Pronouncing Things...

Like with all children as they learn to talk children create their own words or variations of words. We NEVER talked baby-talk to Ace, nor did we tolerate it from well meaning friends, family, or strangers. Ace has always been provided the official word for almost everything. He does get some 'kid' terms like for his ice pack - which we refer to as his 'boo-be-gone' and I am sure there are a smattering of other things that have had unique terms adopted to them. However, for the most part as a rule, Ace is taught the proper word from the get go.

I believe this is partially why he has such a good vocabulary and sentence structure at the age of 2 (27 months.) He has in recent weeks started to read 'with' me - where we run through the exercise of me reading a story one word at a time and he repeats after me. We have been doing this with his Advent 'Calendar' which are mini-books with the telling of the Christmas story - and he is able to repeat 'frankincense' with no issue. Don't get me wrong he still has some words mushed together, and proper pronunciation doesn't come with every word - but he still seems leaps and bounds ahead when it comes to speaking.

We recently started reading every night before bed a devotional book for toddlers and each one comes with a prayer. I say the prayer first and the we go into 'repeat' mode and he fold his hands and says the prayer himself - with an enthusiastic AMEN! at the end. It is so sweet, and I love that he is excited to do it.

Monday in the doctor's office - our doctor was astonished that after consuming some dried apples and having some dust on his fingers he looked at his hand and up at her and said "Oh I just need a napkin." She couldn't believe it. These things don't strike me as astonishing since he's been doing it for months now - but I guess for a two year old it is pretty impressive and I should give him the credit and allow others to relish in his 'advancement'.

He still has a few gems that I hold tightly to, he still refers to music as 'merser' and bananas as 'banas' and he has recently switched from saying 'I am' to 'I are' or 'I'm are' - I appreciate them because while I love that he is such a little man with an extensive vocabulary and a great sense of language and words, I still like the glimpse of my little boy. He quickly outgrew the "ee" phase and I missed it when it was gone. He has been in conversation now for some time and while I love it, I miss my little boy.

Enjoy this video of us reading one of his Toy Story books.

And this one of my unprepared interview skills where we discuss a smattering of things, primarily the need for the Christmas lights to 'take a break' :)