Bobugah

Some times, as a parent, you do something that you think is funny and will pass, yet it comes back to bite you in the behind again and again. Kind of like when your child says something you know he/she should NOT be saying but you laugh anyway which just prompts the child to say it again and again. Well, my darling husband has created a situation, shall we call it, that comes back to bite us every single day and it is my duty to not only exploit my proud parenting moments, but his as well. :-)

Let's first explain the history here. While in Russia with Andrew, our translator took us to a beautiful park on one of our days off. It had lots of different play areas, a duck pond and a small bird zoo (or something like that). At one point we passed a little “cartooney” (that is now officially a word in case you were wondering) area with colorful statues. One of the statues was a weird shaped house and a guy inside. Our translator said it was “Bobugeea” (pronounced Bob-oo-gee-ah) who is in a lot of Russian fairytales as the old wise man. Andrew knew exactly who it was, except he called him Bobugah (pronounced Bob-oo-gah).

From time to time he would bring up Bobugah and he thinks the conductor on Thomas the Train (don’t shoot me – I don’t know his name yet) is Bobugah. They must look alike. Little by little Bobugah turned into Andrew’s imaginary friend of sorts. If I had a towel on my head drying my hair, I was all of a sudden Bobugah. It was really cute.

So, one night we’re at Chik-fi1-a and Andrew is up in the slide tunnel. He is having a grand old time and Keith decides to bang on the bottom of the slide – expecting to get a giggle or a “Papa! No!”. Well, Andrew comes down the slide with an shocked look on his face. He looks at Keith and smiles expecting him to own up to it. Instead, Keith throws up his arms and says “What was that??”. In his defense, I’m pretty sure he thought Andrew would run over and laugh or something, instead he refused to go back on the slide. It was at that point that I knew there was no turning back.

We got him to go back up the slide (yes up, not down) but only with us sitting at the bottom to make sure the culprit didn’t come back. Who is this culprit? Why, Bobugah of course! From that point forward, Andrew is scared of Bobugah. Every once in a while he’ll wake up in the middle of the night because of Bobugah (most likely a cat at the door or the air conditioning kicking on and off). More and more, everything gets blamed on Bobugah. “Andrew, did you just throw your bread on the floor?” Wide eyed, split second response – “BOBUGAH!”. The other day he was in my car and was looking through his photo album of pictures from Russia. He pulled at one of the plastic pages and ripped it out. I heard the noise and turned, didn’t say a word, and he is a puddle of tears saying “Bobugah” through his sobs.

We’ve told him time and time again that Bobugah is in Russia or that he’s not allowed in our house or that Keith talked to Bobugah and he is going to be nice now. No dice. I have opted out of the middle of the night crying since I had no hand in this. I remind Keith quite often that he made his bed! :-) It’s an ongoing joke in our house because Keith seems to “remember” the chain of events at Chik-Fi1-a much differently then I do! Just last night I even had Alex helping him remember what truly happened. I know, down the road, Keith will be able to turn the tables on me (probably because Andrew will learn a bad word from me or something) so I'm getting my jabs in while I can! :-)

So, we’ll see what Bobugah does tonight. The poor guy is getting blamed for a ton and being an old wise man, I think he's probably quite offended! If anyone knows or has a link to the true spelling/meaning/story about the Bobugah fellow, let me know. I’d love to be able to share some happy Bobugah stories with my little monkey!

Later!
Becky