I should have put her in time out

Bennett loves her picture word books. Every day she is getting new words- keys, plate, fork, flower, and many more. But her favorite has been animals for several months now. We started out with the standard ones. Horse, cow, chicken, etc... But she will now point out many others including elephant, snake, lion, dog, and bee. Many times when we are riding in the car I will hear her yell, "NAY!" from the backseat and sure enough we are passing a horse farm.

So when I heard her yelling, "COW" today I didn't think much about it. She is always commenting on every animal we pass on the road. I think I murmured, "Good job, honey- cow." She kept saying "Cow Cow" and was becoming more frantic. I still wasn't really paying attention so I glanced up and saw that we were in the middle of traffic. I kind of mumbled to the backseat, "No, Bennett. There aren't any cows." She grew more insistent, "COW! COW!" I would tell her No and then remind myself to go back over her farm animals when we got home. After she yelled "COW" for the 20th time, I turned around to look at her and saw that she was pointing right at me. I immediately gave her a lecture, "You listen here. Just because Mommy weighs 30 extra pounds does not give you the right to call her a cow. I had barely lost the weight with you when Will came along and I do not appreciate you calling Mommy a cow." She laughed and kept calling me a cow. I was on the verge of a hormonal breakdown- devastated that my 16 month old daughter was already mocking me when Rob calmly pointed out, "Honey. She's talking about your shirt."

I looked down and I was wearing one of those awful maternity shirts with the black and white patterns that do indeed look very cow like. I apologized to Bennett. She laughed and said, "Moooooooo."