. . . a little 'Taken by Cars'

Baby-adorable loves to use her words. She hasn't many of them*, but those she has are put to good use at mostly appropriate times. Her favorite word of the moment is 'uh-oh', and she uses it as a pre-cursor to any action on her part that involves dropping something. This 'something' could be a toy she's about to toss over the baby-gate into the small, but unknown spaces of the kitchen, or it could be the slimy and partially mushed broccoli that she's decided to pull out of her mouth and hurl to the floor. The key thing about 'uh-oh' is that it always comes before the fall, so to speak, and is a type of emergency alert system for we-the-parents, putting us on notice that something which should probably not be, is about to be sent to the floor.

Hearing our baby-sweetheart utter the 'uh-oh' often comes early enough that a quick parent, or one in close proximity can step in and avert the upcoming disaster, so when Babymama heard 'Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Uh-oh, Mamamamama!' as she was washing sippy cups yesterday morning, she quickly stopped and looked around to see what the 'uh-oh' was bound to be. Strangely, the baby had nothing in her hands, and mama coudn't see anything spilled, dropped or broken. The tiny toddler smiled at mama, and walked off to play with her toys, and mama, satisfied that nothing was amiss, continued her work at the sink.

It was moments after leaving the kitchen that Babymama realized she'd missed something. A few steps from the doorway, mama felt something cold, wet and a little squishy under her bare foot. Holding her breath, she looked down to see what horror lay under her foot. It was a baby-wipe . . . that led to another baby wipe . . . which led to another baby wipe, which in turn led to a pile of baby wipes nearly eight inches tall. Nearby was the nearly empty remains of what had been a brand new package of wipes picked up specially by Babydaddy only yesterday. Seems they somehow made their way, one by one, out of the package and onto the carpet, and baby-truthful came to let mama know right away.

Luckily for Babymama, wipes are easily rescued from the carpet, so the 'accident' was only a tiny hiccup in our morning routine. The real problem here is the timing change of the language. It seems our system of recognizable foreshadowing is disappearing in favor of a contextual expression of the word, leaving we-the-parents without an early alarm, less time for accident interception, and more time for berry juice to soak into the carpet. Uh-oh for real.

*Some of the words Baby-brilliant loves to speak: Daow, hi, bye, stars, mama, daddy, tack-tack (quack-quack), hot, dat? (that, as in 'what's that?'), truck, juice, ruff-ruff, hop, tree, all-done and of course, uh-oh.