They are such sponges, I really do need to be more careful

My two year old is like a never filled up sponge. She copies everything everyone says and does around here it gets scary sometimes. And guess who she imitates most? Yep, you guessed it right....ME.

I have this habit of clicking my tongue when I'm impatient or frustrated about something. I've done it so much that even when you're looking at mouth you can't really tell if I was actually doing something with mouth, but you can hear the sound. That is one of things that my sweet little two year old has picked up from me. And when she play house, with her dolls, she would pull her shirt up and nurses her baby dolls like I usually do. It's totally uncanny but she can imitate me so perfectly you would think she was me...LOL.

And of course, she loves imitating her siblings too. And her oldest sister loves to teach her some very poor manners and not so admiring words for a little kid...LOL.

One of things I do, and I am not proud of it by all means, is when I get mad at my kids, I can really swear up a storm....really bad for a mom to use some very unladylike and colorful words in the presence of children. {Don't look at me like that, I am only human and I grew up with six older brothers whose first language is foul language, I am bound to pick up a few words here and there...no?)

So a few days ago, I was in one of those days, where the kids are just not cooperating. I think one of my boys had struck a nerve on me or something because I was stomping over to him yelling, "I'm going to beat!!" and I caught myself just in time and stopped right there with my hand smacked over my mouth, thinking my toddler is toddling after me somewhere. And to my shocking or should I say, embarrassing surprise, I heard this cute little voice finishing up my sentence, "the shit {it sounded like sit} outta you."

You can imagine how I must feel at that moment, right? My mind was racing, trying to figure out exactly when in the past few days or weeks have I said that very thing did she hear me say it and remember that was how to the sentence ends.

That brought back a memory I had of when my teenagers were just little kids. Back when there were the three kids, my oldest girl who five at the time, the second girl who was three and my boy who was eighteen months then. I thought about a specific incident that happened back in 1996. Back then we were living in the student housing at BYUH and I haven't been driving very long so I tend to get nervous when I was driving on unfamiliar roads.

So we were driving home from Honolulu after visiting some friends, just me and the three kids. We were about forty five minutes away from home and had come upon kind of a heavy traffic and of course I was nervous so I was paying really close attention to the road. And suddenly something caught my eye in the rear view mirror and when I looked closely at it, my three year old, Jen, was standing on the seat in the back of the van. Not only did she manage to wiggle her way out of her car seat in the middle row but she had climbed over the seat to the very back row of the van and was standing there looking out the window with total satisfaction of her accomplishment while she was enjoying the view as though we were sight seeing. My heart stopped for minute and the next minute I was ranting and raving like a freaking lunatic and of course some very colorful words were thrown in there with the rantings. It was bad. As soon as I could change lane, I pulled over and strapped her back down in her seat, the whole time scolding her.

All I could think then were 1. if the police see us, we will be in trouble and 2. if I had to suddenly step on the brake, she would go flying. I spent the rest of the drive mumbling to myself. When we finally reached home, I pulled into our parking stall and there was my hubby standing there all happy to see us. I was still trying to make myself calm down. He walked over to the side of the van and helped the kids out of the car and guess what my sweet little Jen blurted out?

"Dad, mom was yelling at me in the car and she said the "F" word", and then she proceeded to imitate my voice and repeated every single word I said even right down to my tone of voice. If my skin color was pale, it would clearly show how red it was because I could feel my face burning from embarrassment. I had to look around the parking lot to see if anyone was around to hear my daughter imitate me like that. I could see that my husband was trying very hard not to crack up from what my daughter was saying and the expression I wore on my face. I wished at that moment that the gravel would open up and swallow me right up. And my sweet little girl was just too happy to keep repeating back what I said since my hubby kept asking her to repeat herself but never, mind you, never did she bother to tell her dad why I used such language. As I stomped away from them, I heard my five year, Steph, defended me saying..

"Dad, it was Jen's fault. She climbed out of her seat and then climbed into the back seat and stood up there while mom was driving."

That was the last thing I heard as I ran up the stairs to our apartment to bury my head in shame.

So now, my sweet little two year old is constantly trailing after me, sponging up everything I do and say and repeating it back.