Little pitchers have big ears

This saying never made much sense to me, but I remember it fondly from our annual Christmas viewing of "The Christmas Story". The gist of it is this: don't say anything you want kids repeating. In our childless years, we used curse words like most normal non-trucker people. As Jennie was pregnant with Baxter, we started retraining our vernacular with the inevitable assumption that we would need to be curse-free for the next 20 years. For the most part, we have been pretty clean, only slipping up when faced with severely frustrating situations. Family members, especially those who go weeks without seeing the kids, will occasional lapse. This makes for a slightly funny but awkward situation that requires us, the former children to reprimand our parents for swearing. 20 years ago, I would never have thought the following would leave my lips directed at Jennie's dad: "Watch your mouth old man! Do I need to take my belt off?"
As I mentioned in an earlier post, we recently had prolonged issues with leaky bathrooms. The shower stall has just been "repaired" for the 2nd time when I took a shower. As I opened the door, I noticed a dark wet spot on the floor towel. Filled with frustration, I muttered under my breath, "Jesus." Baxter just happened to be in the room with me and repeated what he thought he heard, using the same disgusted tone as his soon to be ashamed father. Only when it came out of his mouth, it sounded more like "Pizzas". Being well-read on how to deal with these situations, I didn't pursue or prod him further, but I didn't enjoy a nice chuckle. So next time you're struggling to find a strong but clean exclamation for a frustrating situation, remember there's always pizza.

See you on the (frozen) playground!