Category: Babyslang

The Finnfatha continues to try stretching his verbal muscles. I’m totally charmed by his sometimes goofy-sounding attempts at sophistication:

• He’ll now state a long string of info, then causally bolt on, “FYI.”
• Giving me the long made-up back story for some of his trucks tonight, Finn said, “Well Sheriff & Sam like to hang out with Monster, but then, blah blah blah, they just want to go in my room.”
• Other times he’ll just throw up verbal “Hail Marys,”  trying out words he’s not quite sure of. Ranting at some ants in the hot sun, he said “These ants are feeble, they’re succulent, and they’re not good for eating!”
• When I tried taking a shopping basket back from him tonight, he shook his head and said, “Whoa, hey, ay Dios mío, I need that!” Wait’ll he tries that one with las maestras at preschool! 😉

At lunch yesterday my friend Iván, father of a 1-year-old girl, remarked on how she’s uncannily similar to him in her mannerisms–things she hasn’t been taught & almost couldn’t have observed. When his mom sees her granddaughter pout or make certain faces, Iván says, she says “It’s you!!”

Our guys can be similar. I’ll sometimes catch Henry chewing on his knuckles or forearm. “I’m not eating my arm!” he’ll declare, but guess what? It’s just like my weird habit (which I caught myself doing while writing this post!)–and my dad’s for that matter.

Finny, meanwhile, has taken a keen interest in his often banged-up feet. “Check out my blood toes!” he’ll crow. Taking off his Crocs he declares, “A flock of blood toes is on the loose!” Offered some itch-busting eczema lotion, he shakes his head: “I’ll just play with my blood toes.” Let’s just say, the old man can relate. 🙂

When I asked Margot if she thought the boys mirrored any of her mannerisms, she had to think about it for a minute. “Oh yeah,” she said, “Finny’s definitely inherited the ‘I’m ready to go home now’ declaration from me.” (A rather well-known story about 2-year-old Margot concerns her wandering out into the middle of a grown-up Christmas party with her mom’s purse, finding her mom, and very definitively indicating she was ready to leave. NOW.)

Oh yeah, and there’s the stubbornness that both boys evince pretty frequently. We have no idea where they get that…!

Boy, I guess we must go to Target more than I imagined: Henry’s lately started volunteering the opinion that things–anything!–could be gotten at that store. Reading some Richard Scarry tales the other day, he noted–in his halting, weirdly William Shatneresque way–“Dude’s hat… popping off… Got it… at Target.” And later, when Mommy Cat burned up Pa’s shirt with her iron, Hen suggested, “Get another one… at Target.”

Target execs, if you need a sub-3ft pitchman, you know where to reach us (presumably at Target!).

What’s the old line about little pitchers…?

Somewhere (we have our theories where), Finn picked up the, ah, charming adjective “friggin’.” It’s hard to know quite how to react to his using what’s not a real curse word but not very polite, either. An example scene:

The boys & I walked to nearby Hummingbird Park for some post-dinner R&R the other evening, and Finn insisted on towing a small wagon laden with all kinds of toys. (Amazingly, and to his credit, he was careful & didn’t lose any.) At the park Henry grew naturally curious & made a move for the wagon.

“Hey!!” shouted Finn. “Dad-O, he’s going to grab my friggin’ wagon!”

Oh boy, I thought, not knowing whether to laugh or apply the brakes. Not wanting to make a stink (and maybe raise the word’s scandalous appeal), I ignored the language & calmly assured him that Henry wouldn’t take the wagon.

“Yeah,” said Finn,” but then he’s gonna grab my friggin’ police car, my friggin’ pirate ship, my friggin’ ice cream truck…”

Man oh man–what to friggin’ do? 😉

Sometimes I think we need to hire some of the WWII Navajo Wind Talkers or build our own Enigma machine to decipher what exactly Finny is talking (or not talking!) about these days. Recently, while I was getting ready for work, Finny and Henry were poking around our bedroom, and Finny exclaimed, “I want to play with that Scramble under the couch!” My response: “Whaaaat? What is Scramble? Can you describe what you’re talking about?” He said “The little pieces with letters on them that go in this big box. It’s right here under the couch.” It was then I figured out he was talking about the Scrabble game under the bed!

Sometimes, the challenge is not even to decipher the words coming out of Finny’s mouth, but the things he’s feeling when he chooses not to use words. This has become more common lately, as he tries to noverbally exert his will in various situations. He’ll grump around because he wants you to bow to his bossy demands, or he doesn’t want to do something he knows he should (like ask for things politely). He’s trying to see whether he can get away with being rude and bossy instead of polite (short answer: NO.).

