“Oofta!”
Yes, apparently one or both Jason and I say “oofta.” Yes, we also live in North Dakota, so it probably happens more than we ever realize. This fact was hammered home to us the other night at supper when Jason said, “oofta” after A had a coughing spell. K looked at him and said, “Asa poopy?” So apparently, we not only use the word oofta, but we use it as an expletive when changing a smelly diaper.
More and more over the past few weeks, we’ve been hearing K repeat things that we have said to him. One night, Jason was giving him two choices for getting his diaper changed. K kept telling Jason that he didn’t want to have his (poopy) diaper changed. He wanted to wear it. (On a side note, you can tell we’re not exactly steaming down the road of potty learning :-). ) Jason told him, “That’s not a choice.” Later that night during the bedtime routine, K and Jason were talking and at one point, K said to Jason, “No, Daddy, that not a choice.”
Last week, we spent a little time with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. One of the days, my nieces (ages 6 and 4 were over). At one point, I heard them arguing, and the six year old was saying, “That’s fair!” to her sister over whether or not she needed to share some toys with her. Fast forward to this morning. I was showing K the new library books we had checked out for this week. He was pretty excited about them, and he kept pulling them out of the bag and saying, “That very fair!”
Then, there are the things he picks up that I’m not sure where they came from. “You know better, Mommy!” “A, you being bad!” “No, no, no, no, no!” These are not things we say to him. I know that now that his peers are speaking more and we are around more and different people, his pool of experiences to draw from also grows.
He’s at an age where he is such a sponge. He doesn’t have preconceived ideas of what is fun or not fun (video games vs. books) or what music is good or not good (pop music vs. opera). He loves so many different things. I think that his new tendency to repeat things that we say at just the right time is good for us in more than one way. While it reminds me that he’s always listening to what we say, it also reminds me that he is picking stuff up All. The. Time. I am raising a little sponge, and I want him to be able to absorb all that he can before this time ends.




