What I am Loving Right Now

Right now I am loving my children's speech. They are both at different places in their speech development, and both are equally delightful. Penelope is a lover of words, and uses them very creatively. She is always stopping me while I read to her to ask what a word or a phrase means, she pauses movies to run and ask me what a character was talking about when they used an unfamiliar expression, and there is an urgency to her need to have these things explained. If I am in the middle of a conversation with another adult, or on the phone she will come to me saying "excuse me!" and I'll ask if it's important or tell her to wait just a minute. She usually has a very hard time being patient, and when I finally can pay attention to her and find out she wanted to know the definition of a word, I tell her that really wasn't important enough to interrupt me, it could have waited, she is angry. "It WAS important! I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT IT MEANT! I NEED to know what words mean!" Complete exasperation.

I love to listen to her "read" books right after we have been to the library. She uses words we don't usually use in our every day talking, but that are common in books. I hear her say things like, "he declared" or "she cried out" or "he responded" or "they exclaimed". I love the descriptive adjectives she uses when reading too. "It was a bright and beautiful morning", "across the misty meadow", "down the long and winding lane", "inside his safe and cozy den, safe from harm". She doesn't know the story yet, because we have just brought the books home, but she'll sit for an hour or more and "read" the books to herself, using the pictures, her imagination, and the vocabulary she has heard in other books. I have tried to get this on video to keep forever, but she stops reading if she sees me do it, and so I don't know if I'll ever get it. I really love it though, it is one of my favorite things.

I also love the things she says incorrectly. Like, she doesn't eat grilled cheese, it's girl cheese, as in "Will you make me a girl cheese sandwich, Mom?" Or yesterday morning when she asked me if I thought one of her friends liked to go to croissants. Our conversation went something like this...
Pen: Mom, do you think Kimmy likes to go to Croissants?
Me: Do you mean does Kimmy like to eat croissants?
Pen: NO! I mean does she like to GO to CROISSANTS!
Me: Umm...Like the kind of treat you sometimes get at the farmer's market?
Pen: NO! MOM! You are NOT listening to me, I'm talking about croissants!
Me: So am I, but I don't think we are talking about the same kind of croissants, is it a place to go eat?
Pen: NO! Mom, I can't believe you! You are doing this on purpose! You are making me SO MAD!!!
Me: Well I'm really confused, can you explain what it looks like, where it is, what we do there?
Pen: Mom, you know this. We go all the time in the summer. It's down by the water and we bring a picnic dinner and sit on a blanket and people play music on a big stage and we dance and get Del's lemonade and lots of people go and we see all our friends there! You know THE CROISSANTS!!!
Me: (finally seeing the light) Oh! The concerts! You mean the concerts!

And Violet is suddenly growing her vocabulary by about 10 words a day. It is amazing to watch. Today she put two words together for the first time. Penelope was trying to convince her to climb up a rock with her, and Violet didn't think it was a good idea and said "No rock". Penelope noticed that she used two words. "Did you hear that, Mom? She said no rock, just like a real talker!" And yesterday, because of the unseasonably warm weather, I let them wear their new flip flops. Violet called her's pip pops, and now that's what Pen and I are calling them. And my favorite of the week, yesterday at the zoo. Violet is very into naming things, and naming body parts on various bodies is a favorite activity. We were looking at the elephants, and Violet began pointing out and naming all the elephant's parts. "Back. Legs. Feet. Tail. Head. Eyes. Nose. Wings."  Wait a minute, wings? Where are the wings? And she proudly pointed to them. And there they were, sure enough, wings. Right where one would normally notice ears, but don't elephant ears just look exactly like wings?

So now I know that elephants have wings, I'll be wearing my pip pops this summer, and I'm sure I'll be making my way down to the croissants to hear music and have a Del's lemonade with my favorite girls in the world.