Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Toddler Talking Trash

I know I've been heavy on mommy posts, lately. But I'm thinking Grasshopper's interst in this blog, if she ever reads it, will be these sorts of posts.  Don't worry, though: I'm in the midst of a post on feeding a vegetarian baby. Okay. That's a lie. In order to justify another post about my wee one I hustled some synapses, which reminded me of the Quorn taste in my mouth, and how I once considered writing a post on the topic of raising a healthy vegetarian child. I am still at the dawn of thinking about writing that post however.

This post, by the way, is unabashedly about my adorable toddler whose requisite pronounciation mistakes have a distinctly crass bent.

boobies and cow poopFor instance, although she has always referred to her breastfeeding as, "NiiighNigh!" she ran up to me and started demanding boobies last week. Boobies?? Grasshopper is all but weaned and neither of us could remember the last time we'd uttered the "b-o-o" word. The next morning, though, she asked again. I said no, outright, which sent her into tears, but she quieted down and gazed at me intently as I started making her morning seven grain cereal. When I opened the freezer, as usual, and dumped a handful of frozen blueberries into the pot she let out a victorious gurgle of sorts and started laughing/chanting like an insane baby: boobies! boobies! boobies!

And just tonight she crassified another of her favorite foods. I was teaching her that all liquids aren't, actually, called agua or water. On the table in front of us: bilburry juice (jugo), milk, water, and ketchup. After a protracted conversation in which I had to assure her that my name was still "mommy" even if all the liquids were not "agua," she decided I wasn't pulling her leg. Then she pointed and named everything on the table: aqua, jugo, milk, cow poop.

And last but not least: after she sits on her potty GreenDaddy chirps: "Good job, Grasshopper! Let's go put the pee pee in the toilet." Grasshopper falls into a full tilt run towards the bathroom yelling, "Twat! Twat! Twat!"

We're trying not to encourage her in these mispronunciations, since I don't want to be one of the YouTube parents who thinks it's funny to teach their children to swear worse than sailors and put it on the web for the world to see. But, like my father always swore he was doing for me, I am saving these stories to tell her first dates (though by the time she's thirty-five, she'll probably just think they're funny too...heh heh).

Of course, my favorite of her words is not an uncouth mispronunciation at all: it's an extraordinary invention. A mix between the spanish and english words for shoe -- "zapato," and, well, "shoe." A shoepato.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

very insightful post.

george

GreenDaddy said...

What you don't know is that I secretly play her Eddie Murphy's "Raw" routine over and over. I want her to have some street creds since we live in downtown Houston and all.

Fiddler said...

Here are a couple from back in the day (when my now adult children were just tots)...
Au gratin potatoes were high on the request list as "old rotten potatoes"
Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise sauce is still affectionately referred to as "Holiday" sauce, because would usually only appear on holidays... and now when the kids are home it is declared an unofficial holiday and warrants having the special breakfast with "Holiday" sauce!

cake said...

while it can be frustrating for all involved, i like this stage of trying to interpret what our toddler is trying to say when he throws a new vocalization at me. i find that i typically underestimate what cosmo is capable of understanding and stating.

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad you're recording these moments. It's so important to immortalize family lore, I think.
Anyway, I like it. Julie