Learning to Talk

There are so many reasons why age three is just one of my favorite ages for kids.  I love all the personality that starts showing its face at age three and all the thinking skills that start to develop.  Some of those thinking skills are maybe there before age three, but at age three, they start to get expressed, and I am amazed every single day at what Mr. Trouble on Feet is thinking and remembering.  This new level of interaction is so much fun.  It’s fun to read big kid books together and all activities are tempered with so much more reason.

Best of all, there has been such a language explosion for my little guy this summer.  I knew he’d love talking when he was ready, he always did love to communicate with his hands and face,  and he tries more and more words all the time.  He is so incredibly patient when I don’t quite understand what he’s saying, and he just keeps trying and trying until I finally figure it out.  I love hearing what sounds are substituted for tricky phonemes.  I love hearing how word order develops in sentences.  Language development just never gets old for me!

Here are some of my favorite verbalizations from Mr. TOF:

• I love how he uses “me” for the subjective “I” and possessive “my” all the time.  All my kids did this, and it makes me want to shrink my big kids back down to age three.
• Similarly, I’m smitten with “Us do dat” (We should do that).
• He calls his bike the “wee wee” because its so fun to go fast.
• I wish you could hear this guy say “cookie dough.”  It’s so endearing that you just want to hand him a bucket of cookie dough.  He loves cookie dough ice cream.
• “Hank you” (thank you) is always stated so sweetly.
• He has a bit of a minor lisp, which is incredibly adorable.  “Sofie” (our old babysitter who came to visit earlier this week) comes out “sthosthie.”  Yes is often “Yesth”
• Sarah is still “Sszzzzzzzaaah”
• Lake Superior is “Big wettie wettie.”
• When something doesn’t go right he feels so apologetic and so sincerely states “so sthorie” that you can’t help but to instantly forgive any altercation.

There are so many more, as well.  Most importantly he just learned to say his name at the end of last month.  Cousin Alex was here, and Cousin Alex refers to Mr. TOF as “Iboe.”  Mr. TOF did NOT like being called Iboe.  He stood up tall and said “Me no Iboe.  Me Zaiah.  I-zaiah.  Me Zaiah.” (Then the two of them had a little verbal argument about whether it was Iboe or Zaiah . . . he’s pretty particular about people getting his name right, and Iboe definitely doesn’t make the cut, apparently).   He has to think pretty hard about putting the “I” before the zaiah, so he mostly calls himself Zaiah, which is one of his nicknames anyway.