Kid's speech 2

Benjamin couldn't say "thank you" for a very long time. It sounded more like "nay-noo." Now we tell eachother "nay-noo" when we're feeling silly.

Rachel is such a girl. She loves princesses, fairies, and mermaids. The r's turn into w's of course, such as pwincesses and faiwies. The one that surprises me the most is how mermaids sounds like worm-aids. I have corrected her time and again, yet I know I'll miss it when she stops.

Makayla loves piggy back rides down the stairs and calls for "higgy back!" or even just "higgy!" Dominic caught me asking her if she wanted a higgy back ride the other day. I didn't even realize I said it.

Rachel feeds her goldfish fish flakes and algae pellets, but she can't remember the word algae. Instead, she feeds her fish allergy pellets.

Driving on a foggy day Makayla said, "The frog is creeping me out."
"You mean the fog?" I clarified.
"Yeah, I can't see through the frog," she complained.

Kids' Speech

I love kid-speak! It's very cute to me how Makayla says gingky for stinky. Our neighbor's daughter calls hamburgers hamgurbers. When Lisy was telling me about her adoreable freckles the other day, she actually said a-doe-able fweckles.

As a toddler Samuel couldn't make the s sound. He called himself Yammy, earning him the nickname Sammy Yammy. And Dominic had a blast when Samuel substituted his j's with d's, often asking him to say jam and jam-nation.

Speaking of replacing letters with ds, my older brother would get out of the bath and say that his dingers were dinkled (translation: fingers are wrinkled). We still chuckle about how my nephew Spencer used to call himself Der-Der.

Benjamin called Fruit Loops cereal Oot Oops, a term we still use. At the grocery store recently I said, "Let's get Oot Oops," and then put Fruit Loops in the cart. Lisy is a great reader and said, "That's not Oot Oops. It says Fruit Loops." She was upset that I had grabbed the wrong cereal.

The other day Makayla asked for a lolli-hop. I thought it was so funny that I kept saying lolli-hop, too. She corrected me saying, "No Mommy, lolli-hop." (Hee hee hee) She used to call her older sister Waychel but now says Baychel. Rachel even answers when we call for Baychel.

I love it.

Nobody likes tornadoes

Most children mix up the words for potato and tomato. Rachel, on the other hand, confuses tomatoes and tornadoes to funny results.

Rachel often helps me in the kitchen. So she was standing right in front of the stove when I added chopped tomatoes to the pan. In horror and despair she cried, "Mom! I hate tornadoes! You know I hate tornadoes! Why did you put them in the dinner?!" Then she stormed out to the backyard. Honestly, I don't like tornadoes but love tomatoes.

Tornado. Not a tomato.

Eh, tornado or tomahto, it's all the same, right?

"Mom, is Ancient Egypt real?" Rachel asked one day.

"Yes, dear. It really existed," I answered.

"I want to go to Ancient Egypt and visit the Stinks," she said.

"Oh, Honey, you can't visit ancient Egypt, because that was a very long time ago. You can visit modern Egypt, though. Why do you want to go there?" I said.

"Because I want to see the Stinks!" she happily said.

The Stinks? "Do you mean the Sphinx?" I asked.

"Yes!" she giggled. "I want to see the Stinks, like on 'Bubble Guppies' (a kid's cartoon which she loves and I can't stand, so I never watch it)."

Watch out for those "D's"

Makayla wrapped a piece of cardboard around her torso and wandered around the house saying, "dobbo, dobbo."

I just thought she was acting silly. When Dominic came home from work, he watched her for a minute, then asked, "Are you a turkey?"

"Yes!" immediately came the reply. Oh, of course, she was saying "gobble, gobble." You would think that by my fifth child I would have figured out the whole g/d displacement, which is so common in children's speech. I still can't figure out why she needed the cardboard, though.

This isn't her turkey outfit, but she is so cute!

The Hilarious Twos

I heard laughing behind me in the car. So I glance back and see Makayla laughing because Rachel is licking her foot.

