Talk Like a Toddler

This post is inspired by another blog post by my friend Megan, written about her adorable son, Elijah. He's just a little older than Elise, and he says some funny things too.

Unrelated to this post, Elise loves to put things, especially headbands, around her legs, then shuffle around. I have no idea why she does this, but it sure is funny to watch.

Elise is 21 months old now, and she has been talking like crazy lately. She is stringing words together all the time, not necessarily in sentences, but close. Like tonight, when she wanted to watch this video of Jesus being baptized, she said, "Watch video Jesus baptize water." She definitely can get her point across.

She also constantly asks to go to the pool lately. A typical request might sound something like, "Shoes, diaper, suit, water." She knows that in order to go to the pool, we need to put on our shoes and bathing suits and get her a special swim diaper.

She is usually pretty clear when she speaks (at least to me), but I thought I'd make a list of some things she says that would probably need translation. Sometimes I even have to translate for Matt, like tonight when he thought Elise was saying something about her shirt being wet today. She was actually saying "red day" and patting her chest because she was wearing a red shirt today.

Here's a brief list, with the word or phrase she is trying to say first, followed by my best spelling of the way Elise really says it:

tomato = made-oh
bathing suit = suit
today = day
motorcycle = cycle
pineapple = apple
strawberry = strawbee
peanut butter = butter
sour cream = crean
ice cream = cone, or ice crean
pinecone = cone
kitchen = chichen
couch = chouch
sandwich = chanchich
library = ahh-bwee
thank you/you’re welcome = tan too gwelcon (said like one word as she gives you something)
washcloth = foff-foff
pacifier = faff-fie
up high = pie
hold it/them = hole-mum (usually with both hands on chest)
eat it/them = ee-mum
excuse me = scuses
basket = bassick
quesadilla = dadda

If you don't already know what she means, some of these things can get confusing. Like how she uses "apple" for both apple and pineapple, or "butter" for both butter and peanut butter. She says a lot of other typical things little kids say, like "baff" for bath, but this list includes a lot of the things she says that I think are amusing or unique to her toddler speech, although I'm sure there are many more things she says that are amusing that I can't think of offhand.

She also occasionally adds "es" to words, like "feetses" for feet or "toeses" for toes or "clotheses" for clothes. She's still figuring out the whole plural thing. And if she adds "too" to the end of a sentence or a phrase, you can usually ignore it. It doesn't usually signify much; I'm not sure she really knows what "too" means, but she uses it a lot. She can also say most of a prayer by herself, although she sometimes gets really loud suddenly and inexplicably while she prays. Occasionally she will stop playing, look over at me, fold her arms, and say, "Favver (Father), thank thee, Jesus Christ, Amen."

We sure do love this sweet girl, and we love how talkative and spunky she is.