baby's first grammar lesson
Cub is imitating Philomythulus. So now there are TWO children running around my house roaring and yelling and crashing into the walls on purpose and laughing hysterically. Cub yells 'Bang!' when he hits the walls, just to make the point absolutely clear. Between collapsing with laughter, Mr P and I are wondering just what we've done and whether the world is ready for this duo.
We have more new words than you can shake a stick at: tiger, coat, bang, plate, walk, pushchair... loads of words. Also he's starting to argue with me. I said we were going out in the pushchair. "Walkie," he said. "Pushchair," I said. "It's a long way." "Walkie," he repeated, and I'm pretty sure he would have kept going indefinitely. We compromised on walking to the end of our road and then going in the pushchair. He also imitates practically every word out of our mouths at home, which can be hilarious when the words he's attempting are things like 'interview strategy' and 'statistical significance'.
'Cuddle' is still a favourite word, whether it's him doing his high-speed cuddle missile thing, or when he gets to the end of one his little tantrums after being told 'no' and looks at me and whimpers 'need cuddle'. Also 'give me cuddle', generally accompanied by grabbing me by both knees while I'm trying to do something that's difficult to do while cuddling a toddler, like washing dishes. Cuddles are very important in his life.
I now have a new name: Busy Mummy. I think I must have told him I was busy so many times that he now thinks it's part of my name. Oops? He knows who he is too: 'apful baby' (helpful). This after I set him to taking the laundry out of the washing machine and putting it into the tumble dryer, and then told him what a helpful baby he was. He is now officially the Helpful Baby, and he's very happy about it. I am no longer permitted anywhere near the laundry; if I try to do anything he shoves me out of the way with screeches of 'apful baby, apful baby, me do, me do!'
But my favourite new thing in the language front is that we have regular grammar! Cub pointed to a picture of several sheep and said 'sheeps'! I may be absurdly delighted by this. Identifying grammatical rules and regularising the irregular bits of the English language, as done by toddlers everywhere and now in my house too! Can I have 'goed' too?
Crossposted at http://philomytha.dreamwidth.org/133564.html. There are
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