Marcelo and I really have to remember that though they don't seem to, the kids hear and remember everything that comes out of our mouths.

For instance... this morning at 7:07 am, the painters knocked on my door. They've been hired by the HOA to paint every unit in the complex. The prepped the front of the unit last night but didn't get to the back. Yesterday, I asked them to please let me know before they needed access to my patio because what the HOA told them to do was just use their ladder to climb up over the roof of the garages to get to the patios. And when they put the ladder down from the garage to my patio they had to put it through the branches of my apricot tree and knocked a ton of apricots off and damaged some of the branches. (Yes... I realize this has become a tangent griping about them...) Anyway, when I took the kids out to go to school, we saw that they'd moved our potted plants around and knocked over our sunflowers. When I tried to straighten them up, both stems snapped in half (they're a good 7-8 feet tall). When Marc saw that he heaved a great sigh and said "Ohferchristsake. The painter wasn't very careful. He broke our flowers!" And yes, sighing and saying "Ohferchristsake" is my child friendly replacement for saying "GOD DAMNIT!" very loudly when I'm upset.

And then last night when I picked the kids up, Marc was telling me about a new kid at school who is very rough and snatches whatever he wants out of other kids' hands. And Alex piped up and said "(name edited for privacy) a chupacabra! He a chupacabra!"