Mostly whimsy and drivel of no consequence. And CHEESE.
Leif, recently, has taken to using expressions that surprise me a little. They really shouldn’t. He’s five, and he and all his absorbent, sponge-like wee peers throw terminology back and forth at a truly alarming velocity. For a while now, if something confuses him, surprises him, or amuses him in either of those aforementioned capacities, he’ll exclaim, “What the….?” He NEVER says anything in place of the ellipsis, though the vehemence with which he utters the phrase leads ME (yes, filthy minds) to think that what he’s omitting is completely scandalous.
An image of another member of the family captured this phrase perfectly in pictorial form:
“WHAT THE…?” as Interpreted by Paisley.
ames
July 11th, 2006 at 8:54 am
My three-year-old uses the exact same expression, although every once in a while, just for emphasis, he fills in the blank with “hecks/hex.” So of course now our favorite family expression is “What the hex?!”
One night, in the middle of the night, Henry was scared, so I went and laid down at the bottom of the bed. At regular 5-minute intervals, in a sleepy stupor, Henry would lift his head off the pillow, exclaim “What the . . . !” and then, seeing me still down at the end of his bed, drift back off to sleep for another five minutes. If it hadn’t been 2:00 a.m., I would have found it extremely amusing.