Note: I realize posts about my kids might get tiresome for some out there, but frankly, this just knocked me on my ass.

It’s the morning hustle and bustle, as usual. I’ve actually got the kids fed, dressed (with shoes on!) and headed towards the door and nobody’s crying. And I’m only like five minutes late. Amazing, right? But wait, there’s more.

Sure. I stayed up late fixing lunch and laying out clothes and stuff. But we had to get to the auto shop to drop off the car and pick up a loaner before heading off to the rest of the day. I hadn’t stopped moving since 6:30 when ’Bekah got up. Play, change diaper, feed, play, dress, cook, wake, dress, potty, feed, pack, go. I was moving. My sweet boy is trying to tell me about the words he made yesterday with his letter puzzle, pulling the letters of the alphabet and making words with them. We’d been playing with A, T and R. He made ‘rat’ and I suggested switching the ‘t’ and the ‘r’ to make ‘tar.’ So this morning, as I’m swiftly moving everything toward the door, he tells me he rearranged them to make ‘art.’ Which, hey, I thought that was pretty cool. And he had other letter combinations laid out on the floor, too, I noticed.

“Is N-I a word?”
“No, sweetie, N-I is not a word.” He had the ‘n’ lying next to the ‘i’, and of course I start making dumb jokes about the Knights of Ni. Sure. A four-year-old is going to get that.
“Yeah,” he says “It’s an abbreviation.” Abbreviations are our new favorite thing. I had to explain to him that you couldn’t abbreviate T.V. to just ‘T’ because TV was an abbreviation itself. I don’t think he bought it.
“An abbreviation?” I ask, continuing our movement to the garage and thinking he’s just playing. “Of what?” We’re going through the door.
“Nickel.”
He continues walking to the car with his little hat on and his socks pulled up to his knees and I stand there in my tracks, bags over my shoulder, baby in my arms, keys in my hand, running through the abbreviations from the periodic table in my head.
“Yep. Yep, Ni is an abbreviation for nickel.”

Holy. Crap.