Conversations with Charlie: Expletives in three-year-old style!

Charlie has a huge vocabulary and uses these words liberally.   I think he inherited my need to process out loud AND Jonathan’s need to carefully craft each utterance to be as accurate as it can be.   This particular combination in Charlie is one of the most frustrating and most charming things in my life.
                                
Charlie often phrases and re-phrases the beginning of a sentence or paragraph until I am almost ready to shake the rest of it out of him.  He will not move on, or do any other task, until it satisfies him and he can finish his idea entirely.  If you try to hurry him by finishing his sentence or jumping in to help, he will inform you that you just “ ‘toowupted” (interrupted) him.  THEN he will start over from the very beginning.    Only very patient souls persevere to the end of one of Charlie’s thorough explanations, but by then they have fallen in love with him and his creative tongue.
Exclamations, on the other hand, have started flying out of Charlie’s mouth without deliberation.  We feel no need to correct his errors since they bring us such amusement.  And, his mistakes make his utterances age-appropriate, right? (Please tell me I’m right on this one! ) Here are a few goodies:  

• The tip-off to this new phase of language and his first  imitated ‘adult’ exclamation, was a high-pitched “WHAaaaaT?!!!?” as he threw out his hands in surprise when I told him that Batman cannot fly.
• Then, he dropped his basket of cars and they spilled all over the floor: “Tao-nay-shun!” (Tarnation!) Too much Looney Toons, perhaps?
• After spending three minutes trying to pick-up a soccer ball, three tennis balls, a golf ball and a football all at once: “Goodness gwasus my oh me! Dis is twiky!”

{Apparently, after some experimentation, he decided his preferred genre of expletives are statements which begin with “what the…”  He got quite creative.  There is a whole family of them} 

• When Wendy knocks the jar of markers off the art table:  “What duh oawth(earth) did you do?”
• As we merge onto the freeway, and he looks out his window on the left side:  “What duh hoe-wee (holy) cow!  Doze caws ow suwr fwyin past us! Day aw dwivin’ cwazy!”
• This one is for the little things like missing a ball when hitting it with a paper tube:  "What the whack?"
• This one is powerfully, doubly and expletively effective: “What duh WHhaaaat !?!”
• And our personal favorite:   “What duh hick !?!!”

{bonus quote}
Last week Charlie explained to Jonathan and I, in a serious tone (about the two very dead dandelions languishing in a little tea cup on the dinner table):  “Doze fwowers are a ‘pecial tweat for you guys.  But I don’t give dem to you evwee day, (sagely nodding his head) yeah, cuz dey are a ‘pecial tweat. . .”

Hope this was a treat too!   Thanks for stopping by!