One phenomenon associated with being two-and-a-half years old is that your vocabulary develops at a rapid rate. Apparently, such rapid development isn't necessarily directly linked with words learned from mommy and daddy.
Today, we began our annual summer tradition of yard-sale shopping. One of our finds was a fisher-price doll house for $2. It comes with a few little plastic people. While playing with the doll house, Sheinah brought the little girl to Melissa, pointed between her legs and said "there's her pee-pee" and proceeded to laugh hysterically. Now, we are pretty sure that we have not referred to that particular part of the anatomy as a "pee pee." In fact, Melissa at one point referred to it as the "not bottom" for lack of a better word. We've also used Zach's suggestion of the Hawaiin word "punani" (not sure on the spelling). Thus, she must have learned "pee pee" from someone else. Now, Travis is a firm believer that only boys have "pee pees" but Melissa didn't think she needed to discuss that with Sheinah right now.
One thing we do know is we've been hesitant to teach her the real word yet after hearing Annetta's story about Grace. Apparently, Barney and Annetta had been teaching Grace the proper terms for anatomy. Grace was in the bathroom at church and Brenda (one of our pastors) called her pumpkin. Grace proceeded to remind Brenda that her name was Grace, not pumpkin. Brenda explained that pumpkin was a nickname and asked if her mommy had a nickname for her. Grace told Brenda that her mommy called her "vagina." Very funny story...as long as it's not you and your daughter :)
We're open to any suggestions folks might have for the best way to teach kids the proper names of body parts...
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