Dear Marshall,
You turned 2.5 years old on Christmas. Happy Half Birthday! You have changed a lot in the last few months, particularly in the way you speak. You are getting quite good at English, which is great, but that means Martian is well and truly on its way out.
Your father and I are sad to lose some of our favorite Martian words. For example, you no longer say “gockey.” You call gockeys “monkeys” now, like everyone else. Also gone are “la boolah” and “le boodan,” both now replaced by “bread.”
But you still use a few fun Martian words and phrases and, even when you use English, you say the most adorable things. Here are some of them.
- You call your diaper a “biter” and triangles “trighingles.”
- If you break something or make a mess when you’re in another room, we know because you keep saying “Brokit!” or “Make le mess!” or my personal favorite, “What hhhhappened?”
- You can count fairly well when you’re serious about counting, but other times you just spout out strings of not-quite-consecutive numbers. You seem particularly fond of 14, because many of your strings end on it. For example, you often say, “One, two three, five, nine, fourteen!” Your least favorite number must be 8, because you almost always skip it.
- If your father leaves you downstairs for a while, sometimes you’ll come upstairs by yourself (which you’re not supposed to do), asking in your cute, soft voice, “Where are you, Daddy?” You usually end up at my office door, so I let you in and keep an eye on you until your daddy comes back.
- The cats’ food dish is located opposite your bedroom door. Every time you are in the upstairs hallway, whether coming or going, you always see the dish and want to feed the cats. You are quite insistent, so your father and I have pretty much delegated that task to you. You’ve gotten very good at it, too. You should see the exaggerated care with which you pour the food from the cup to the bowl. This morning you also treated me to a running commentary as you did it: “Feed the cats. In the bowl. Put back the cup. All done.”
- You have dry skin so you often ask me to “otion legs” (put lotion on your legs). Sometimes you call the lotion “soap,” probably because the two products come in similarly-shaped containers.
- You love the TV show Curious George. There are four seasons of the show on Netflix and you are now on your third time through them! When an episode ends, before the credits are even done rolling, you start demanding another. You say, “More George?” If we don’t put a new episode on right away, you repeat that phrase over and over and over again until we do. At least you know what you like!
Love,
Mom