This is a post I have been meaning to write for weeks, and I am going to squeeze it in before we go to a friend's house (instead of balancing the checkbook -- perhaps salamander is a bit of a stretch for me). Joe has had a massive language explosion over the past four or so months. Mostly I love it. This morning he was singing a creditable version of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall," which isn't bad for a kid whose vocabulary consisted chiefly of "ah" in July. But there are a few things I will miss.
When we go out on chilly afternoons, we often make hot cocoa when we come back in. Joe, though, calls it "hot dodo," which delights me. Anybody can make chicken soup or beef tea. But how many places will serve you a steaming cup of hot dodo? (On tonight's menu: roasted passenger pigeon barded with quagga bacon.) Joe is beginning to play with /k/ at the beginnings of words, and I know it's only a matter of time before our exotically named concoction gets more pedestrian. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
He is moving past his intense love of machines, and I will miss the way he sometimes says, out of the blue, "Zoop dih-dih [scoop dig dig], Mama." "Thinking about backhoes, huh?" I answer. "Yeah." I am curious about what new interest will eclipse his fascination with construction equipment. I will miss the way he runs to the window on Wednesday mornings to watch, entranced, as the garbage trucks make their way down the alley.
For months, Joe's word for "nurse" was a voiceless raspberry. It took me awhile to catch on -- I remember finishing an email to a friend last December that said, "Must run -- E seems to be having nightmares about bulldozers," when really he was waking up and asking to nurse. It started as his word for cold (like brrrr) and became "ice cream" and "frozen berries" and "juice pops" and then apparently morphed into "yummy things I like," including nursing. I had heard all kinds of toddler words for nursing, but never that one, and I loved it. It couldn't have been more discreet -- when he said "prrrrr" in church no one ever suspected what he meant. In August, though, he began to say "nuss." When he booms out "Nuss me, Mama!" it's a little more obvious what he wants. Now his nursing sound is completely gone -- he doesn't even seem to know what I mean if I say "want prrrr?"
If I had more time I might wax philosophical about the evanescence of childhood. But I've been there before and I have shoes to tie right now. So instead I'll ask you to wrap it up for me. Tell me about your favorite things that your little ones have said -- the things you almost wish they hadn't outgrown.
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