Thursday, January 22, 2009

Best Mom Tip #31: Record your kid-isms

My daughter used to say we were going "upchairs" instead of upstairs. She used to say, "I want budder on da top an' da bomun" instead of "butter on the top and the bottom." We still sometimes say that it is "chiyyi" outside when the weather is a little chilly.

But these kid-isms are fewer and far between as she rapidly approaches school age. She still says "dolly" instead of doll. She occassionally metions something that happened back when she was "free" instead of three. I like that one because it sounds like she's been in some sort of bondage for the last few months. As in, "back when I was free I didn't have to clean my room by myself."

Her last true little-girl word is "clo," which in my daughter's world is the singular of the word "clothes." She came running down the stairs last week and said, "Mommy! When we go to Disney World I'm gonna take a dress-up clo!" I find myself avoiding using the correct terminology so she won't figure out that she is mistaken for a little while.

My beautiful girl now has a little brother who is still in the cooing and grunting phase so I certainly have a few more years of cute kid phrases to remember. But this time I know how fast they pass by. What if I don't remember "upchairs" anymore? What if I start to get those cute kiddie words mixed up and I don't remember who said what?

I don't think my life will be worse if I don't record these somewhere (a notebook, a baby book, captions in photo albums), but I do think it will be richer when I'm older to look back at their frist attempts at language. Until then, I need to go pick out a clo to wear.

2 comments:

  1. Strangely, I just told Adam that I wanted to spend the evening writing a list of Abby's words before I forget what her first words were. My personal favorite is "craca" which sounds a bit like "caca" and means "cracker" as in graham cracker, her favorite food. I especially love it in when she throws her arms in the air during a meal and says "craca" as if she is saying "touchdown" (which was actually her 3rd word).

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  2. I love the little-kid phase when they are only intelligible to their parents. We're already finished with that part...at least for the first kid.

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