man wanted to know.
“The theme song to my life. I don’t know, the name is Y’all Gonna Make Me Lose My Mind or something. Let me look it up on YouTube.”
So I did. And I started playing it and then Little Man started break dancing. And then Sam came back in.
“Oh, my god, E, what are you letting them listen to?!” He rushed over to the computer.
“That Y’all Gonna Make Me Lose My Mind song. Why?”
He close the tab with the song playing. “Did you not hear the words he was saying?”
“Just the opening part.”
He whispered some of the rest of the song in my ear. (You can read the lyrics here.) Yikes. Luckily LM couldn’t understand any more of the song, either.
“So, dear, you do realize that you were just riding me about saying ‘dummy’ around Baby Girl, right?” Sam asked. “And then you play a really explicit DMX song to them a few minutes later?”
Hmph.