In a word...

I loved when my toddlers were learning to talk and they would constantly mispronounce words...I used to adapt their way of saying something into my regular speech. For example, Greg said one year "we goin to the cunkin catch??" so every fall instead of going to the "pumpkin patch" we would go to the "cunkin catch" ! he used to say "we wide the crain?" so ever after I would say "you wike widing the crain?" Who knows how bad I delayed their speech by incorrectly pronouncing words when I spoke to them, but I had fun doing it. My youngest is now 5 and has caught on to the gig and gets angry when I mispronounce things. As they are learning to speak correctly, and I can no longer laugh at their mispronounced words, I have turned my attention to their writing. Every night I help with homework and check classwork that was done that day. The school doesn't focus much on spelling things correctly unless it is a writing assignment, so as long as the teacher can decifer what the student is saying, they leave spelling alone for the most part...it is so fun to see how my kids interpret what they hear.. this a sampling of answers that I had fun with yesterday...



Q: "I have no sides or corners, what am I?"
David: "crokol" (translation: circle)

so trying to stay serious I would hold up an item and say "David, is this a crokol or a square?"

Q: "These shapes are alike because...."

David: "taer bof ratagos" (translation = they're both rectangles)
(so I now pronounce "rectangle", "rat-tag-o")
Q: "these shapes are different because..."
David: "lis fat lis not fat" (translation = this one is flat, that one is not flat")
(just funny!)

He got all those answers correct, his teacher is a good translator!

Greg is learning sounds of letters and sings the alphbet song with words attached, "a: annie's apple, b: baby's bottle" etc etc...it's really amusing because he will mispronounce some of the words in the song, such as "M: my cacaroni,..p: purple kencil" ...it is very very cute...I have started to sing along, and just get quiet during the part he mispronounces...I think he is figuring it out, but I love it so much that I don't want to correct him! (I am sure the teachers would be more successful if they had a parent that helped them!)

I find a lot of humor in words everywhere. One of my favorite things is when I leave a comment on someones blog and I have to type a security word, I always make up definitions in my head of what the word could mean...for example, one time I got "skineia" , my made up definition was an adjective to describe someone who was extremly skinny,a synonym for "skin and bones", or another one was "pufeat". to me it would mean any failed attempt when trying to accomplish a feat...it was funny when paired with the visuals in my head... I also find humor in playing scrabble with Dale. It has become a game of who can bluff more successfully...we have come up with some pretty amusing made up words.. Last night Dale's amusing word was MYTE...(as in Dyno-myte!) ...myte is not a word, but it was to cute to challenge, so I didn't...I did have to challenge "ques" (we don't speak spanish!)

I gotta run so I can get some "trismas" shopping done and then we can start to put presents under the "trismas tree" !