those words

Three kids is totally pwning {I'm stuck in 2010 apparently} Jamie and I. Seriously. I don't feel depressed or unhappy, but I am tired. Kinda like I'm treading water. Trying to keep my head above water. The difference is, I'm treading water with my best friend.
I don't think I can say/type it enough; I am beyond thankful to have had Jamie on parental leave for December and January. BEYOND thankful.

Now I'm not much of a swearer. I've never really been one to use a curse word - except for that rebellious phase I went through in grade 3 when I felt the need to use every swear word I knew at recesses. But I digress...
Since Blaise has been born, a dark side of me has been revealed. I swear. I'm like Joe Pesci's character from Home Alone when he's muttering "frickin' frackin'" after getting knocked upside the head. Except I'm not saying "frickin' frackin'". I'm saying the real thing. Usually at night. Usually when Blaise won't sleep. Liiiiiike last night. Froooooooom 12:30-4:30am. Awesome, right? WRONG. It was not awesome. It sucked.
But I held my proverbial shit together and actually managed to lightly doze amid the fussing/complaining/crying/hollering done by my youngest instead of getting angry or frustrated. Jamie got up and surfed the internet for a bit. Eventually I fed him {again - do not be fooled. The child was not hungry. Just...anti-sleep.} and he finally settled.
I don't swear around my kids {not the ones who understand, that is. *cough*} and sometimes...it just adequately communicates how I'm feeling. And then I'm over it. And sometimes I laugh at myself. It relieves a bit of tension.
I have a bunch of friends who swear. And ones I know would never swear {and might be aghast to hear that I do...?}
I've been thinking about words and swear words and what will happen when our kids go to school next year in Canada and how they'll be exposed to many ideas and thoughts and ... words. And I remembered reading a blog post about how these parents sat down with their school-aged child and wrote out every swear word they could think of and then explained {generally} them to their child. So that they could hear it from their parents. So that the whole stigma of those words would be lessened. Perhaps so that their child could see that there's nothing magical about them, but that we have a responsibility with the words that come out of our mouths. I've thought about what we'll do when the time comes for Noah and Jude to go to school. Right now we have rules like "We don't say stupid or shut up in our family." And I've explained to them that not every family has those rules, so some kids might say them because they don't have that rule in their family. But that if they are being said in a hurtful way, they can tell that person that those words aren't nice and they shouldn't use them that way {instead of saying, "We don't say stupid in our family." since that child isn't in our family.} And we've talked about how we have the power to use our words to be kind and loving or to hurt people and make them feel bad and that once our words come out of our mouths, we can't take them back.

But I'm not perfect. And I mess up. And I've learned/learning to apologize quickly to my kids. It's been hard, though because that wasn't ever really modeled to me as a child. But I want to model humility to my kids. That if I can and need to ask for forgiveness, then maybe they can and need to as well.

So. Swearing. I don't want it to creep into my every day vernacular. But I do swear. Sometimes. And not in front of my kids {that they can hear}.

So I have to ask, do you swear? Does your family have rules about which words you can and can't use? What are those rules based on? Are you offended that I confessed my recent development in swearing? Do you make up alternate swear words? {If so, read this. HILARIOUS.}