"Gosh darn it!" I said when I saw that Lillia had, once again, taken all her puzzles from the shelf and turned them upside down to form a giant, scary-looking pile of various animal and princess parts on her bedroom floor. It was five minutes before her bedtime and I have a hard time putting her down when her room is a mess. Call me anal. Everyone else does.

"Darn it!" she repeated. "Darn it! Darn it!"

And then... "Damn it!"

I glanced her direction and said, simply, "No, we don't say that. We say 'darn it.'" She went back to spouting 'Darn it! Darn it!" over and over again. I am a firm believer that a parent's reaction to their child's behavior plays a huge role in whether or not that behavior will continue or not.

However, I feel differently about how a wife's reaction influences her husband's behavior, as evidenced by the verbal beating that Matt got (out of Lillia's range of hearing, of course) regarding his inappropriate use of language around our daughter.

Translation: Matt did it.