Potty Mouth

I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that this post actually has nothing to do with the potty.

Since Soren learned to talk about five years ago, I've been pretty good about watching my language in front of him. In fact, he's only picked up one curse from me, and it isn't one of the really bad ones, so I consider that a victory. He was taking a bath a few months ago (he's had a couple more since then), and I remembered that I'd forgotten to bring my library books back or something like that and said "Dammit!" Of course, as soon as it left my mouth, I knew it would come back to haunt me, because kids and parrots love to repeat words spoken with a lot of emotion. Leland never did learn any curses that we could decipher, but now "dammit" has entered Soren's vocabulary. He's only said it a couple times, and only busts it out when our friend Bryn is around, for some reason. She must be a bad influence. (I kid)

So yesterday, Bryn and her boys were visiting, and Soren dropped the D-bomb. I calmly called him over and let him know that it wasn't a nice word, and that if he said it again, he would get a time-out. A couple minutes later, whaddya know, I had to give him a time-out.

He sat out his three minutes without much trouble, and when the timer went off, he came down for his usual hug and non-specific apology, which prompts me to ask for a little more detail because I want to make sure he remembers what he got in trouble for in the first place:

"Sorry, Mama."

"Sorry for what?"

You know what's coming, right? Because I did.

"Sorry for saying 'dammit'."

So I sent his butt straight back into time-out.

Awww, no, not really. I just let him know that maybe next time (not that there will be one, right?) he could say "Sorry for saying a bad word" instead.