Thursday 17 September 2009

Moving on...

I knew the day would come eventually - and it arrived yesterday.

Small children have a wonderful knack for twisting words to suit them; 'bye bye' becomes 'boy boy', 'yellow' becomes 'lellow', 'napkin' becomes (if you are Boy #1) 'nyapkyin'. If you have children I have no doubt there will have been a trademark mispronounciation at some point in their development, one that you will probably always remember, to be brought out, polished up, and passed around at family gatherings or on first parental / sibling meetings with boyfriends and girlfriends.

My brothers' trademark at 3 years old was a line from a book; Babar the Elephant. You may remember that when the old king ate a poisoned mushroom, he '...lay down, and he died.' Unless you live in Gloucestershire, when he '...lay down, and he doyed.' See? Thirty years on, and I still remember it. Got to love big sisters, huh?

Boy #2's signature word was - unsurprisingly - related to transport, what with his worship of all moveable machines. He has never been able to say the word 'helicopter'. Or at least, he never felt the need to. Instead, it was always 'hello-lo-lok', which personally I quite like, and actually think that it even sounds a little like the sound that they make. (OK, not much, but I'm his mother...).

Yesterday afternoon in the playground however, the era of the 'hello-lo-lok' drew to an end. He said 'helicopter' - correctly. And then he decided that he liked the sound of it so much that he was going to say it again. And again. And again...

I applauded, of course. It is the right pronounciation, after all. Even though I preferred the old one.

My baby is growing up.

15 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. They grow too fast.

    My 2 (almost 3) year old has always called elephants 'effalants' until this wee when he mastered the right pronunciation. Sob.

    Helicopters are stil 'hellolopters' though.

    :)

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  3. Did you see the freudian slip there?

    Wee instead if week. I have potty training on the brain!

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  4. Nyapkyn(sp?) - sounds remarkably Russian to me. He's obviously one step ahead on your Moscow adventure!

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  5. Luke (who is always called Lukey) can't pronounce his own name. Calls himself Oo-key. I LOVE OOkey. When he learns to say his name properly I'll cry.

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  6. I love it when my daughter says "lo" instead of "though" - I know it won't last long.

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  7. Did your kids say pasghetti instead of spaghetti? That's the one word all kids seem to say wrong.

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  8. How is he with binoculars?

    I still can't say it in my thirties.

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  9. Little guy used to say "f" instead of "s" so "strawberries and cream" came out as 'Foobies and feem". He's long since stopped saying that but the rest of us still do!

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  10. IM, yep, you're potty training. Definitely.

    Mud, I wouldn't be at all suprised if Husband was tutoring them on the quiet...

    Brit, I know what you mean. (boy #2 said 'hello-lo-lok' again today. I didn't correct him).

    Iota - see comment above...

    Irene - only if they don't get to say 'carbonara' afterwards...

    SPD - 'binnocolers', right?

    EPM, I bet you still will when he's left home too. It's funny though - it's cute when it refers to child bloopers. When it refers to adult ones it just seems contrived, somehow.

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  11. I've got a little book where I write down some of the words and expressions they have, otherwise you forget. There are a lot of them in this house. Littleboy 1 still says 'Moomus' for Hummus, and he's 4...

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  12. Ohhh, that is a terrible thing. My five year old has outgrown all of them. Luckily, I now have a one year old around who provides the entertainment.

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  13. You can't help but love the things they get wrong. My 4 year-old daughter reverts to a kind of old English for words ending in 'ed'. Scraped becomes scrape-ed etc. We've no idea why. It's like living with an Elizabethan child! School will put her right but we kind of don't want them to...

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  14. Jonathan still calls it a helitopter.

    But when he stops doing that.....*sniff*

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  15. How dare he grow up! I admit to repeating and occasionally encouraging adorable wrongness because I love it so.

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Go on - you know you want to...