"Dad, do you know where my sandals are?" asks a polite Spawnling as we're heading out the door last  night.

"I don't know, buddy" Geekster replies as he begins scanning for them.

Spawnling drops his hands down in an exasperated fashion. "Dammit!"

"Oops," chimes in Intrepid. "That word would be my fault. I'm sorry."

Geekster is behind Spawnling with a hint of a smile creeping onto his face. Intrepid sees it and turns away, also smiling. I give them both the "If you start laughing I'm going to kill you" look.

Okay, it is kind of funny, I know. There's nothing like an innocent little mouth saying a big rotten swear word to make me giggle. And normally I would be wanting to laugh, too. Except that, in less than a week, Spawnling goes to school. He just can't drop his glue stick and say "Dammit!" during craft time. He can't flex his extensive vocabulary of faux pas fun words. These include:

Stupid, as in "You're stuuuuuuuupid!"

Stupidhead, as in "Stupidhead!" He made this one up. I suppose I should be celebrating his creativity.

Shut up, as in "Shut up!" I probably didn't need to explain this one.

Shut your mouth! As in "Shut your mouth, Guuuuuutsy!" For some reason, this is far ruder to me than "shut up."

I realize this is a sign of our family's foul mouthedness. We take full responsibility. With two older brothers, a dad who mutters under his breath, and a mom who stubs her toe on absolutely everything, can you really blame him for picking stuff up? The only redeeming factor in this scenario is that he hasn't been dropping F-bombs; a sign of at least a pathetic attempt to censor ourselves.

The bigger problem is that we're still getting used to having a hearing child in our home. Even with their hearing aids on, Intrepid and Gutsy often don't pick up quiet speech, like, say, me muttering something about how I'm tired of all the damn fighting. Super Ears, on the other hand, will yell out "Stop all the damn fighting!" a few hours later, and then I'm left kicking myself for not being used to this non-hearing-impaired kid in our midst after nearly four years.

Now, with my little angel starting school, I'm left with my stomach in knots at the prospect that he's going to open his mouth and spew forth a plague of nastiness the first time little Tommy takes a toy out of his hands. I can hope he won't, but I worry. Oh, do I worry.

I pulled him aside this morning and told him we needed to have a talk about bad words. I told him he can't call his new friends or teachers any names, even when he's very upset. I explained that he can get in very big trouble using those words, and that I was quite sure his teachers would give him a big time out.

"But what can I say when I'm fur-russ-ter-rated if I can't say 'dammit'?" asked Gutsy.

"You can say 'darn it'. How's that?"

"Okay, that's fine." As he walked down the hallway, I heard him say "Darn it! I can't find the flashlight!"

I love that kid's ability to quickly assimilate.

There's a delicate balance to strike here: On one hand, he needs to know there are consequences for his actions at school, just like at home. On the other hand, school needs to be painted as a fun place where he needn't be terrified to go.

Because I need these two days off to become a most excellent writer, dammit!

Uh, I mean darn it.