(no subject)

Today I told the kid about blue-footed boobies. I mean, she had seen the picture before, but I had just been saying, “Here’s a bird with bright blue feet!” Today I said, “Oh look, here’s a blue-footed booby!” and she lit up and said, “Booby!” A pause for thought. “More booby!”

“Oh,” I say, best happy isn’t-learning-things-amazing voice, “this is a blue-footed booby, and this one over here is a red-footed booby, they are birds that live near the ocean, and they like to dance!”

At this point, you may go back and reread the previous paragraphs several times, as that will give you a fairly good idea of the general tenor of the conversation.

“Boobies!” she says, and, as she often does when she is too full of delight to sit still, goes off to climb up the nearest vertical gradient. On top, she turns around and says to me, hopefully, “More? More boobies!”

“Is ‘booby’ fun to say?” I ask.

“Yes!” she says, with a great grin. “Booby!”

First of all, this clarifies a lot for me in retrospect, and second, I don’t think this is the context they will assume at daycare.