On Saturday night, our family attended a dinner party in honor of our niece’s college graduation. It was an elegant little affair, complete with great conversation, an around the world beer tour and some delicious food.

The home of our hosts was amazingly decorated and resembled an English manor. It was a sprawling abode, sitting on a golf course and even had a pond out back with swans swimming about. Thank goodness I took my fake Coach handbag and wore my best Target jacket!

After a few Coronas, Amstel Lights and Red Stripes I still managed to be on my best behavior. But, on the way home I decided to let my real riff-raff self come out and said, “That sure was a nice party. Their house was unbelievable and the food was da’ bomb diggity.”

Then my son, who was all pumped up on mini-cheesecake and juice boxes, piped up from the back seat and said, “Nuh-uh! The food was really good!”

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Because of my son’s ear tubes, I still have to help him at bath time. The last thing we need is an ear drum full of playground scum mixed with shampoo.

As I was lifting him out of the tub last night, I grabbed him with the towel and said, “Come here, Mister”.

He corrected me and replied, “I’m a Master”.

I smiled. “That’s true. You’ll be a Master for a few more years and then you’ll be a Mister, and your sister will be a Miss until she gets married.” As I handed him his pajama shirt I said, “When you get big, you’ll get married too.”

“I will?”

I brushed his hair. “You will if you want to.” Then, thinking he might give me a hint as to whether he has a crush on anyone I asked, “Who do you think you’ll marry?”

He thought for a moment then said, “I think I’ll marry my sister”.

I laughed. “You can’t marry your sister. You can’t marry me, or your Dad, or your cousins, or anyone else in our family.” I left out the part about some places in the world which still let you do that. I’m talking to you, West Virginia.

“So, since you can’t marry your sister, who do you think it will be?”

And, I will never accuse my boy of not aiming for the top because he went ever so slightly higher than his sibling when he exclaimed, “I want to marry Jesus!”

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Last week, we were playing a board game together as a family when my husband blocked our six year old son’s next move. Our boy saw his dad’s defensive strategy and proclaimed, “Damn it, Daddy!”

He didn’t realize he had said anything wrong, so we explained that it was bad, and he need not ever say it again. We didn’t need to ask him where he learned it. We knew he had picked it up while playing games with his dad. My husband’s competitive nature has also been responsible for teaching our son the words, “sucker” and “crap”.

My husband, the sailor, also taught our daughter her first curse word. When she was about two years old we were driving in the car when, out-of-the-blue, we heard the “F” word come from the back seat. Before we had a chance to stop her, she had said it about ten times in a row. At least she used it in the proper venue. Clearly, she had heard that while driving in the car with her dad.

But, I can not blame my husband for the time my daughter did not fling curse words, but instead assaulted us with attitude.

I was extremely hormonal tired, and had been working all day while my husband played with our daughter, who was just a toddler at the time. They sat down to have a snack together as I flopped my exhausted body onto the couch. No sooner had I sat down, than my daughter asked, “Mom, can you get us some napkins?”

Irritated that she asked me, instead of her father, I angrily said, “Oh, sure! Dad’s been playing all day while I’ve been working, but I’ll get up to get the FREAKING napkins!”

I returned to the room and tossed them a couple of paper towels before falling back into my seat.

Then I watched as my daughter climbed onto her dad’s lap and put her face a mere inch from his. She held that position as she stuck her hand into their snack bag, then glared at him and yelled, “Dad! These are FREAKING cheese puffs!”

But all things considered, I don’t think my “F” word is nearly as bad as his.

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My ten year old daughter has always battled me at mealtime. She was born 10 weeks early and was fed through a tube for two weeks before I begged the doctors to let us try bottle feeding her. I have a home video of that first bottle and halfway through you can hear the monitor sound an alarm to let us know her heart rate was dropping dangerously low. Things have only gone downhill from there.

If she was permitted to exist on popcorn, chicken nuggets and Ho Hos there would be no problem at all. The girl is totally doomed when she gets to college. Let’s hope she continues to play three sports.

When she was a toddler she would pick at her plate and it would take her an hour-and-a-half to eat a meal. People thought I was kidding until they saw it for themselves.

After Thanksgiving one year, we even received a note from a dear great-aunt who told us how impressed she was with the way our daughter sat at her seat and ate her food, while her cousins left the table and played all around her. For an hour. We didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was only because there was turkey and, for crying out loud, she has to chew turkey 136 times before she would swallow a bite. At least it made us look like good parents. For once.

She was so picky in kindergarten, that she would come home with one quarter of her sandwich eaten, and nothing else. I could hear her stomach growling from three blocks away.

Now that she’s been around for over a decade, I have learned to work with it.

Tonight I made salmon, which is one of her favorite things to eat. As we always do, we went over our best and worst parts of our day.

And darn if I don’t have to work a little harder, because when I asked my daughter to tell us the worst part of her day, she didn’t hesitate in saying, “That this salmon has no flavor.”

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