Mommy Blogger April B. – Fly Swappers

We bought some new fly swappers this week. The flies are maddening right now. Thus, the need for additional fly swappers. Seems my kids have a knack for swapping flies and they love to do it. More fly swappers were required to end the feuding over who gets to be the insect executioner.

Oh, do you call it a fly SWATTer? Well, most people do. Except my 4-year-old. He once called it a fly swapper and the rest of us laughed hysterically and it caught on. And now that's what we call it.

Now, if you were to copy us and say fly swapper, too, we'd have to call you a coffee catter, of course. Because that's another fun phrase that's morphed it's way into our vocabulary via the children and their discombobulated speak.

The first instance I remember of this happening was when my oldest daughter, who'll soon be 10, was still a toddler. She was really frustrated with me one night and turned to her dad and yelled, "I don't know what she's saying. She speaks fanish!" The three of us laughed hysterically and almost instantly, fanish was inserted into our vocabulary as the alternative we'd use for the usual word just to give ourselves a good chuckle.

With three kids now, there are a lot of chuckles. Like when we take a road trip and we stock up on snacks, which means a bag of beef turkey for each of us. Or, beef jerkey, for the rest of you.

A few months back, my son, who turns 5 next week, sat on my lap to tell me about his latest boo-boo. As little boys go, he is so very sweet and he really, REALLY loves his mommy. He's always going on about how he loves me more than 152 googles. Which means, of course, that I must listen with wide-eyed attention to every detail of how the injury occurred, and then offer the appropriate action to make it better. On this particular occassion, he pointed to a spot on his knee and told me how when he fell earlier that day, he had a "bleed."

"And now it's a skip," he explained, pointing to the scab that had formed in place of the "bleed."

It took me while to recover from the massive belly laugh that ensued. So now, of course, all scabs in our home are referred to as skips. And any injury that results in even microscopic blood flow is herein dubbed "a bleed."

That's how we roll.

Last week I introduced my sweet boy to the dancehall sound of Junior Brown. The hubs and I heard he's playing in Amarillo next month, which left us reminicing about that one time we saw him play at the Nat Ballroom. My son was immediately hooked. No longer is the theme song from COPS or Yellow Submarine his favorite tune. Within seconds he had caught on and was singing, "I'm just a doin' my job, I'm the Highway Control."