Linguistic Ticks

Jack's talking up a storm these days. He's getting to the point that even people who don't spend much time with him can usually decipher a fair amount of what he's saying. Sometimes, things come out as clear as a bell. Perfect diction and the intonation that you'd expect from an adult. Other times, it requires a good deal of interpretation, but he's pretty good at making his thoughts known.

And then there a couple of funny little ticks that he's held onto for quite a while. Things that clearly aren't right, but they're so cute that we can't bear to correct them. Like the large, pink barnyard animals that say "oink." They're pligs. Every time. He says it with this sweet, lilting tone in his voice that makes them sound like the most magical, friendly animals on the face of the earth. Pligs . . . .

Or the color yellow. It was the first color Jack learned, and for a long time it was the answer to the question, "what color is that?" -- whether the object was red, green, blue or yellow. And all along it's been "lellow." It still is.

A few weeks ago, when we went to Florida, we spent a lot of time talking about how the pilot drove the plane. In that funny way that toddlers have, he took in the information and didn't say anything about it for a couple of days. Then, we were watching planes up in the sky one day, and he proclaimed that they were driven by the "toilet." This stuck with him on the return trip from Florida, when he was quite vocal about the toilet driving the plane. Since then, it's morphed into a pirate who flies the plane.

I feel like we're closing in on pilot pretty quickly. That's good, I suppose. But I'll be a little nostalgic when the sweet pligs and the color lellow vanish from our conversations.