Warning: dirty words ahead!

I'm beginning to think that children must go through a Tourette-like stage in their toddler / pre-school years.

Finslippy's cherub makes up words. My Boy prefers yelling out the inappropriate, or in the case of yesterday (just for variety), the obscene.

No lie. We were half way through the Wal Mart food section when Boy suddenly sings out: "PENIS!" like a street merchant trying to attract attention to his wares. This was followed immediately by: "Willy, cootchie, BOOBIES!"

Darling Hubby looked frowningly at me (like his son was some malfunctioning electronic device and only I had the remote).

"Boobies, BUM, cootchie, PENIS! Hahahahahahah!" said Boy.

At which point I burst into laughter.

I don't think that my admonishment carries nearly the weight when I'm wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.

----

Yeah, we're pretty free around here with general anatomical references. I mean, with little, curious people around you have to call a spade a spade (or a willy a willy as the case may be). I don't feel like the human body is anything to be ashamed of. Of course this attitude leads to convos like this one:

My oldest daughter, Tall Girl, has developed the charming habit of asking what everything is (degree of charm in opposite proportion to number of times she has asked that hour).

“What’s dat right dare?” she’ll ask, gesturing vaguely. If you ask “where?” she chirps with great excitement “Dat! Right dare!”

Cut to nursery the other day getting ready for naps. Tall girl has also been asking to sit on the pot of late (we have one in the bathroom and one in the nursery) which I allow her to do whenever the mood strikes her. She rarely does anything on it, but what the heck. So she’s sitting there cutely on the pot, naked from the waist down, humming to herself while I put her sister down in her crib.

Suddenly I hear: “What’s dat right dare?!” and turn to find her standing doubled over, peering between her legs.

Yep. She’d discovered her own cootchie.

Tall Girl: (muffled) “What’s dat right dare?!”
Me: (stifling laughter) “That’s your cootchie, sweetie”
TG: (Still muffled, but thoughtful) “Toooooooochie”
(Enter Boy, also naked from the waist down – this is how he sleeps)
Boy: (authoratatively) “You have tootchie an’ momma has toochie”
Me: “and bitty sister has toochie … I mean a cootchie”
(pause as everyone studies Bitty Girl who stares back at us like we’re mad.)
Boy: (helpfully) “An’ I have a willy … see? (lifts shirt and thrusts out his wee package) An’ dada has a willy …”
TG: “wilwee?”
Boy: “… an’ a BUM!”
Me: (sensing that this is going astray) “Everybody has a bum and now we need to get in bed and go to sleep …”
Boy: (moving from zero to outraged in one half second) “NO! *I* have a BUM an’ DADA has a BUM! Ya’ll don’t have BUMS!”
TG: “Bums!”
Me: “Ok … time for bed ..”
Boy: “NO MOMMA! You DON'T HAVE a BUM!”

My son: Junior Professor of Anatomy.