Vocabulary Adventures - Anatomy

The age of 3, what can I say? It's my third time experiencing the age of 3 with my children, and I'd have to say that while it is one of the most frustrating ages, it is definitely one of the funniest. Terrible 2's? Didn't have them at my house. Don't know if we are just blessed or what.

I seem to still be in denial that a 3-year-old must absolutely interact with me verbally every moment of every day, whether it be "Look at this mom.", "What's this mom?", "You be this guy.", etc. There is no getting away with an "uh-huh" or a head nod, it absolutely MUST be accompanied by eye contact in order to convey a true connection. I'm just grateful the stage where I had to actually repeat what he says to convey to him that he was truly heard seems to be passing.

Why can I still say after 11 years that being talked to all day long is frustrating? Because it is. I guess it doesn't help that I hear doctor voices in my head all day long through dictation, that my husband has to talk to me, and that he, combined with the children, seem to be yakkin' away AT me all at the same time a good part of each day......by the end of the day, I just want to cover my ears, slouch down against a wall onto the floor, and holler "No more voices! No more voices in my head!" (Then I would actually look as crazy as I feel most of the time.)

Even though I expected my children to talk a lot at the age of 3, I don't think anything really prepares you for just how much some 3-year-olds can really talk. ALLLLLL DAAAAYYYYY LOOOOOOOOOONG. It seems to accompany that strong will to do things for themselves, to take a crack at hanging with the big guys, and attempting to act like anything other than 3 years old. With it, however, are those hilarious moments when they attempt trying the "big" words out in a sentence - just gotta love them. They elicit laughter out of me every single day, even in moments of frustration.

Not too long ago, G asked what those balls were "down here." I told him they were called testicles. Fast forward a couple of weeks later wherein the word was never uttered again.....I noticed G checking out his stuff in the tub. I asked him, "Whatchya doin'?" He said, "I'm touchin' my knuckles mom."

It brings back a memory from my first. His version of testicles was teck-a-skulls, and they had been referred to as skulls ever since, until, that is, they magically became knuckles. I remember back then in the "skull" era when my son and daughter were still young enough to bathe together and he asked me what her's was called. While she didn't have the ability or desire to ask yet herself, she understood the answer.....as soon as I said "Vagina," she started skipping through the house sing-songing "annnngiiiiiina, angina....." I just let her go. She was a singer and sang all day long with any word she could form or think up, and the last thing I wanted was to have to explain why she turned the word vagina into a song strewn together with any other random word. Oh, the possibilities!

(For those of you upset that we don't encourage or force them to say the words the right way, chill out. No, I'm not scared of the real words, and neither are they, and they do know them. We call hands patties, feet dogs, and heads noggins, and we aren't scared of those either.)

When I was little, my grandmother, born and raised down South, had us calling our stuff possums. You should have seen the look on our faces, all girls, when we asked our mother what that dead creature in the road was, and her answer was "A possum." It's still good for a laugh, and I predict the same reaction from my son the first time he hears the phrase "You wanna knuckle sammich?"