Last night, Finny was terribly grouchy, whiny, and petulant (without giving me anything to go on), and he was raising a big stink about wanting to watch one of his fire engine videos. I refused on the grounds that he had been a totally grumpy handfull all night long, so I wasn’t rewarding that with a video. He was unhappy about it, but seemingly went to bed quietly after we read a book. An hour or so later I heard him moaning and crying in bed, and when I went down to check on him, he wouldn’t explain why he was crying…but I figured out he was still upset about the video.

Tonight, after a prolonged late-afternoon doctor visit where he was a total gem, he asked about the fire truck video, and told me he would not cry, whine, fight, or kick like he did last night, and that he would be good so we could watch the video. I was impressed that my 3 year-old boy had sorted through last night’s episode and decided at last to verbalize his feelings. It just lightens my heart when we make tangible progress through these kinds of rough patches.

[“These tiles don’t want to be obedient!” said Finn the other day, mashing the Scrabble set. “They just want to friggin’ *panic*!” Oh boy: we tell Finn not to “panic” when he’s emotionally derailing, and as for the language–well, more on that in a bit. –J.]

Little Hen is, let’s say, not shy in expressing his wishes, especially now that he can toss some words around. Lately he conveys his desire to be held by saying, “Dad-O, hold you??*” We’re trying to teach him to have a little patience, but he’s wily: Seeking to draw me nearer his high chair, he’ll offer to pet us. Example:

H: “Pet… Dad-O??”
Me: “Uh… you want to pet me?”
H: “Nah” (meaning “Yah”).
Me: “Uh, okay,” cautiously extending an arm.
H: (seizing the moment & the arm) “Dad-O, hold you??”

He can be trying, this kid, especially as he tends to burst into tears (which he helpfully notes as “Cryin’?! Fussin’?!”) if gratification is delayed. Ah, but then he can be so nice: As we’ve sung in the dark at bedtime the last few nights, he’s combined elements of just-read Pat the Bunny, caressing my stubbly throat & chin and saying, “Pet, Dad-O… soft, face…” What a guy, what a guy; I think we’ll keep him. 🙂

*Nearly every phrase features little pauses, then rises with the tone of an urgent, somewhat pained question.

The onslaught of verbal creativity at the Nack house continues to pick up steam! Both boys’ abilities and imaginations are really blooming this spring.

Henry has started to truly enjoy being read to, and has abandoned his old practice of bailing out halfway through a book (or even a page). Most of the time he hangs in there for the entire story, although periodically he’ll grab the book and try to shut it with a pre-emptory “The End!” His top two book requests are: “Moo! Moo! Brown!” (Seuss’s Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?), and “Seaside?!” (Calling All Engines, a Thomas book that includes references to the seaside). Henry’s also starting to string together phrases, and every day adds at least one or two to his repetoire, which includes “Hello…Finny!”, “Mom-o’s yogurt”, “Dad-o hold you?”, “Bye bye doggie!”, “Come on, Finnster!”, and “…like it!” (which actually means “I don’t like it.” A favorite at meal times.)

For his part, Finny keeps cranking out comic gold. After climbing up a little climbing wall and sliding down its adjacent slide, Finny declared “Now I’m really a rockstar!” At snack time yesterday, he dutifully noted “I’m really wolfing down these nuts!” He has started calling his brother Henremius (apparently the ancient Roman version of Henry), and has dubbed the little Android-branded robot toy, pictured above, “The Italian.” Not to mention his ongoing fascination with pirates and their names. He is Blackbeard, so he’s appropriately dubbed me “Curlybeard.” At bathtime, the whole family becomes a horde of Bubblebeards! And apparently his new method of grooming involves “polishing” himself with “slop” (aka spit). He is also quite opinionated these days…After being assured that John’s drink at Aqui was juice & not a margarita, he smiled & opined “I think it’s a margarita.”

I swear, we don’t make this stuff up! It’s straight from the birdmens’ mouths!

[One other fun bit: Finn’s taken to narrating his life using language from stories. Once he’s adopted a persona (e.g. Thomas, Lightning McQueen), he might say a sentence normally, then add, “…tooted Thomas,” “…bellowed Lightning,” etc. –J.]

We have a lot of fun goofing around with words at our house, and Finny is not only a willing participant, he’s often the instigator of new phrases and word games. Utterly out of the blue, he renamed himself Chinny Jipasaurus while we were horsing around one afternoon. The name has stuck, and Chinny Jipasaurus has come out to play several times over the last few weeks. He even named his brother Hinny Jipasaurus!

