Summer vacation changes everything. Our eating habits shift from three, nutritious meals a day to twelve, smaller, snack-like binges and almost always involve something frozen, infused with loads of sugar and food colouring. In one sitting, the girls actually claimed a neighbour gave them thirty-nine freezies, the good kind. Not the kind I buy made with actual fruit juice. While I don’t expect that number to be true, I do think they are eating their way through the equivalent of the Dickie Dee cart’s summer sales.
We also watch a lot less television and play more interactive games. One of those introduced this summer was Scrabble.
I thought Ellie at age four would benefit from arranging letters, discovering her ability to sound out and create three letter words in preparation for school in the fall. As usual, she did not disappoint. The obvious “cat,” “mom,” “dad,” seemed a trivial exercise in encouraging her, she was looking for a greater challenge.
She quickly whisks her letters off of her letter holder and spends time pondering on the floor with one or both hands covering the wooden squares so a non-player can’t yell out a completed word that she hasn’t had a chance to find on her own.
Her first excited game play came when she used the following four letters “ifwr.” Her eyes danced as did her body, while she cheered, “Mommy! I made “if-were.” While “if” and “were” are both words, requiring a couple of e’s, a space and would rarely be hyphenated or ever be written directly beside each other, I simply could not tell her she was wrong. A huge pat on the back, she anxiously awaited round two.
“Ldw! (pronounced eldawoo) Woohooo! Mommy, I spelled “outerworld!” A smile.
While I wasn’t anticipating her next move to affect her on an emotional level, she shook her head as she questioned whether or not to lay her three letters on the board. She looked at me, a puppy begging for a treat, worried our relationship was about to change forever, “Mommy, I can’t play this word, it’s a bad name you call someone.”
Oh dear. I really wanted her to show me the quasi word she had discovered for so many reasons. As a parent, this insight into what she considers a bad word, what she has learned from other kids, her older sister, us, cartoons, is usually an eye-opener and a warning about what we should and should not say with tiny ears in the room. I calmly convinced her to show me the word she had found and we would look at it together.
She slowly put a “j” on the board and looked at me as if for permission to proceed. I smiled and nodded, waiting for the “erk,” relieved her word didn’t start with an “f.”
Hands shaking, she laid the “i”. Hmmmm
Next it was an “r” followed by her eyes welling up and a big hug for Mommy.
“Sorry mom.” She could barely speak. Her own disapproval of the word “jir” and acknowledgement that she knew what a “jir” was somehow stripped her of her innocence and had her almost sobbing.
Perhaps Scrabble can wait a little longer.
Hanna on the other hand told me that she knew the “c” word. Oh God, please don’t say it because I’ll have to react sweetly and calmly as I had with “jir” knowing the odds were in my favour that Ellie really didn’t know anything more dangerous than jerk.
“It’s CRAP!!!”
Phew.
