"Die" Kitty Cow: how my kids slaughter the English language

One late late night about 6 years ago, I was holding a very upset and very distraught infant Ellie. She had been crying for close to an hour and I hadn't the foggiest idea what was the matter with her (there goes Mother's intuition, right?). At one point, I held her up and stared directly into her beet red screaming little face and said "why can't you just TELL ME what's wrong???? I can't wait till you can talk!?!?" Oh, how I've learned to rue those words.

Fast forward a few years, and Ellie has definitely learned how to talk, in fact it's nearly impossible to shut her up. From the time she could smile and wave, Ellie has always been the social butterfly. She said hi to anyone. And when I say anyone, I mean anyone. The lovely old ladies who cooed and fawned over her at the grocery store were gifted with her most charming smiles. But she would also try to jump into the arms of the mildly alarming man who looked like he hadn't bathed in weeks. Her benevolence was never discriminatory. One of the first words she learned after "Mama" and "Dada" was "Hi", and this fascinating new word was applied liberally to every hapless passerby.

Now the English language is a rather difficult language to master, even more so to a small child who has been mostly subjected to a twisted form of English known as Baby Talk. I'm not sure how anyone learns how to talk when they spend the first formative months of their lives hearing, "Ooo's a bwiigg widdle gwirl, oh yessums we are!" So Ellie had the "hi" part down pretty well, but the "goodbye" part was a bit trickier, instead of a clear "bye", we all received a cheery: "die!" I must admit, I secretly loved the looks on people's faces when my 1 year old cheerfully told them to "die" and merrily waved at their somewhat shocked faces. But sometimes it got a bit spooky. One particular time, my sister was putting Ellie down for a nap, and as she was laying down, Ellie was waving and chirping "die, die, die!" to her. No child likes going down for a nap, but wishing death upon the bringer of the nap is pretty extreme.


Due to Ellie's extreme chattiness, Maya's vocabulary is pretty extraordinary for a two year old. When you have a six year old sister that you adore, of course you're going to mimic everything she does, which includes talking continuously. We've been dealing with full sentences for a bit now, which only means I have two girls who talk non stop all day. Last week I was working on animal sounds with Maya, some of them familiar, some of them new:

Me: Maya, what does a cat say?
Maya: Mew
Me: Oh good. Now what does a dog say?
Maya: Woof, woof.
Me: Great. Now what does a chicken say?
Maya: Pot Pie!!!
Me: *uncontrollable snickering*

One guess what her favorite dinner is? Poor chicken.

Bring on the good stuff Mommy!

Now a bit of background on my middle child. Not only does she possess a large vocabulary, she is also the proud owner of an incredible appetite. When she was 4 months old, she began begging for my food. Actually, she wasn't so much as begging as she was trying to launch herself face first into my plate. The child was starving. I normally hold off the solids until the baby reaches 6 months, but she seemed SO hungry that I reluctantly pulled out the nasty rice cereal and prepared for rejection. From what I've heard, most babies hate rice cereal. You insert the gelatinous goodness and they immediately push the foreign-not-breast-milk/formula right back at you.  And I don't blame them, it looks gross, smells gross, and I'm willing to bet it doesn't taste like cherry pie. If you've ever seen rice cereal it's relatively thick, with a consistency like paste and as far as stickiness goes, it can give super glue a run for it's money. Oh yum. So Maya got her first taste of the gluey rice cereal, promptly ate 3 times the recommended serving size and cried when I finally stopped the flow of gooey cereal.

I wasn't joking about the food nose dive.

And she never looked back.

After that, nursing was pretty much an afterthought. Maya adopted the: "forget you Mommy, I've got the good stuff now" attitude. By the time she was around 9 months old she was eating 2-3 bananas and a bagel for breakfast and then turning around and eating just as much for lunch and dinner. Most meals she ate more than I did, sometimes she ate more than her dad. Of course I was mildly concerned that I was raising a small gorilla, but since she never showed any serious primate behavior (besides consuming her weight in bananas) I didn't get too worried. You've heard the phrase: "a bottomless pit"? That was Maya, she was a black hole of appetite disguised as a cute 9 month old baby.  In the past few months, her appetite has finally slowed down, for which I'm extremely thankful. (She's also turned into a rather picky eater, but that's another story for a different time).  I gave birth to three girls, I never bargained for feeding a teenage boy too.

