My daughter is your typical rude American

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The Kid's vocabulary has exploded lately. Her often non-stop narrative occasionally makes sense now, and she pulls a typical brutish American move when you don't understand her, she repeats what she just said at maximum volume.

For the most part, her diction is spot on. She is very clear with the mono-syllabic words she does know, and her ability to string together short sentences is improving (although I think I'll be saying "cankoo" instead of thank you for quite a while). And she absolutely melts her word nerd Papa's heart by using every single word in her vocabulary correctly.

But incidents like what transpired Friday are indicative of what can drive the parents of toddlers to an early grave.

On my way back from a business trip in Chicago, my windshield wiper fluid lines were frozen. It was a stressful drive, mostly because I had my boss and a co-worker in the car and I could only see when I could tailgate a trucker to get any moisture on my windshield. So I opted to go in for a carwash, figuring the combination of hot water and the car dryer would melt anything away. It worked, sort of. The wiper fluid was thoroughly melted, and I could see clearly without endangering my passengers, but the sunroof that I never wanted (long story) and absolutely hate, leaked all over me and my boss.

Or so I thought.

As my lovely daughter and I made our way to daycare the next day, she said, "Papa. Wet."  I asked if she peed through her Pull-Up, and was answered with a resounding, "No Papa. Wet." At the next light, I reached back and felt her seat, which was clearly cold and wet. The water stain above her seat told me the culprit. I acknowledged that she didn't pee-pee, and told her we would be at daycare soon so we could get it cleaned up.

The next 10 minutes of my drive sounded like this:

"Wet Papa."

"Okay kiddo, we're almost at daycare. Papa will help you get dry when we get there, okay?"

"Okay Papa... WET PAPA!"

And every time I did not respond to her shouts of, "WET PAPA!", she repeated them with an increasing volume and annoyance in her tone, as if I didn't understand a word she said.

Luckily, I think we have plenty of time to correct this before she's 18. Or at least before she's parodied in a Ken Tanaka video.


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