You know it's bad

that the house is in disarray when your two and a half year-old spontaneously declares one evening, "yucky house," as Ivan did last night.

I was floored.

He, of course, repeated it first thing this morning. "Yucky house."

Now, the term "yucky" has entered his vocabulary in the last few weeks, and everything he doesn't want to eat (or he half ate) or things that he thinks are dirty, he declares "yucky."

However, this was the first time he used it to describe the house. And the house was truly yucky. It was very messy and it hadn't been cleaned in two weeks. The cleaning ladies were supposed to come on Friday but I had to cancel them. Andy and I were so busy with work this past week that we (or shall I say I) had really let the house go.

I just never expected Ivan to care and to declare "yucky house."

However, he is much more observant and aware of things that we give him credit for. As I guess all toddlers do, he notices and stores information to retrieve it at a much later date. It's happened several times now that he's shocked me with something that I didn't expect him to know or understand.