Tinky!

Once upon a time, our neighbor tried to warn them away from some prickly shrubbery by telling them it was "hot."

It didn't work. The word around our place is "blggch."

I guess it's not so much a word as a facial expression with sound effects. It's the face the wuggies make whenever they eat something they think is gross, and we would imitate their "blggch face" back at them whenever they started to eat something we thought was gross. Or when they got into the trash. Or went to touch the stove, for that matter.

When they were small, I couldn't figure out how to teach them the concept of "hot" without actually endangering them. But the concept of disgusting flavors was quite simple. All I had to do was offer them green beans a few times, and they got the idea. So "blggch" it was.

Recently, the boys have learned the word "tinky," and that word is starting to replace the other, less pronouncable one. Dirty diapers are tinky, the trash is tinky, and, alas, brother is declared to be tinky in those unfortunate instances of sibling mockery.

A dead bug fell into the bath water this morning, and I thought it was pretty gross. The wuggies heartily agreed. "Tinky! Tinky! Tinky!" There was much celebration as they gleefully pointed at the bug. "Tinky! Tinky! Tinky!"

*sigh* They're most definitely boys.

Maybe we should start working on the word "hot."