Friday, January 4, 2008

Misquoted

Kids crack me up when they mispronounce a word. My boys (4 and 6) do it all the time. However, I find it more humorous when kids use an actual English language word in place of the correct one. My nephew, Logan (3), has been instrumental for some of these laughs this week at my mom’s.

First of all, my sister, Mindi, is expecting. (I got her permission before I posted this.) We are in dire need of some female influence on all sides of the family, so they have begun talking about girl names. If they have a girl, they have tossed around the name Savanna. However, if you ask Logan what his expected sibling’s name will be, he says her name will be “Banana.”

Today Gavin returned from a nature walk with Papa with a tackle box full of “treasures” including more acorns than you can count and two Cardinal bird feathers. When Logan was going through the box with Gavin, he referred to the acorns as “corn-nuts.” I can’t argue with that logic, but something tells me they don’t taste as good.

The other day as Logan was carefully maneuvering an obstacle course of cords and wires, he told Grant to be careful of the “tension cord.” (extension cord)

Today the boys were playing chase. Gavin and Grant have cleverly caught on to the sneaky concept of “base.” While taunting their pursuers a few paces from the safe haven, they would run back claiming, “I’m on base!” Logan, obviously not as familiar with this concept, excitedly claimed that he too, “Was in Space!”

Recently, he told my sister and her husband after they rode a trolley car that he wanted to go back and ride the “tamale” again.

When looking at his plate of chicken, tater tots, and green beans, Logan explained that he had “chicken, ‘Goldilocks,’ and green beans.” I, personally, can’t get past my own envious observation that he LOVES green beans.

One of my favorite misquotes from Logan, however, happened a few months ago when he was staying with us in Illinois for the week. One evening we went to Chuck E Cheese’s, followed by some half-witted idea I had to take all three boys, Logan (3), Grant (4) and Gavin (6), into the neighboring Toys R Us to purchase a birthday present for a party that weekend. I learned a long time ago to make the threats to my boys stern yet vague enough that I can follow through on MY terms when we are in public. Meaning, my spank bluffs got called one too many times. So, I always tell MY boys, “Do what I say, or you will be punished.” I can follow through on that no matter if it is a dirty look, time out, loss of video games or whatever. Logan, however, was unfamiliar with this threat. After the Chuck E Cheese high, the Toys-R-Us mission was ill-fated and all three boys were awful – not listening, not staying with me, etc. So, I pulled out the old. “That’s it! If you don’t stay right by my side, you are going to be punished! No more warnings!” Grant did not comply (as usual) and as I started to walk away from the aisle he was still browsing, Logan turned to him and VERY LOUDLY declared, “Grant, you had better come with us or else you are going to get PUNCHED!” He misquoted my ‘punish’ for ‘punch’ about three more times in the next two minutes. AHHHHHH! As the security guard and employees sideways glanced at me, I tried as innocently and motherly as possible to correct his misquote tenderly stating, “Punished. I said, PUNISHED. I would never PUNCH any of you.” By that point in time, I could have punched any of them.

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4 comments:

  1. I agree with you on the misquotes thing...kids are so cute at that age. Luke at 20 months calls pineapple "pinecone apple". I guess it does sort of look like a pinecone before you slice it! Another one of my favorites from my kids is when Rebecca was about 2 she could not say "s" at the beginning of a word if it was followed by a consonant - she replaced the whole sound with an "f". Eg. "swiper" became "fiper". Our all time favorite was the word smarties...did you sound it out in your head and come up with what she called her favorite treat? Yes, green farties were her favorite! My sister-in-law bought her smarties all the time just so she could hear her say it. Thanks again for your blog posts, Angie. I don't always leave comments, but I always read them =)

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  2. That had me laughing pretty hard. Logan sounds precious and precocious and following a very similar trail of the boys in his family. Here's hoping for Savanna, but she'll just end up acting like a boy anyway out of necessity. I was called Feather by John's nieces and nephews for many years.

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  3. The wife just completed breast cancer treatments. We're BELIEVING that it is all behind us now. I pray that your husband is doing well. One has to have hope.

    I'm visiting the blogs of people that posted on my sight and inviting them to sign up for a give-away I am having. No gimicks - just fun. It's my way of celebrating one year of blogging.

    http://organizeddoodles.blogspot.com/

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  4. My hubby thinks I'm crazy, but I've started to cherish their mispronounced words so much that I don't correct them! I want them to stick around as long as possible. Does that make me a bad mommy, or just a sappy mess?
    I love this kind of stuff!!

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