My 4-year-old son has been cracking me up lately because he’s starting to sound like, well, me. He’s starting to mimic the phrases I use.

I’m not talking about the four-letter words either, though I must admit that while my husband cleaned up his potty mouth when Guillermo was born, becoming a mom has caused more curse words to fall out of my mouth than ever before. Guillermo used to walk around the house saying damn anytime something went wrong, like Cheerios spilling on the floor. Embarrassing, I know. He even picked up my sarcastic “whatever” that I throw at my husband as frequently as a teen-ager says it to her mother. We had to teach Guillermo that “whatever” was not nice to say, and now when I say it, Guillermo scolds me. “’Whatever’ is a bad word, mom.” I’ve learned to curtail the cursing, though I do let a word slip every so often now and I know it because Maya, being 2, is quick to repeat me.  

What I think is funny is catching Guillermo using “my” phrases or words, the things I say several times a day. The other day I heard him say to Maya “Not a chance, pal” as the two played in the living room. I didn’t hear what prompted him to say it, but it had me in a fit of giggles in the kitchen.

My husband cracked up the other night when he heard Guillermo say “You’ve got to be kidding me,” placing the accents just where I place them.

A few months ago, Guillermo was playing in the bathroom while I was giving Maya a bath and I heard him say, “You want a piece of me.” My husband later reminded me that I say that, a lot.

My husband, an environmental engineer during the week and jazz deejay for a few hours on the weekend, has been trying for about a year to get Guillermo to mimic his laid back “Can you dig it?” It hasn’t worked, yet. My husband also would like it if Guillermo would call his friends “cats” as in “my friends are some cool cats.” Guillermo is still trying to figure out that one.

More than anything, we’d really like Guillermo to start mimicking us when we speak to him in Spanish. We were really good about speaking two languages to him when he was a baby. Now that he’s older and our conversations have matured past “Get the ball” and “Is Guillermo hungry,” we’ve let our dual-language conversations fall to the wayside a bit more than we would like. Spanish is not my first language (I learned in school) nor is it my husband’s (though he learned at home from his parents) but we do our best. Or, we did our best and it’s time to try a little harder so our kids can speak it, too. If Guillermo spoke Spanish a little more, I don’t think I’d have a problem with an occasional “lo que sea,” or “whatever,” directed at me.

Natalie appears every Sunday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Natalie at her blog A Day at the Park.