Mom On The Rocks

It's occurred to me that my kids are really growing up. They are now riding off on their bikes they are too big for. They've had the bikes for two years because they were two and too big for tricycles.

Yes, we've covered their physical enormousness. It's become very apparent in the last week that their vocabulary and communication skills are maturing as well. They've been talking and using words since way before they were one. Being the communications major that I am, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but... TOOT TOOT!

Their vocabularies have been big; their creativities with their vocabularies has been entertaining. We thought nothing of it, until we got visitors, asking, "What are they talking about?"

Yes, we're the obnoxious parents, "Oh, that's code for this or that. Isn't that so cute, they came up with it all on their own."

They are only days away from turning 4 years old, and the code words are fading fast. There's only two left. We're holdling on to it as long as we can. Here's a few words and their translations that we bid farewell to:

The New Gym - We switched gyms almost a year ago. They still use this one on occasion, and then question themselves.

Spicy Juice - any caffeine-free, clear, carbonated beverage.

Which seques beautifully into:

Mommy Juice - This is any juice the kids are forbidden to touch: vodka tonics, beer & tomatoe juice slyfully disguised as "mommy's breakfast juice" Mommy Juice can also be caffeinated beverages. The kids still refer to this one on occasion, but not too much because they just know to not even think about touching my juice.

Booger Holes - We have no clue where this one came from, but one day, we're at the zoo checking out the gorillas and Max says, "He's got big booger holes!" And so be it. Yes that gorilla did, and we just thought it was so cute, we never corrected him. Some fool corrected him and he now refers to it as nostrils. Damn.

Flat Cheese - Try and guess. Anyone? I'll give you a minute. Did you get it? It's American Cheese. In our home, we cook nothing that can't be corrected with a little extra cheese.Some people can fix anything with duct tape, I prefer cheese. So, my kids are well versed in cheese sticks, cheese cubes, shredded cheese, and flat cheese. Aren't they brilliant?!

Boing-Boing - noun and verb references to trampoline or jumping on a trampoline.

Tuesday School - Preschool that is attended on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was just school until we got them signed up for Sunday School... Pretty brilliant on their end, don't you think? It was quite a doozie when this year, we started Monday/Wednesday/Friday school. Whew! Somehow, we got it through that it was called Pre-K. That's when they asked about college. "Sweetie, can we get to Kindergarten before you start jumping to college?"

Daddy's Hot Ride - This is a conglomeration of what should be referred to as a Hot Rod, and the lump of car in our garage. The lump now has a sweet paint job, no interior, and I think it might have an engine in it. I've pushed it in and out of the garage one too many times to refer to it anything less than the lump. The kids now call it what I guess is the correct term, the Chevelle.

Yummy Milk - Chocolate or Strawberry Milk. And you better differentiate, because one likes chocolate, one likes strawberry.

The weak should not read the following terms. I'll be brief, but again, it's worthy of writing and reading. Lucy came up with these in a moment of, er, stomach illness.

The three degrees of poop:
Pee Poop (Worse), Barf Poop (Bad), Snake Poop (Better). I'll leave this for you to figure out. But isn't that brilliant? What a genius! Thankfully, these three terms have depleted from their vocabularies because they haven't had to use those descriptions in a while.

There's one that both Max and Lucy are holding on to: Ungumbrella. Yep, it's just your average umbrella. This one we've tried to correct along with Gumbraska. They now say Nebraska, but Ricardo and I are just at a loss over the Ungumbrella. Now that we bid ado to the other funny phrases, we'll hold on to this one as long as we can. We (and when I say we, I'm including Ricardo in this unvoluntarily) pride ourselves in fun, funny and laughter in this family life of ours. So, I hate to say goodbye to such fun terms. I guess Lucy calling her college coach to tell her that she can't go to Tuesday School because she has pee poop because she drank a bad batch of Mommy juice probably isn't a good idea. So, we'll allow this growing up thing, for now. That's only because I know eventually, they'll slip and come up with another funny term.

That's how I roll.