Sh*t I Promised to Never Say to My Kids!

I read a funny blog post about how toddlers are like little drunk people. It’s no joke, they are little drunk buttheads. This morning, as I was leaving the house, I told Pickle to tell me “good-bye”. She turned to the sitter, waved and said “good-bye”, then tried to walk out the door with me. I shut the door just before the screaming began…I ran for the car and didn’t look back. I have a bad feeling that the “terrible twos” are beginning. I might need some sort of medication to get through this…I don’t think alcohol is enough.

As I ponder the terrible twos, I am reminded of “awesome*” comments that our folks used to use on us…and I am wondering how long it will take for me to use them on Pickle. Especially after I promised my teenage self that I would never use on my future children!

1. "Shape up or ship out!” Really, Mom and Dad? Where were you going to ship us out to? Grandma’s house, where we would be really spoiled? Good one.
2. “Wait until your father gets home!” This started around the time our Mom figured out she didn’t scare us anymore. Dad, that’s another story. I’m still scared shitless of getting that look…you know the one, the “I am very disappointed in you and can’t look at you right now” one? Yeah, I’m almost 40 and if I see that look, I shrivel up.
3. “Get in this house, RIGHT NOW...DeelaBryceSarah!” This is pretty funny…because at least six times this happened, one of us was lying in the driveway/yard/etc. crying because we had something broken/bee stung/some sort of silly injury. Only Mom didn’t know that yet and she loved to yell our names mashed together as one. We’ve never let her forget it! HAHA. My favorite one started with my brother lying in the yard on his bike (after he’d been in a full lower body cast for four months) and ended with Mom driving off with his leg propped on a pillow, out the window.
4. “Go look it up.” After asking what something meant or what it was, we were sent to the dictionary and encyclopedias to figure it out. It’s one of the coolest things they told us to do…if you want to know something, figure it out. I still LOVE encyclopedias, but I’m sure Pickle will just pull up her ipad and tell us what it is.

Other fantastic things, I fully expect to say to my child:

1. “Go pick a switch!” No judgement on this one…everyone was parented differently. But I will tell  you, the bigger the switch, the less likely she was to swing it. A tree trunk works great!
2. “Shut the door!” This is all of our favorite sayings that our Grandpa Ed used. The older kids remember a “damned” in the middle of that sentence. Who has time to shut the door when you’re terrorizing the grandparents house?!
3. “See you in the funny papers.” My Grandpa Fox never said much to us kids, but this I remember and it still makes me giggle.
4. “Stop jumping up and down, you’re making me nervous!” A Grandma quote…I never did stop jumping up and down. J
5. “What did you do?!?!” (with a horrified look)…I still get that question from my parents and husband, but that’s not stopping me from doing silly things.

And shit I never hope I hear from Pickle?! "You're SO MEAN!" and "That's not fair!" Ugh...I can feel karma heading my way.

*Awesome: once upon a time, we were using the word “awesome” (it was the late 80’s and cool to say)…my Dad finally got fed up and told us to grab the dictionary. We reported back to him that it meant massive or something like that…so in our house it was deemed that if you referred to something as “awesome”, it automatically meant that that thing was “big, dumb, stupid”. It was pretty mean of Papa Kirk, but we stopped using it. J

What silly things do you say to your kids that you said you would never say??