My Son's Potty Mouth

I must say the shame of my ability as a parent begins.  I was sitting with a cup of coffee at my side this morning, and my son, Augustus, climbed in my lap to play.  We got to wrestling a bit, and his arm flared out and tipped the coffee cup.  There the cup stood teetering back and forth on the edge of the arm of the sofa on which we were sitting.  At that point, I responded to the potential disaster that would be the spilling of a cup of coffee on our new sofa or the possible breaking of my wife's Longaberger cup.  My response was shameful.  I said "Oh ...," Well you know what I said.

My son turned two years old a month ago, and he is at that phase when he repeats everything that seems interesting to say.  He has also been very good with his "S" words for some time now.  Some of his favorite words to say are, "stuck," "step," "story," and "SH" words like, "show," "shush," and "ship."  This morning he added a new "SH" word to his repertoire.  Now I generally love it when a new word enters his vocabulary, but obviously this time was not one of those times.

As I mentioned before, I cursed in response to the my coffee cup's potential tumbling onto our sofa and/or floor this morning.  Luckily I was able to catch the cup before it did.  But the word did come out of my mouth.  Right after the point of catching the cup, I breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Augustus.  There he sat on my lap looking at his daddy with a quizzical yet enthusiastic expression, and he said slowly and clearly, "shhhhh----iiii---."  "Oh no," I thought.  Here it really begins.

My son is like a sponge and fully conscious of everything that goes on, especially the actions and words of his daddy.  I must learn to watch what I say.  I guess it is time to begin thinking about alternatives for those words that I might say in frustration, pain, or responses to trouble.  Anyone have suggestions.  Obviously "fudge," "shucks," and "mother of pearl." are possibilities.  I think there might be more interesting words to include.  Unfortunately I am expressive so holding my tongue is probably not going to happen.  Well feel free to respond to my query.

Halloween Candy

Halloween is one of those times every year that are great for kids, but for we adults that lack self control (particularly me) it is a blessing and a curse.  In preparing for the day, both my wife and I came in with a couple of bags of candy for the trick-or-treaters without knowing the other was buying candy.  Now we have twice the candy that we felt necessary.  What we could do is double up on the amount of candy we will give out on the 31st, but do you think we will do that.  No we're already doing what I feared.  We're eating the candy, which tastes pretty good (blessing).  Yesterday, I had a couple of packs of M&M's, two Baby Ruth's, a Snickers, and I split a Kit Kat with my son.  I don't even want to tell you what I included in my breakfast this morning.  It is shameful my lack of self control when I have sweets around (curse).

An extra five pounds to my already over-weight body seems to be the destiny for me for the few days that surround Halloween.  But I bet my son has a blast.  We don't know if we'll take him trick-or-treating or just have him hand out candy.  I think he might like handing out candy best this year, so I am leaning that way.

Introducing Dr. Dave

Hello everyone and welcome to Dr. Dave's Average Mind.  First let me introduce myself.  My name is David Gibson and I have a doctorate that serves me well in the leadership and organizational development fields.  However do not expect this to be leadership blog.  This is a blog about me.  It is an expressive outlet for an educated guy with average mental abilities (maybe slightly above average on a good day).  It is not my ultimate goal to have this blog read by anyone, but it would be cool to have a bit of a following.  It is an outlet for someone that spends a lot of time with a two year old and gets only mild adult conversation.  My two year old son, my wife, my wife's career, my career struggles, our new life in Madison, Wisconsin, my love of sports, old memories that may or may not be interesting, new experiences with the same parameters, my political views (only so much however), and whatever comes to mind at any given time will be the basis of this blog.