Baby Milestones

Three major milestones yesterday in my daughter's transition from toddlerhood to preschooler.

1. She hit me. She wanted to be picked up and I said "not right now I'm cooking dinner". Her frustration grew instantly and she screamed "NO!" and then smacked me on the leg with her hand. I let her know, sternly, that hitting is not good and you dont hit mommy. She burst out crying. I picked her up a few minutes later when dinner was in the oven, and we had a "chat" about not hitting, that its not nice, and we don't hit in our house. She seemed to understand. At least she could see that I still loved her and could be tender and loving towards her despite her unacceptable behaviour.

2. She finally has her bottom molars poking through her gums. Finally at 17 months she's almost able to chew food, and not resort to either trying to swallow chunks whole (she chokes frequently) or for us to cut things up into such tiny pieces it's not fun for her to eat. She does try to mash things up with her front teeth, but she's not always successful.

3. She cursed. Now before this sounds too awful, toddlers are prone to making up a lot of nonsense words and not knowing what they mean. Her favourites lately are mostly two syllable ones such as "ag-doh" and "da-bee". She's also been heard saying "la-vash, ba-doh, da-bah, ba-gah, ba-deesh, za-bah". She also occasionally comes out with "a-go-doh" which has something to do with her crate of soft-blocks. I haven't figured this one out yet. She does have a few nonsense words that actually mean something.. her own little language. She uses the word "ahm-ee" for lemon, and "ack" for eyeglasses or sunglasses.

But last night, amid the usual nonsense words, came something that sounded like "sh*t". My husband looked at me, I looked at him, our eyes met, they grew wide, and then I burst out laughing. I had to leave the table so as not to encourage her from saying it over and over (as toddlers love to do when they find something that makes adults laugh). It sounded SO funny in her little baby voice, her saying something that sounded a lot like a curse word.

I know curse words are vulgar, and improper, and probably a sin in some people's books, but I have often found cursing funny. Particularly when I'm extremely stressed, and/or it comes from people who dont seem like the cursing type: proper, formal, uptight people, sweet elderly grandmothers, and toddlers who dont really know what they're saying yet.

Aaaah. Parenthood is waay too funny sometimes.