The perils of a linguistic breakthrough

A brief break from the topic of fasting.  I've started Scot McKnight's book on fasting, but I've only finished two chapters.  I would love to jump to a conclusion and right a review of the book right now, but that wouldn't be helpful to anybody, so I'm going to abstain and write about my favorite topic: Boogaloo. 

The kid in my current equation is growing up far too quickly.  She turned four two and a half weeks ago, and it's unnerving the way the number four seemed to unlock all kinds of little alcoves inside her tiny brain.   Boogaloo has been trying out new sentence structures,  telling me what she's supposed to do (albeit in two word phrases), and actually following Mommy's directions.  All these changes make me very happy.  I've been worrying a bit about her language development. 

But we have also reentered a phase in which the Boo repeats just about everything we say.  That's not normally a bad thing.  It's awfully cute when I get words like "gallon of milk" repeated back to me in perfect diction, but, well,  I said, "Dagnabbit" (no, seriously, that's my primary cussword) and got it repeated back to me on Tuesday.  That caused a bit of cognitive dissonance.  I don't want her repeated my cusswords, but that's a cussword only I would worry about.  The feeling could best be described as "Oh no, I've taught my kid to curse antiquatedly!"  Really, I'm not sure which way to laugh at that little predicament. 

However, the language drama continued today.  As I was cooking dinner, I heard Boogaloo chirping in the living room.  I wasn't really paying attention, just stirring the spaghetti sauce and thinking about the salad.  Then I heard something that jerked me upright and whirled me around.  It started with an "f" and ended with a "kin," and it's not part of our daily vocabulary.   She was saying it over and over again, followed with something that I didn't catch from where I was standing.

 At this point, I'd already jumped to a conclusion, but I just couldn't imagine where she would have gotten that word!  I did a quick rundown of vocabulary sources outside our home.  Kids at the park?  Nope, she's never out of my sight.  Random person in the grocery store?  I think I would have heard that.  That left the ladies who lead story hour at church.  Uh, no.  Flatly impossible. 

Just when I was about to start banging my head on the stovetop to figure out where this was coming from,  she said the word again, following it up with "Press any key." 

Press any key? 

Oh!

She was saying "Thumbkin" as in "Where is Thumbkin?"  She just doesn't say "Th" yet, and her nose is a little stuffy, so the "mb" didn't come out.  We had been singing along with the computer earlier, and to repeat the song, we had to "press any key."  "Now we know" was part of "I guess now we know where Thumbkin is."  How adorable!  Mommy is an idiot.
I turned back to the spaghetti sauce.   She kept blathering in the background, talking to her animals and repeating lines from her favorite movies.  Then I heard her say a word that had "a" as the first vowel and ended with a "tar" and possibly a "d".  I thought about pursuing that one (I know it hasn't been in any of our preschool songs), but then I decided that she was just saying "faster,"  so I let it go.