Friday, January 18, 2008

It's that time...

So this morning, as I'm getting ready for work, I'm bouncing the Bean on my hip and dancing while I find my comb. I'm singing.

"Take that, rewind it back, Usher got the voice make your booty go.."

Husband laughed at me and gave me a little scold for singing booty rap to my 9 month old daughter.

It's okay, I rationalized, because she's too little to know what I'm saying when I sing. But then later, on our commute to work, I'm thinking about when she will know what I'm saying. And it's not that far off. And there is a far more pressing issue than the occasional booty rap...

I curse like a G*d d**n sailor. I mean, truly. It is appalling how much I swear. My friends all think it's funny "Bean's first word is gonna be 'f*ck'"... But you know what, I don't really want that to be true. For one, my mother would probably disown me. For another, I like Bean's school, and I don't really want her to get kicked out.

"Husband, I think it's time to institute the swear jar."

We've talked about the swear jar before. It's on our list of bad habits to eliminate before Bean is old enough to know better. Like drinking diet soda. But that's another issue.

"Okay," says Husband. "What are the rules?"

"Well, how about a quarter for every swear word."

"A quarter?!" he says. "It's supposed to be a real penalty!"

"Trust me babe, I'm gonna be broke by the end of the week."

"Well, is it all the time, or just when the Bean is in earshot?" he asks.

"I say all hours outside of lab, whether the Bean can hear us or not. We gotta get out of the habit, so it's gotta be all the time. But there are too many things at lab that make me curse... so, yeah."

"Okay. Well what's on the list?" he asks. I laugh at this, but he's serious. "Like is 'd*mn' a curse word?"

"Yes."

"Well what about darn?" he asks.

"Not darn. But definitely 'd*mn', 's**t', 'f**k'..."

"And b*tch" Husband adds.

"Yes. And 'whore' for that matter," I say (I use this a lot in place of b*tch... like 'son of a whore'). "Basically anything we wouldn't want her to walk around saying."

"What about 'Jesus Christ'?" Husbands asks.

As a recovering Catholic, I take the lords name in vain quite a bit. "Yeah, 'Jesus Christ' too. I wouldn't want her walking around school saying 'Jesus Christ' all the time."

So there it is. The swear jar. It'll be full in a few days, I'm sure. We'll put the proceeds into Bean's college fund. Because I like a little irony.

6 comments:

ruchi said...

I think you should give us a report of how much money is in there after the first week. :)

Best of luck!

Julie R said...

Good luck!

And as the mother of 2 year olds, I can tell you that she will repeat words back to you waaay before she comprehends the meaning of them. Good for you for getting a jump on the issue.

Flicka Mawa said...

I swear too, not all the time but enough. Since I only watch kids as a pt nanny at someone else's house, it's easy to keep my vocab clean while I'm there, but Husband and I will have to be careful about this when we bring a baby into our own home.

Unknown said...

Et tu diet soda? What's wrong with that? Actually, I don't want to know.

ScienceMama said...

I just figured maybe drinking soda ALL THE TIME instead of, say, water, probably isn't the best example to set. Eventually she'll start asking for soda too. And neither regular nor diet soda seems appropriate to give to my two-year-old...

ScienceGirl said...

I love this! Especially the "recovering Catholic" part :)