This isn't dissimilar to the way LG developed, either, with big developmental leaps forward. The crucial difference, however, is that G2 is a lazy talker. If he can distill a longer word into a shorter form that he knows you understand, he won't make the effort to say the whole thing.
As you might expect, this is hilarious. Yesterday after breakfast, he was running around shouting "boobies! boobies!" Once I recalibrated my Babel fish for toddler-speak, I realized he was telling me about the BLUEBERRIES he had for breakfast. Later, he handed me a small Minion toy, pointed to the front and said, "Butt." I started to correct him with "belly," when I realized he wanted me to push a BUTTON located on the figure's stomach.
I'd love to better understand how these short word forms develop. One of his very first words was banana, but these days he can hardly be bother to muster much more than "bann," "bana," or "nana." Clementine is another fun one. Most often it comes out "cline-tine," which is, admittedly, closer to the real thing than "boobies" is to blueberries. Meanwhile, he has no problem saying "cupcake."
Before he regularly said "Dada," G2 briefly and inexplicably referred to me as "Nya-Nya." LG loved this, though I was somewhat less than enthusiastic. He refers to his sister as "Mimi," which is the best kind of endearing.
Anyone who knows Hollie well knows that there is no shortage of Peanuts memorabilia around the house, especially at holidays. We decorated for Halloween over the weekend, and re-introduced G2 to an animatronic Snoopy mummy. While I certainly get tired of him pushing the "butt" to activate the toy for the 37th time, I very much enjoy his repeated, failed attempts at saying Snoopy. So far, we have "Poofny," "Foofny," and "Poopsny," which is somehow the closest he's gotten.
LG had similar trouble with the word "pretzel." For a long time, she only called them "pencils." That was amazing and confusing, and I loved it. Then it became "prentzel" and it weirdly remains so, despite the fact that this child regular uses "simultaneous" and "similar" in regular conversation. Today, she told me the difference between her right and left hand, and noted that "right" means two things. "Right means this side of my body, and it also means you did something the way you're supposed to. You can do something right." She understands homophones, but pretzel still eludes her.
Never change, LG. Never change.
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| They are pretty cute. |
