It's not nice to laugh at your children. I know that. Yet I do. Often. After all, isn't this part of the reason we have them? Haven't entire cottage industries been created on their poor little backs as we chuckle at their ``Don't they say the darndest things?'' ways?
My middle son, W, is the current leading provider of unintentional comedy in our house. He is an extremely smart young man at the ripe old age of 2, speaking in complete sentences and expressing himself eloquently. There's only one problem: His `L's'.
He's more or less unable to use the `L' sound and substitutes a `Y' sound. This is, frankly, really funny, owing largely to his aforementioned command of the language. `I want to sit on your lap' becomes `I want to sit on you yap.' I'm sorry. That's funny.
The other day he was singing a song he learned in chapel at his (obviously Christian) preschool/day care. ``Happy happy happy are people whose God is the Yurd.'' That would be `Lord,' not a new Eastern-sounding pagan god they're teaching him about.
But the instance that sends us into adjoining rooms to laugh quietly out of earshot is when he decides it's time to relieve himself, or `go No. 2' in the parlance of his five-year-old brother. W, usually grabbing onto a chair leg or table top to steady himself, his face going slightly crimson with the effort, catches your eye, and scolds: `DON'T. YOOK. AT. ME.'
It's easy, and necessary, to look away.