Listening Ears...

On a very regular basis O and I talk about her "listening ears"... For the most part, this discussion centers around me telling her that they seem to be broken, or at least that is my assumption for why she does not seem to listen to me.  This conversation has a tendency to start about the time that I am repeating myself for the fifth time... Fortunately for me, she does not yet understand when I am being sarcastic...  But I am noticing that while she may not catch the sarcasm, she is picking up plenty of other things...

On the way home from school one evening last week, we had the following conversation:

O: "Mom, I going to change my name..."
M: "Change your name?  What are you changing your name to?"
O: "I changing it to Glare"
M: "Glare???  Do you mean Claire?"
O: "No, mama, GLARE"
M: "Why do you want to change your name?  Olivia is such a pretty name..."
O: "Mama... that name is just killin' me!"

Killing her?  When I could stop laughing, I realized that she has most likely heard me use that expression several times... And that is not the only one that she has picked up... I have heard her repeat several things that I know she learned from those of us that she spends the most time with.  Sayings such as... "are you kidding me?", as well as a few choice words that I wish she had not heard... She recently exclaimed "what da heck?!" and I felt like I could have been having a conversation with her dad (thankfully he has edited the hell to heck).

So, the lesson is this... Toddlers clearly possess selective hearing...  For my married mom friends, you should be accustomed to dealing with this as husbands tend to have the same condition.  So, while toddlers do not hear the things that you want them to...or at least not the first time that you say it...they do hear it when you yell it for the fifth time.  But, they also happen to hear the things you don't want them to hear the very first time that you say them...  Beware of those listening ears...