"Rachel! Stop licking Makayla's foot! I don't care if she likes it, stop licking her foot. Now put her foot down. Dooowwn. Good."

Rachel talking to the "zeba."

"Daddy, this doesn't scare you."
"No, it doesn't. It's a banana."
"Yes, this is a banana, not a monster."

Rachel was hiding in the bushes and growling.

"Mommy, I found my hand."
"Was it at the end of your arm?"
"Yes!"

Countdown

Lisy held up 3 fingers. "How many is this?" she asked.
"Three," I replied.
Lisy put down a finger. "How many is this?"
"Two," I answered.
Lisy put down another finger. "How many is this?"
"One," I said.
Lisy held up her fist. "What is this?"
"Zero." Of course.
"No. It's a rock," and then she started playing rock-paper-scissors.

This has nothing to do with anything, it just cracks me up.

Lisy sayings

Lisy is such a girl, but she also has older brothers. She is so used to hearing her brothers talk about Batman that she has a hard time adjusting to new superheroes. One day the boys were playing Spiderman, and Lisy kept calling him Spiderbatman. They could not convince her to take out bat.

She recently received hand-me-down Batman pajamas. When Dominic saw her playing by herself, he asked her what she was doing. Lisy has a high-pitched voice, and yet in her lowest voice possible, she glowered and replied, "I'm Batman." No matter how much we correct her, she is not Bat Girl.

Lisy enjoys the t.v. show Ben Ten (check out the wikipedia link, or you might not understand this paragraph.) Whenever I wear my watch, she constantly hits it and tells me that I'm different aliens. One day she got a hold of her brother's omnitrix, and she would hit it, make all the appropriate sound effects, and pretend to be the various aliens. She was pretty good, too. Even if I couldn't understand what she was saying, I could still determine the correct alien by the way she talked.

All the kids have a favorite Beatles' song. Benjamin prefers "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Samuel and Lisy both really like "Yellow Submarine." I think it's adorable when Lisy goes around singing, "we aw yive in a yeyow submawine!"

If the cat goes somewhere it isn't supposed to be, Lisy likes to helpfully shoo the cat away with, "Soo! Soo!"

on the phone

Tonight when I was talking to Dominic on the phone, Lisy wanted to talk, too. As soon as I handed her the phone, she said, "Shh! I'm on the phone." I hadn't said a word. Most of her side of the conversation was incoherent. Then right in the middle of her babbling, she told Dominic "I'm talking to Daddy on the phone! My phone in the playroom," followed by more babbling. I thought I would die of the Cutes.

I am glad she let me take the phone back. When Samuel was little, he would get the phone and run away from me, then babble on and on while I tried to find him and pry the phone out of his hands.


-MR

WHAT kind of lights?!

Background: When Benjamin was born, he developed jaundice and had to stay in the hospital an extra day under bilirubin lights.

This afternoon I was telling the kids about when Dominic and I met, dated and married. (They love to hear our story.)

I ended it with: "And 2 years later, Sammy was born!" Samuel smiled really big.

Then Benjamin piped up, "and then I was born and put under the booby lights!"

I tried to correct him, but bilirubin was difficult for him to say.

Searching

When Samuel was a toddler and we still called him Sammy, he lost something important. Dominic started looking around the house, and Sammy wanted to help. He energetically ran from room to room, poking his head in to say, "In heyah? No heyah," all the way down the hall. (At 6 years old, he still can't say "r.")

-MR

Advanced speech patterns

Benjamin goes to speech therapy, but it's just to help his pronunciation. According to Danielle, his therapist, he uses advanced vocabulary and sentence structures. One thing that cracks her up is when he says, "not very likely." He says it at least once per session, usually when she asks if he wants to do a certain activity, and he pipes up with, "not likely." Apparently 4-year-olds don't typically say that.

I'm going to miss "tomato." You see, Benjamin has already stopped talking like a toddler. Before he was 2 he said tomato for tornado. And once he learns how to make the r sound, tornado will be tornado. It's just so funny and cute when he pretends that a tomato is destroying the house.

-MR