Kid Amnesiac

Thank Goodness. I mean, Thank Goodness. Possibly even, THANK GOODNESS! I have finally decoded a bit of Simon’s speech, and it has brought no end of relief.

For ages now-literally months-Simon has been walking around saying variations of “Mommy, shee”. Occasionally it would be, “Daddy, shee” or maybe even “Bubbie, shee”, but the last word never ever changed. Except when it sounded more like “sheet” than “shee.”

More than once, with a blush of mortification, Matt and I exchanged meaningful glances and  silently beseeched Simon to please not let that be, pretty-please let that not be, Oh Dear! I’ll do anything if that’s just not what it really, truly sounded like.

The minute your kid pipes up with something like this in public, at a mall say, or at pre-school, you get branded as a bad parent. Or at least as not a nice parent. Nice people live in nice houses and rear nice kids who do not begin swearing in public at two. It just isn’t done. It’s like those other nice people rules in suburbia: you have to cut your grass, you don’t paint your house neon orange, and you don’t send your toddlers out the door armed with a full vocabulary of potty-language.

So while it could be worse-and a shout out now to a friend whose son gets very excited about trucks but mispronounces the word in an unfortunate way-it could also be a lot, lot better.

But last night Simon was emphatically trying to get my attention to show me something. When I didn’t comply right away, he pointed to his object of interest, raised his voice, and squeaked out a “Mommy, shee” with a “sh” sound that was halfway to “s”, as in “Mommy, see!” It makes total sense. We’ve been showing him things for ages, and everything is prefaced by “Simon, look!” or “Simon, see!” This probably should have been obvious to us earlier, but we were too terrified of the other possibility to think straight.