It had been a trying afternoon, the way it just is sometimes with kids, by the time I got them home from feeding a friend’s cats and laid June down in the living room for a bum change.

As I did so, one of the strings from my hoodie caught under her body and flicked me in the face when I sat up.

“Oh my god! For fuck’s sake!” I said.

June’s eyes went wide. “No make that noise!!” She fixed me with a hard stare. “No make that noise, daddy!”

Nora, calmly playing with Duplo off to the side, said, “No make the fuck noise.”

My anger turned to amusement. I couldn’t stop myself laughing, so I turned my head away from both kids. They still noticed.

“I just wanna say – fuck,” said Nora. “FUCK.”

“I just wanna say fuck too,” said June. “FUCK.”

Did I stop myself laughing even harder?

Did I fuck.

And that was how the fuck noise came to be made often, by the smallest voices in our house, for a couple of weeks.