Nice Hot Bowl Wa-Wa

We were fresh out of swim class, walking at the head of a crowd of people leaving the Y, and I was negotiating with Sydney.

"Mo hop-hops" she said.
I shook my head, "No, no more hop-hops until we get to the car."
"Car," Sydney said, "No hop-hops, car."
"What are hop-hops?" The woman behind me finally had to ask.

Busted!

Hop-hops are, of course, what Sydney calls bunnies, because she knows they hop, I suppose, and she and I were actually talking about Annies Bunny Grahams, which are kind of like your traditional Animal Cracker except they are all bunnies. So I had to explain to the woman that my daughter was actually talking about eating bunnies, which sounded terrible when you explained it in adult English. At least she wasn't sitting at our dinner table, listening to Sydney expound upon her love of baa-baa while eating lamb.

We'd recently heard from a child expert that not using the correct word for whatever the child says when speaking back to them is bad for language development. That means when Sydney announces that she wants wa-wa I should promptly say "water" back to her, and I should definitely not fall into the trap of referring to bunnies as "hop-hops." But on the other hand, what is language development after all but the ability to aptly express yourself? Why shouldn't I start referring to our mouthwash as "teeth juice?" Or to soup as "bowl wa-wa?" Or to the act of plowing snow as "mommy push snow?" Maybe Sydney just isn't as hide-bound, language-wise, as the rest of us. Maybe toddlers don't develop language so much as craft it.

Bowl wa-wa, by the way, is a simple meal which can be cooked up right at the dinner table. All you need is a bowl, some water, and some dinner. First you pour the water into the bowl. Then you put select pieces of dinner in the bowl. Then you mash it around with your hand. Then you drink it. If you have hop-hops and baa-baa at the same time, you might just be in toddler heaven. Or as Sydney might put it, in "baby up-high".

And Yes means Yes

At 21 months, we're embarking on 2, and we all know the Terrible Twos.

Here's a sampling:

The game of Chase Me: Chase Me is excellent exercise, for child and parent alike, and consists, at least at the moment, of going round and round the dining room table or, if we're really ambitious and rambunctious, the circuit we can make by going through the kitchen to the living room through the hall to the dining room and back through the kitchen. The game is necessarily accompanied by the panicky giggle from the 21 month old and the phrase "I'm gonna get you" from the chasing parent.

Chase Me is also employed when about to do something you might not want to do, such as getting dressed or going to bed.

No: The word no is increasingly employed by both parent and child to mean things we shouldn't do (No climbing on the radiator) or things we don't want to do (no brush!) or things we're not going to do right now (No car today) or things we're not going to have anymore (no more juice). No is also a word ignored increasingly by both parties, to the point where my husband, in one frustrating moment, told Sydney sternly, "No means no!" She has taken this to heart, repeating it endlessly back to us so that we understand too: "nomeanno! nomeanno! nomeanno!" Of course she's right. In a fair world, her "no" would mean no, too. Someday soon, maybe, Dad will be forced to tell her: "yeah, well, life's not fair." Hopefully that won't be until we reach the Terrible Teens.

Smiling: Yes, Virginia, being cute and having an adorable smile will get you everything in the end. This girl has a mind of her own, a head of blond hair and the smile of an angel. Watch out, world. Here she comes.

Errant Xylophones

"Nysh!" Sydney says, pointing to the swords we have hanging on the wall or to the cucumber she wants cut up smaller. "Nysh!" she says when she sticks her hand under the water, when it is that rare just right temperature that is neither hot nor cold. "Daddee! Nysh!" she says with a definitive nod of her head, which either means "Daddy is nice" or "Daddy is a knife." We assume the former.

Language has always been a confusing mishmash for me, one of the reasons I have stuck with my primary and only tongue, English, although my fluency in this particularly confusing grammatical structure is probably a fine accomplishment, given the sheer number of rules and exceptions we have to play with. Not to mention the further down the alphabet you go, the less examples of viable words you have.

Take, for instance, the letter X.

Sydney has started to take an interest in her blocks. She has moved past the knock them down, stack them up stage and has moved to the pictures, numbers and letters represented on each of the six sides. Some of the blocks are thoughtfully arranged so that the letter represents a word represents a picture, and thus we have our lesson in language while striving to play. For a while the game is easy enough. "A" is for apple, "B" is for basket... but then you get to "X" and what do you do now? What super 21 month old can get their tongue around the word "xylophone", not to mention trying to explain what it is?

This particular block set tried to represent x-ray, with mixed results:

"X!" I say, turning the block around to reveal the big X and the small x. Then "X is for xray..." and then turning it around again to the picture side, which shows a kid with a blackened middle and bones for a belly, at which point I say "and this is a...."

"Boy!" Sydney gamely says, going for the most obvious portion of the picture and conveniently ignoring the "x" part.

.."Yes," I say, "x is for... boy." How am I really supposed to explain the concept of a machine which can see your bones? She doesn't even know she has bones.