Bits and Pieces of Language

This morning, I was asleep on my back, and Peeper was, as usual, beside me nursing.

(Yeah, my boobs do that.)

Through the fog, I heard her sleepy little voice ask for, "uh si' pease."

As I rolled toward her, she looked at me and said, "Hey, Mama!" as though she were surprised to find me there.

You know, attached to my breast.

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"Other side, please."

That "please" just slays me.

As does "Sank you, Mama" and "Foof me, doggy." ('scuse me)

Manners. Where the hell did my kid get manners?

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A few days ago, I was pissing and moaning to Shrike about "Oh my aching back" (I am forty-two years old. I have a toddler. My back aches.) when Peeper started climbing all over me, saying "Tiss! Tiss!"

I figured she was asking for one, so I was trying to grab her hand to kiss the scratch she got at Target, and couldn't figure out why she wasn't cooperating.

Finally she said, "Tiss. Mama back."

And then she did.

And you know what, it kind of felt a little bit better.

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She's been rocking the two-word phrases since our trip to Texas, then last week, during the great toy relocation project, I wasn't even paying attention to what she had, until she handed me a toy and said, "Wind it up."

Verb. Object. Preposition.

That's an honest to God, diagramable sentence right there, folks.

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There have been more. The things she repeats tend to run together with the things she makes up on her own, but I know there have been more.

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Humhummuh is now almost always "San-tah Caws!" and snowmen are something not quite spellable, but clearly "snowman" rather than "myan-myan" which is also her word for "man" and "mailman" and, probably, any other compound word ending in "man."

Doggies are no longer "dada" and cats are "cat" or "kitty" but very rarely "yow yow" anymore.

And if she's talking about our critters, she often calls them by their proper names.

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She's into greeting people and animals and inanimate objects. There's not much more adorable than "Hew-ow, Mama!" unless maybe it's "Hew-ow, Snowman!"

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Her Little People farm includes a brown horse, who is all rounded and bloated and non-chokey, like all the new-fangled Little People. Out of the corner of an eye, he always looks like a pile of poop.

We made the mistake of talking about it, and now his name is "Poop Horse."

And it is HIGH-larious.