Background: Naomi loves her new Geekwear. For Christmas, I bought for her a Version 2.0 T-shirt and a new Geek in Training T-shirt to replace the one she’d outgrown.
She loves the shirts! She calls the “Geek in Training” one her “Mouse Shirt,” and asked for it every day several times a day when it was in the laundry. While that was being washed, she tried the “Version 2.0” shirt. (I suppose it really should be a Version 2.4 shirt, or maybe 2.3, depending on whether John gets—as the software equivalent of a buy-out—his own version number.) She went around showing people at church, pointing at the logo, and saying, “Version two oh.” Nichelle observed:
At Christmas, Doug bought Naomi two new geek shirts. She loves them. Yesterday, I was putting her laundry away and she spotted her V2.0 shirt and picked it up and hugged it. She was already dressed so I told her she could wear it to bed. She quickly took it and put it under her pillow and remembered to get it when it was bedtime.
At any rate, Naomi’s speech is becoming much more complex (even beyond calling me a weasel or a slacker). I called home one day, and she wanted to talk to me.
NaNi: Version 2.0
Dad: Your Version 2.0 shirt? I’m very glad you like it.
NaNi: Thank you, Daddy!
Dad: You’re welcome.
NaNi: Love you, Daddy. Bye!
She melts my heart!
She’s adorable.
I seem to remember David at that age would wear his “superhero” cape for days and days. There must be a Wilcox thing going on here. 🙂
You dont know the power of the Light side Nani. Their is a better way. Like take sports for example?
(Editor’s note: As this is a continuation of a post that was originally on Beth’s BLOG, I’ve moved the relevant discussion points here. See comments 2, 3, and 4, above.)
Rather than posting on Beth’s site, I thought I’d continue our conversation by posting on yours about kids being “fresh” mouthed.
I know you guys just do it in fun, but apparently you’ve already seen the types of problems that can arise with age and cleverness. (Good rules, btw.) Personally, I never had to encourage my kids in name-calling.;) Instead, I remember spending a lot of time teaching them verses like “Be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted…”, “Edify (build up) one another…” and “Let your speech be always with grace…”. I only point this out because control of my tongue and my wit have been lifelong trials!
Naomi learned to say goober today, and she started to add little to insults.
That little weasel!
So let me get this straight…you’re teaching your 2 year old to be insulting? Disrespect may not be so “cute” when she is 12, you know!
Yes, we’re teaching NaNi (I’ll bet Beth thinks “Sodium Nickel” when she sees that nickname) to be insulting. It’s very cute.
For the record, we allow insults in fun, but not disrespect. (With the boys toward each other, they have the further restriction that it can’t be founded in fact: So, for example, Isaac’s teeth or height are off-limits). Isaac needed some fine tuning in the fun versus disrespectful area when he was 10, and John tends to get a warning from time to time about “insults with meaning,” but overall it’s been an easy thing for the kids to follow.
…
One day when Isaac was around 2, he decided that he was going to call me by my first name. When corrected, he replied, “But I can’t say, ‘Daddy,’ Doug.”
Addendum: NaNi has been quoting movies of late. She seems to remember lines that are spoken in states of high excitement.
From the short “Jack Jack Attack,” that ships on the bonus features DVD that comes with The Incredibles (one of the few films I consider a “must have” for young and old alike—even my sister Cindy liked it):
Kari exclaims: “The baby was exploding! Have you ever sat an exploding baby, Mr. Dicker?”
NaNi’s condensed version is: “Baby exploding! Dicker!”
Yesterday she watched The Emperor’s New Groove (Disney’s surprisingly moral—compare my review of Mulan II—and extremely funny animated film), and was going around the house yelling, “Demon llama!”
Yesterday Naomi kept sneaking away from her supper to try to get popcorn (one of her favorite foods) from Isaac. About the third time she was reminded that she had to finish her supper first, she said, “Don’t want it. It’s yucky.”
Neither Nichelle nor I have any idea where she learned that.
This is completely unrelated, but very amusing: Geek Parents Using Cooling Technology Instead of Medicine to Lower Fevers.