Chat-chick and chokk-it

My girls don't have the best pronunciation in the world…as I may have mentioned before. And it's so fun – I rarely correct their word creations. I'd much rather allow them to last as long as possible. I'll fix it before first grade.

Probably.

At least before middle school.

I promise.

But the latest mispronunciation led to a mis-communication that turned out to be quite entertaining. I apologize before-hand that I didn't take pictures. It wasn't until the end that I realized what I was dealing with or I would have.

So back to the beginning….

The girls got chapstick – otherwise known around here as chat-chick – in their stockings for Christmas. They love it, and use it every time they can get their hands on it, which isn't nearly as often as they like, since I keep moving and "hiding" it.

They also got "chokk-it" (chocolate) then, and more recently, and since the snow days hit, there's even more floating around in far-too-accessible places.

The other evening, C comes running in to tell me that T2 has "chokk-it" all over her mouth. Since my husband was baking chocolate chip cookies at the time, I figured he'd slipped her a cookie when I wasn't paying attention. She's a terrible mess with chocolate. I went searching for a baby wipe and for her. I noticed as I was wiping the mess off that it looked a little odd…not the normal chocolate look. And my husband said that he hadn't given her a cookie, so it wasn't his fault.

So we went on a hunt for the "chokk-it."

"Did you get chocolate out of a wrapper?"

Randommumblingandbabytalk"yes"moreunintelligiblebabytalk

"can you show me where you left the wrapper?"

She takes me into my bedroom, where I remember that I was eating dark-chocolate covered pretzel peppermint patties, and had left the package on my nightstand. Dark chocolate seemed a little more likely to have caused that mess on her mouth, but it still seemed not-quite-right.

She kept going, through the bedroom and into the bathroom, where I was trying to remember what in the world I might have left in my purse or school-bag.

There sitting on my bathroom counter….

….is a tube of mascara, with the wand loose next to it….

….she apparently thought it was "chat-chick," and had covered her lips with it.

"chat-chick," "chokk-it" – all sorta sounds the same out of her cute, mascara-covered little mouth.

Sigh. Life doesn't get boring much around here.

Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man

We learned at church last Sunday that Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and that he climbed up in a “sycamus” tree. Now, if you learned the song any differently, please don’t tell C…she likes it that way. It’s driving T1 nuts, but there’s no arguing with her. And, honestly? I kind of want to enjoy this mis-speak for a while. After all, it doesn’t last nearly long enough.

Once upon a time, it was T, with his “peeceypacer” (pacifier). No oversimplification of words for him – he goes for the complicated pronunciations! And it was impossible for him to say “ch.” It sort of came through his nose in a snort kind of sound. I tried lots of times to mimic it and never could get it quite right. You should have heard him say “church” – especially when he had a cold!

Now it is C, with her desire to take a “maza-gine” to read at the “Bak-setball” game. And her sycamus tree.

I know, soon it will be T2’s turn, and she’ll have all kinds of entertaining words for us, but I don’t want to hurry anything along.

They outgrow it, and we mourn a little. I guess if they didn’t outgrow it, we would mourn more than a little. But for now, if you sing the Zacchaeus song with my C, will you sing her version? I want to enjoy my view of the “sycamus trees” for a while.