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.