Dear Marshall,
Few things in my life have been as interesting or as enjoyable as helping you learn how to speak. I wish we could record it all with a video camera, so that I could create a movie with all the best parts. But while the end result would be nice, years of having a camera in our faces probably wouldn’t be so pleasant. We will just have to make do with the written word.
- You love saying “bye-bye.” You’ll say it to anything and everything—ants, doors, cats—you name it. And you like to say it over and over again. The other day, as we were walking up the stairs and away from your father, you must have said “Bye-bye, Dada” at least ten times! We also have a “Hello, Bye-Bye” game in which your father or I says hello to something and then you say bye-bye to it. I can almost see the little wheels of your brain turning as you work to hold onto the name of the thing while placing the word “bye-bye” before it.
- Your Martian vocabulary has gotten quite large. Here are some of the words you use regularly.
beam = bean
cown = clown
deet = cheese
Doodledee = Woody (Toy Story character)
duce = juice
en-dee-oo (formerly, nee-oo) = cereal
geek = pink
Goway = Corduroy (a book)
gway = gray
Hobby = Bunnies and Their Hobbies (a book)
izh = shoes
la boolah = bread
moom = moon, moose
nondeet = mac ‘n’ cheese
oogy = yogurt
peeple = purple
rah = red
spoom = spoon
toowah = two
tzah = sock - You have also added new words to your English vocabulary. Among them are bear, beer, car, hair, hammer, pool, tail, and wipes. I love the way you say them. You pronounce each word so deliberately. For example, it’s not just a “hammer.” It’s a “hhhammerrr.” I think you say it that way both because you want to pronounce it correctly and because you understand that words are powerful, maybe even magical.
- You have learned to say “cracker” correctly (instead of “crackoo”). I guess all of your fun Martian words will eventually morph into English. That will be a sad day, however victorious.
- Your father bought a DVD with scenes from an aquarium. You watched part of it and when you saw a clownfish you said, “Cracker!” It amazes me that you noticed the fishy shape of your Goldfish crackers and extrapolated that other similarly-shaped things must also be crackers. I kept telling you that it was a fish, but you didn’t believe me. You just kept saying, “Cracker!”
- You recently made an enormous break-through in reading. We were reading your Potty book the other day when you pointed to the word “I” and said, “I.”
- When you want to watch Toy Story, you say “Hamm” or “Doodledee,” both names of characters. When you want to watch The Backyardigans, you say, “Arr!” (because the first episode is about pirates).
You are a language artist, Sweetie. Keep painting these beautiful memories for me.
Love,
Mom