GG is growing up fast, and as she grows, so do I.  I should preface this post by explaining how I feel about language.  I love language.  Like, really, really love it.  I believe that words have meaning only because of the connotations and societal expectations and norms that surround them.  As a poet and someone who often (even in person) speaks and exists in a manner that includes emphasis, I even love cursing.  I love it for many many reasons.  Obviously, there is context.  When teaching?  Not so much with the cursing.  Around my 3 year old?  Really making sure to watch everything I say.  Why?  Because being a mom is hard enough without strangers looking at me while my cherub utters F-bombs like I am Satan’s asshole.

I digress,  Hubband who I predicted would be the better behaved parent, keeps forgetting.  He curses much more than I.  And yet, GG has latched on to the phrase “Mommy says Fuck.”  You can’t argue with a 3 year old and you can’t change their minds.  At best, you hope they forget the phrase.  For, the record mommy does not say “fuck” (in front of Garnett).

Being a mom (particularly a stay-at-home mom) involves a lot of unwritten rules and pressure.  It occurred to me the other day that speaking out of popular opinion is so drastic that is is what I imagine a Nazi during WW II who hated Hitler felt like.  I understand this is an extreme example, and I am in no way undermining the trauma of the Holocaust.  What I am saying, is that admitting things that make you look like a bad parent in the world I am living in now, will only end up making you feel like crap.  I have met 2 moms in the last three years that I can be completely honest and who are honest with me.  This includes everyone I already knew and new friends.  Two.  That’s akin to five percent of all the moms I know.

It is hard to even write blog posts about it because, as I quickly discovered, there is a large amount of animosity and mom guilt dependent upon specific circumstances.  All moms have mom guilt.  Or at least all of the type A ones (including me) that I know.  Working moms have guilt about working and stay-at-home moms have guilt about how much exposure to other children/educational tools they are getting.  It goes much deeper than this but the point is that we all beat ourselves up in our own ways and for our own reasons.

Tangential tirade aside, Hubband is the less patient and more dirty-languaged parent, which is what no one who knew us expected.  So it is supremely maddening when GG says “Mommy say fuck,” because dammit mommy did not say fuck.  So, to a certain degree I am dead inside about all of this because I know when we are at the Children’s museum or zoo or aquarium, or trampoline place or any of the other 7 million activities we do regularly, she is inevitably going to rat me out for something I didn’t even do.

Now that you have the backstory, we are riding home from my best friend’s house when GG starts in on her favorite new phrase, “Mommy say fuck.”  I was frustrated and also she won’t be in this phase for very long so having her repeat things is entertaining (don’t judge).  So I say, “I like vaginas.”  I figure this is a pro-woman body positive thing to say, plus bonus points for funny.  So GG starts in, “I like baginas, mommy hey mommmmmyyyy, I like baginas.”  I am dying.  I am shaking uncontrollably and Hubband is trying to be stern while shooting me intermittent serious looks in the midst of his own losing-his-shit-to-the-hilarity.  We rode home for five whole minutes like that and I don’t regret it for a second.  I’m sure in the future I might, but it is just as likely she will say the “fuck” phrase and in that case, I would rather have vaginas.