Lost in Translation

The linguist in me has started to come out since Aiden has started to acquire language. I'm noticing patterns in his speech and trying to make sense of what's going on in his head. 

An example in phonetics: every word that Aiden knows that ends in the "r" sound, he will add an "n" to the end, so that "tractor" becomes "tractorn" and "four" becomes "fourn" and so forth. When we try to get him to say new words, he always gets the number of syllables correct even though the sounds are jumbled. If we ask him to say "omnivore" (one of my favorites of late...not sure why), he'll say "ovinone" (notice that it ends in an "n"), and if we ask him to say "cornucopia", he might say something like "copunocia". 

An example of syntax: he has started adding what I call "filler words" before and after the content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) that he knows in what I believe to be an effort to form sentences. But since he doesn't know any structure words yet (articles, pronouns, prepositions-well, he does know a few prepositions), he just babbles those words when he's forming a sentence, so that a statement like "Gramps has a chimes clock at his house" (he's become quite obsessed with this clock) sounds like "Gramps nana-ah-na chimes clock ah-na-ah-na house".

Today, we were on the driveway playing with sidewalk chalk, and he was trying to figure out what to do with this little plastic chalk holder that his Mammy and Papa had given him for Christmas. So I said, "Give Mommy a big stick and I'll put it in there." (There were sticks of chalk lying all around him.) About 5 seconds later I find him dragging a big stick out of the yard and trying to stuff it into the chalk holder. It took me a second to figure out what was going on. Then I realized I hadn't specified that I wanted a stick of chalk as opposed to some other sort of stick. Ah, the joys of learning a language...

Bear Hug

This is the new game of the week. When Jamin and Aiden are together, Aiden will start running away, and when he gets at a safe distance Aiden will say, "Bear hug!" really softly and with a slight grin. At this, Jamin will chase him through the house, sweep him up into his arms and give him a hearty bear hug. Now Aiden gives bear hugs to his stuffed bear before he goes to bed. 

Dominican Wear

Thanks, Gramps, for my awesome T-shirt! 

(I'm not sure what happened to my pants, but if you ask me they're highly overrated anyway.)

Findings

Aiden finds his sister's bed...Ellie finds her toes.

Ellie-4 1/2 months

Ellie is now 4 1/2 months. She's so alert and always wanting to hold things and look at them. Her toy of choice right now is a green stuffed snake I bought for Aiden at the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia when we visited there last year. He couldn't care less about the snake, so now Ellie's claimed it as her own. She loves to look at it and hold it and chew on it. It's just the right size for her tiny grip and it can be bended in any direction so she can move it around and make it fit her mouth just right. She also rolled over from her belly to her back for the first time today...not sure if it was intentional or an accident. She's extremely verbal. It's fun to hear her babble on and on. She also seems to have quite a temper. One example: The other night I woke her up around 11pm to feed her one last time before I went to bed. She was so angry she refused to eat and screamed at the top of her lungs for about 30 minutes until we finally just decided to put her back to bed. The screaming stopped immediately after she was back in bed.  I don't ever remember Aiden pulling a stunt like that. Instead of sucking her thumb, she sucks her pointer and index fingers. These fingers make her very happy when it's time to go to sleep and time to wake up. When we hear her squirming in the morning, it's fun to walk in and see her sucking on her fingers. When she realizes that we're there, she gets this little grin. What a sweetie pie!

Green Tractor

We went on a walk the other day with Holly and her boys and the kids got to take turns sitting on the neighbor's big green John Deere tractor...every little boy's dream.

Doubletake

I've been hearing a lot lately that Ellie looks a lot like Aiden did at her age, so I found some pictures to compare. Can you guess who is who?

Procrastination

Aiden, at a mere 26 months, has mastered the art of procrastination, particulary at certain times of the day that involve the closing of the eyes and quiet.

Some may call it a "bedtime ritual" but I'm pretty sure in his little mind it's "let-me-see-how-much-I-can-do-before-they-can-plop-me-into-my-bed". When he hears the words "bed" or "sleepies", often he immediately starts pulling out every toy he can get his hands on, particularly the ones that require a lot of clean-up, like legos, blocks and puzzles. This is because he knows his mommy can't handle these messes sitting around for long and so not only will he get to play with them but he'll have to pick them up, too. Not that he in any way enjoys clean-up (although he is improving in this slowly), but time spent cleaning up toys means time spent NOT in his bed and this to him is good. 

After we've settled the toy issue and prevented many a household disaster, there's brushing the teeth. This is somewhat of a sore spot for Jamin and I. I would rather wash the dishes, vacuum the entire house AND scrub out the garbage can than brush that kid's teeth. And I'm pretty sure Jamin would rather clean the gutters and pull the weeds. So when brush-the-teeth time rolls around, we may be seen engaging in a battle of the excuses to determine who can come up with the single best excuse for not being able to brush his teeth that night. I once had to help my sister administer pills to her neighbor's cat. If you've ever done this before you will know that it involves a lot of gagging, salivating, flailing of the tongue and scratching on the cat's part. I won't describe what it involves on the human's part...but I'm sure you can imagine. If you're imagining this, now put Mom or Dad in this setting with a toothbrush instead of a pill and Aiden instead of a cat and you have a pretty good idea what our nightly tooth-brushing ritual is in this house. Sometimes, when I'm really tired, I conveniently forget to brush his teeth, and this brings me great delight.

Reading books is also typically part of the procrastination schedule. We usually try to pick out a few before he gets to the bookshelf on his own and in a matter of minutes has every book on every shelf lying in a smoldering pile in the middle of his bedroom floor. Reading books together is actually one of the funnest activities of the evening, though. He has his favorites and even has some of them memorized so he can fill in the blank if we leave a word out. If we happen to get to the end of the book before he realizes it and has had a chance to slow us down somehow, he immediately says "again". 

After this we pray and put him in his crib. But we're not done yet, oh no, not yet. There's still the song "Aiden-weiss" (Edelweiss with a slight twist) and the kisses and the hugs. He has slowly accumulated more and more stuffed animals into his crib. So now instead of just his bun-bun and his blanket, he has Moose, Bear, Sheep, Roar, Pooh blanket, Eeyore and drink, all of which are "sleepies" and he must tell us so. So it goes a little like this:

Aiden: Bun-bun sleepies.

Me: Yeah? And what about Eeyore?

Aiden: Eeyore sleepies.

Me: Is Roar sleepies?

Aiden: Roar sleepies.

And so on

And today instead of just explaining to me that each individual animal is sleepies he also insisted on giving each hugs and kisses. Oh well, at least he's not throwing them across the room...he waits until the morning to do this.