Other personas and characters are often adopted by Finny. Lately he’s been a quail, running around ululating behind us, or from under tables or behind furniture. His favorite game right now goes like this:

— F: “Can you say ‘Where did that quail go’ Dad-o?”
— Dad-o: “Hmm…I seem to recall there being a quail running around here. Have you seen him, Finny? Where did he go? I haven’t heard him in a while.”
— F: (a little bit put out) “I’m the quail! doodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oodle!”
— Henry: (getting in on the act with a fainter, higher-pitched tone) “doodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oodle!”
— Dad-o: “Hey! There’s the baby quail, too!”
(repeat)

He’s been downing a lot of unusual “birdseed” as well: square birdseed (mini-wheat cereal), meat birdseed (self-explanatory), and round birdseed (Cheerios).

One last bit of language fun: Yesterday, when John and Grandpa Liggett took the boys to a big aquarium, they saw sharks, stingrays, crabs, turtles, otters, and beavers. When John asked Finny what he liked best about their visit, Finny replied “I liked the stingraisins!”

With rainy weather setting in, we’re spending a lot more time in our semi-finished basement. Gazing up at various pipes yesterday, Finn asked, “Did Jason the Mason [a bricklaying pig from Richard Scarry’s world] build this house?”

“No,” I told him, “I think it was a bunch of Nicaraguan dudes.”

Finn paused for a second to think. “Did they drink the agua out of jars–pickle jars?”

“Uh, what do you mean, buddy?” I asked. “What jars?”

“Pickle-agua jars!”

I laughed my head off. Now Nicaragua will forever be the land of pickle agua, full of thirsty workmen slugging back jars of briny water. Maybe they’re big fans of “Delicious Pocket,” Finn’s phonetic rendering of neighborhood restaurant “Tlaquepaque.” And now that Henry has started imitating Finn & refers to his own Leo-style blankie as “Leo,” the Pickleaguans might with the boys a hearty “Vaya con Leos!” 😉

Over the last few months, we’ve been charmed that Tyler (our little Tuesday-Thursday babysitting pal) has been calling everything “Bus!!” Living in San Francisco, he’s quite taken with the big busses that rumble past, and he calls anything vehicular (little toy shopping carts, garbage trucks, walkers, whatever) “Bus!”

Little Henry’s become quite the impressionable little myna bird, so now he goes around saying, “Bus, bus!!” If I’m holding him and he catches sight of our Richard Scarry Cars & Trucks book, he lunges sideways and paddles the air like Michael Phelps until I let him down to paw the pages. “Bus, bus!!” Good times all around. 🙂

Just now as I sat in the gazebo, Finn squeezed in next to me carrying a handful of Gobots.

“Hi, Dad-O.
“Hi, Finny.”
“I’m writing.”
“You’re… writing?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What are you writing?”
“Poems.”
“Poems…? Really? What are the poems about?”
“Hearts.”
“Hearts?… What kind of hearts?”
“Poop hearts… I like talking about poop with you, Dad-O.”

Aaaand, Scene.

Time to fire up the Nack Family Secret Decoder Ring…

• Chasando: Chasing. We’ve corrupted Finn’s nascent knowledge of Spanish, teaching him that the suffix “-ando” equals “-ing.” Thus he requests a little post-bath roughhousing by saying, “Let’s do some chasando!!”
• Duck furniture: Dirt clods. Recently Mom-O & Finn used a big “lopper” to lop off a root growing behind our garage. Somehow Finn decided that the root was part of a duck house, and that the ducks took off, leaving behind their furniture (clumps of dirt). This leads to weird incidents like Finn running up, saying “I’m gonna blast you with some duck furniture!,” and then slamming dirt clods into my knee.
• Sand Potato: aka The City Formerly Known as San Mateo
• Hoot bags: Backpack. Our friend Hughes (Hoot) and I have similar backpacks, so when I pulled mine out of storage, Finn said, “Dad-O’s got a Hoot bag!”
• Heavy Duty/Mega Duty: Blankets. Long ago Finn and I dubbed his green wool blanked “Heavy Duty,” and not long ago the even bigger wool blanket from Grandma Liggett became “Mega Duty.” We say that the blankets are brothers, or “Two Duties, Heavy & Mega.”
• Metal nudists: Rodin sculptures up at Stanford.

I get an unreasonably big kick out of assigning absurd title/surname combos to the boys (e.g. Captain Boogerfiend, General Birdwallis, and so on). “Doctor” works especially well, as featured in examples like:

• Dr. Dipechek: The guy we call in to check on a dipe (diaper); “Paging Dr. Dipecheck, Dr. Dipecheck come in please, you’re needed in Finny’s pants…”
• Dr. Neutron McCrazypants: Finn in hyperkinetic mode after getting hopped up on horchata
• Dr. Pebblewetter: Finn spraying down the gravel next to the driveway

…and so on.

Turnabout’s fair play, of course: Finn spotted me putting on a pair of unbelted shorts the other day and immediately said, “Dad-O’s ‘Dr. Pants-Fall-Down.'”