Kids say the oddest things

Trifecta's post about his son's chanting made me think of my own kids' peculiar speech patterns and habits ... my favorite one right now is how Jrette. (age 2½), after seeing the movie Alvin and the Chipmunks (which, I must point out, her mother took her and her brother to see), goes around saying "bow chicka wow wow" all the time. Let's hope she grows out of that one. Of course, she still says "Daddy" like "Daddily," which is also very cute. I've always wanted to be an adverb.

Meanwhile, Jr. (age 8½) still has trouble pronouncing his r's. He's been in speech therapy at school for a while, and it's definitely improving. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to be self-conscious about it, nor does he seem to be passing the habit on to Jrette. If it were me, I'd look for ways to avoid the letter "R" altogether:

Hi! How goes it? I was listening to the ... um, I tuned into NP ... National Public ... ah, scwew it.

When he was very young, Jr. had an endearing tendency to repeat initial syllables of polysyllabic words. Example: singing "Twinkle, Twinkle," he would always say, "Like a die-dime in the sky." Or his dad's favorite football team would be the "Buh-Bucs" for "Buccaneers." I never did figure that one out ...

Both children have been astoundingly articulate with enormous vocabularies for their respective ages. I'm convinced that it's because their mother and I never really talked to them in "baby talk." First thing I said to Jr. after he popped out was a detailed explanation of the infield fly rule, and it's just gone from there.

I look at it this way: it's all going to give them a lot of fodder for their therapists someday.