On second thought, literacy is overrated

Yesterday I took the day off of work to be home with the kids to cover the public school closing for Martin Luther King Day and, to be honest, for a three-day weekend AND to watch the Inauguration. (Was thwarted BIG TIME by DEMANDING CHILDREN WANTING TO PLAY but no matter. Snuck glances  at the ceremony when Noah's back was turned.) Towards the middle of the afternoon when Noah was napping, I was messing around on the computer (and cursing it out under my breath for being an asshat), I detected with my keen Mommy sense that Noelle might be a little...bored. Barbie: A Mermaid's Tale can only hold one's attention for so long after all so I offered to play a game with her or read or do a puzzle. I clearly win at engaging-your-child parenting. Anyway, she chose the Super Why word builder game.

I was a bit surprised by that choice as I was fully expecting something like Twister or Sorry or even Fancy Nancy's Perfectly Pfabulous Parfaits or something. No matter. I'm cool, I'm hip, I can roll with it. (Ha. Haaaa.) So we began.

I had the purple and green letter cards (boy colors, CLEARLY) and she had red and pink (because GIRL. DUH.) We then took turns putting cards down in the order she dictated until we had three rows of four cards each. At that point she seemed a bit stumped as to what to do next so I suggested (clever me) that she see if she could pick out any words from those 12 letters. She jumped right on that suggestion and soon we were playing a game where I would build a word and ask her what other words could be made by changing the first letter. We went through the usual suspects: CAT to BAT to SAT to MAT. All good. Because they are learning combination sounds/diphthongs in school, we moved on to some of those: DECK to DUCK to MUCK...she cast around for another letter...F! FUCK.

FUCK indeed.

"Is that a real word Mommy?"

Yay! Put on the spot due to my own cleverness.

"Yes baby but it's not a nice word so we don't say that." Cough

And mysteriously enough, right after that was snack time.