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.

More Bits and Pieces of from Peeper

(Yeah, "bits and pieces of Peeper" just didn't sound too good.)

Lately, I've taken to texting myself little reminders about cute / funny / smart things that Peeper says and does, so I can remember to tell Shrike and / or the world about them.

Here are a few from the past couple of days, plus a few things that I remembered since my last "Bits and Pieces" post.

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A couple of times now, we've been playing in the living room when Peeper's stopped and told me "Mipe back. Mipe back."

Then, she leaves the room for a while and comes "mipe back" with a toy from another room.

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A few nights ago, we were at Target for a few things, and also had a grocery list from Shrike (the same list with the blue toothpaste on it). There were a couple of things on the list that I couldn't get there, so I decided to get all the grocery items at the grocery store, instead.

While at Target, I decided to add a couple of items to my list, but didn't have a pen, so I told Peeper to "Help me remember that I want to get cheese sticks and raisins at the grocery store."

As we were driving over there, I said, "Okay, I know I wanted cheese sticks, but what was that other thing I told you to remember?"

(Of course, I assumed this was a rhetorical question.)

From the back seat, a little voice said, "Naisins!"

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At the store, we bought some bulk raw almonds for Shrike, which I scooped out of the bin into a plastic bag.

(I'm still not convinced that it's okay to eat them raw. If it were, why would all the nuts in jars be roasted? Shrike says I'm an idiot.)

Further down that aisle, Peeper "requested" goldfish crackers and I bought a small package.

After we finished our shopping, I was reviewing the list, and asking Peeper if we'd gotten everything. (I was trying to teach her to say "Check!" as I called out each item. Just 'cause.)

When I got to "nuts?" she said "Bag!" and after I went through the list, I said, "And what did you talk me into?" "Goldfish!"

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"Mipples."

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On the baby aisle at Target, there's a doll that comes with a highchair, a couple of jars of applesauce and a spoon strapped to her hand. Peeper likes to put one of the little bitty dolls in the highchair, because someone had left one like that once, and she saw it and evidently it seemed "right" to her.

The other day, she was making the bigger doll feed the little doll, and saying, with every bite, "Sank you, baby! Sank you, baby!"

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Last night, she had two of her pumpkin water bottles (we bought one at a pumpkin farm and a friend gave us two more!) and an orange fish. She was saying "Three pumpkins," so I pointed out that she had "Two pumpkins and a fish, but they are all alike. How are they alike? (crickets) Are they the same . . . color?"

She seemed to be ignoring me, but she put them all down, picked up her bouncing Tigger, put him beside them and said, "Orange!"

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Today, as she was pulling out ev.er.y. single. toy. in the living room, I was suggesting that we implement a more systematic storage arrangement.

"We could have a special place for all your blocks, and one for all your cars and trucks and trains and busses, and one for all your . . . "

"Santas!"

Not only was I kind of impressed that she was helping me to classify her toys, but yes, we're halfway through January, and she still has enough Santas in regular use that they warrant their own category.

Bits and Pieces of Peeper

In the bathtub, playing with the tub-sticky numbers and letters, Peeper picked up two 1s and held them next to each other.

I said "One one. What does 'one one' make?"

(I was thinking "eleven.")

Her answer?

"Two!"

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This afternoon, while playing with her bear puzzle (It has interchangable heads, torsos and feet, with different outfits. She says "Trade heads! Trade heads!") she told Shrike that there were "three heads."

This is true, but there are five pairs of feet, so clearly some pieces have gone AWOL.

For shits and giggles, I said, "So, there are three heads, but there are supposed to be five heads. How many heads are missing?"

Without skipping a beat, she said, "Two!"

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So, either our barely two year old is doing addition and subtraction, and possibly algebraic reasoning, or she thinks the answer to every "How many . . . " question is "Two!"

What's your guess?

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Last night, Peeper burped, so I said, "What do we say when we burp?"

She replied with a fake burp.

Perhaps I should have asked "What do we say after we burp?"

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At Target this evening, looking at the list that Shrike had given me, I asked Peeper (rhetorically, I thought) "What kind of toothpaste does Mommy use?"

(We both use Crest, but neither really knows the details of which of the thousand varieties the other prefers.)

She said, "Blue!"

Of course, this conversation happened as I was dialing the phone to call Shrike and ask:

"Hey, I'm at Target. What kind of toothpaste do you want?"

"The blue kind."

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Yesterday morning, we were all in bed, waking up slowly, while Peeper nursed. Typically, I'll stay in bed until she's ready to get up, because if I try to go pee or brush my teeth, she makes it quite clear that I was supposed to stay right there and goody her until she said otherwise.

As we were chatting, I told Shrike that I was freezing, because I didn't have a shirt on.

(I'd woken up hot in the middle of the night and threw off my sweatshirt, leaving me in just a tank. Then it got cold again. Our house does this.)

Peeper unlatched, looked at me and said "Shirt. Shirt." She waited quiely while I got up and put my sweatshirt back on, then went right back to nursing.

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Shrike and I were talking about something I said, ". . . so they don't think they have to follow Maryland Law," and Peeper said "Meh-yen. Yaw!"

We keep saying, "Hey Peeper - Maryland law!" just to make her say it again, because it's so freaking cute.

Bits and Pieces of Our Day

Seeing Mommy off to work.

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While watching Bert and Ernie on the Sesame Street website

Peeper: Elmo! Elmo! Elmo!
Mama: No Elmo right now; it's time to tell Bert and Ernie "bye-bye" so we can go run errands.
Peeper: ELMO!
Mama: We have to run our errands so we can come home and bake cookies.
Peeper: Buh-BYE!

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On the way home from our errands, we were singing "fill-in-the-blank" Christmas songs. You know, I'll sing and stop before the last word of the line, and Peeper fills it in. She does amazingly well with this, on both songs and books, even ones we've not read in a while.

Mama: Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to saaaay. . . ?
Peeper: Hi!

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Before her bath, Peeper put her Little People sheep in her potty.

Mama: Is the sheep pee-peeing?
Peeper: Poop!

Then she read him a book while he pooped.

Well, at least somebody's using that thing.

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After her bath, we swept up the cookie sprinkles. Well, I swept while Peeper held the dustpan and brush, got yucky stuff on her wet, naked body, and either counted the yucky things in the pile, or called cadence.

Fweep! Fweep! Fweep! Nun Too Fwee! Ate Nyun Teen! Ate! Teen! Ate! Teen! Ate! Teen! Fweep! Fweep! Fweep!

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After the sweeping, she was still running around nakey, and I walked into the living room to find this. She's taken all they toys off the bottom shelf where they live, and climbed up onto it. Did I mention naked?