There are certain words that I simply cannot not say in my 3-year-old daughter Audrey’s presence without sending her into a wild-eyed frenzy. “Cookie,” “ice cream,” or “candy,” for example. I can’t even utter these words in passing, even if I speak quickly or in a whisper. The little rodent has this hearing super power that, not surprisingly, doesn’t work when I say things like “come here.” Thus, when I need to keep her from understanding what I’m talking about, I’ve had to resort to spelling out the words. When my girls were younger and only understood a handful of words, this was fairly easy, even for a retard like me. As they’ve gotten older and their vocabularies have expanded, however, I’ve found myself struggling to spell out words that, quite honestly, require far too much thinking on my part.

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