Welcome Home Pumbaa

Only Disney could make something so horrifying look so cute and harmless.

 **WARNING: if disturbing images give you nightmares, close your eyes, scroll down and skip the picture.  It's not a pretty sight**

On an mostly unrelated note, my dad is a hunter. I grew up watching him suiting up for his deer stakeouts. And it was a relatively common occurrence to wake up one winter morning to be told  that there was a deer hanging in the garage (which we raced to inspect immediately). Personally I'm not a hunter. I'm not going to sit in a tree for hours hoping a deer/ wild animal will just so happen to wander by me so I can shoot it. It sounds boring. And cold. But more power to you if you have the patience and several camo parkas. On one of his more recent trips he went to a game preserve and bagged a wild boar. When I heard the news, I was happy for him. I mean great, sounds like fun, it's not my cup of tea but it's not like I would have to deal with the thing, right?

I was also under the impression that a wild boar looked something like Pumbaa from The Lion King. Sure he'd be kinda fat and hairy. But he would have cute little tusks, he'd be generally nice and look like the type who would like singing "Hakuna Matata", maybe even toss in a few dance steps here and there. Obviously I never paid much attention at the zoo when ever we passed by the wild boar exhibits because the non-cartoon version of Pumbaa is UGLY and nightmare inducing. I'm pretty sure he's never even met Wilbur and Babe or maybe he just ate them for dinner. (I don't think he even has a passing acquaintance with "No Worries for the Rest of My Days". Although if you stop and think about it, technically our Not-Pumbaa's days are over and he pretty much doesn't have anything to worry about). I feel pretty betrayed here, is everything Disney taught me a lie?


My dad had the boar mounted and with mild trepidation brought it home. In all fairness, he did warn us that it was rather scary looking and he even promised that he wouldn't hang it in the living room. I told him he was free to hang it in the living room, but I would hang a sheet over it so I wouldn't have to stare at it and if my kids had nightmares, he would be the one who got to wake up and deal with them.

Pumbaa, the Kitty-Cow

My dad walked in the door with the large ugly dead pig and Maya took one terrified look at it and ran as fast as her little legs could carry her to the other side of the room. She peeked out from behind a chair and when she was certain the pig wasn't going anywhere she exclaimed: "A Kitty-Cow!" Since we're pretty much city dwellers, and she hasn't had too much actual face time with cows, I can understand the confusion. But if a kitty cow actually existed outside of my two year old's imagination, I would think it would be kinda cute. Maybe a smallish shaggy version of old Buttercup that has whiskers and likes to purr? Hmm, maybe it's a disturbing animal no matter how you think of it.  I suppose from a 2 year olds perspective, that was as good of a name as any. Thankfully, "Kitty Cow" is not living in my house, he is peacefully residing at a friend's hunting cabin where he is free to give all the deer and cute birds as many nightmares as they want. I stood on the porch and watched our Kitty Cow go to his new home.  I waved gleefully, "die"... errr... bye...Kitty Cow!



Mary must have had a little brother

Nursery Rhymes seem to be a theme lately, last month I was going through my "(Not so) Old Woman in the Shoe" identity crisis and this month Ellie has taken upon herself to revise an old classic. I was sitting peacefully in the living room when I heard Ellie playing the piano and warbling away at the top of lungs. The tune was familiar, Mary had a Little Lamb. However, Ellie must have felt the old fashioned lyrics needed a  modern twist because she definitely edited:

"Mary had a little man, little man, little man!
Oh, Mary had a little man and she threw him in the snow." 

I'm pretty jealous, why didn't I think of those lyrics first?

So I'm curious, do you have any childhood stories of the brutal slaughter of the English language? Or maybe a Kitty Cow or two of your own?