She's Making Me DIZZY!

My head is spinning. Like a whirlpool, it never ends…

No, I didn’t just twirl around and around in circles, or get off a killer rollercoaster.

It’s my daughter. She’s a whirlwind. She talks about 286 different topics in a matter of minutes, and it is SO hard to keep up with her.

Here’s a transcription of a few minutes of “conversation” we had yesterday, on our way home from daycare. I put conversation in quotation marks because truly it is just Emmy talking, with me TRYING (in vain) to interject.

EM: OHHHH! There’s a clock, MAMA!

ME: Yes, there..

EM (interrupting): It’s RAINING outside!

(without skipping a beat) I don’t want to get poop in my eye.

ME: You don’t want

EM (interrupting): Do you have a lollipop, Mama?

ME: Yes, I do, but why did you say

EM (interrupting): I’m a dancing dancing princess.

Look out the window. Do you see something scary?

The trees are SCARY! BAAAAAAAAAAH!

ME: The trees aren’t scary

EM (interrupting): I am going to say MEOW MEOW.

The trees are going to say MEOW MEOW.

ME: How was your day at school Em? What did you do today?

EM: I do did puzzles. And I said I want a bandaid, too. Is Dada here?

ME: No, Em, Dada

EM (interrupting, talking to her Mickey Mouse doll): Mickey, I got you.

ALAZAM! ALAZAM! ALAZAM! (this is Em’s way of saying “Alacazam!” which is her way of magically making the car windows go up and down)

Those cars don’t have an accident.

Mickey, Mickey, YES YES!

ME: Did you do anyt

EM (interrupting): I love food but I DON’T like hot chocolate. I DOOOOO like hot chocolate.

After that I just gave up on asking questions, and listened to Emmy talk TO her Mickey Mouse doll, and FOR her Mickey Mouse doll. Which is all for the best, because it seems Mickey can keep up with my daughter’s train of thought much better than I can.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Emmy is a talker, with a vocabulary that seems to be growing by leaps and bounds every day. For the most part, she is totally easy to understand. But recently I’ve been noticing and appreciating “Emmyisms” – words that are uniquely (and repeatedly) mispronounced in a way that is hugely endearing.

I figure that over the next few years, these words will fade away as Em becomes aware of their correctly spoken origins, so I should probably write them down. That way, when Em is cramming new words into her head in preparation for the SATs, many moons from now, we’ll be able to take a break from studying and look back on this list for a good laugh.

When I was a kid, I won all of my adult relatives over with my mispronunciation of “ketchup” (which was, and still is, my favorite food in the whole wide world). I called it “keppitch” which, I agree now, is a MUCH cuter word than ketchup (hey Heinz CEO, I am willing to license the word “keppitch” to you, for mere millions). Even when I learned to call my favorite food by its true name, my grandparents would continue to call it “keppitch” in my presence, as a kind of eternal running joke.

And I still remember how my younger sister (who will soon be turning 30) called nightmares “NIGHT MIRRORS,” when she was a toddler. “NIGHT MIRRORS” is just a wonderful way of describing dreams, isn’t it?

Will I continue to replace actual words with their Emmyisms for years to come? I have to say, I am half-tempted to continue to call penguins “pengos,” as my daughter does, because it just sounds so much sweeter.

A little list of Emmyisms:

PENGO = penguin

GUBRELLA = umbrella

CHICKY SAMMICH = turkey sandwich

LELLO = yellow

JAMILLA = Vanilla. To her credit, for a while I was working and carpooling with a woman named Jamella, and we used to talk about our friend Jamella a lot. But it still sounds funny when she says she wants Jamilla ice cream.

FRIGERERR = refrigerator

LASSHOLE = lasso (yes, this one makes me particularly happy. Em was drawing one day, and I said, ‘Em, what’s that you are drawing?’ and she said ‘I drawing a LASSHOLE.’ And after projectile spitting my juice clear across the room, I asked her again what she had drawn. ‘A LASSHOLE! To catch!’ she said, making round movements with her hands. Aaaaah. Ha ha. Got it. A lasso.)

Oh yes, and there is the way she sings “Baa, Baa Black Sheep,” that always has me in a fit of giggles. It goes a little something like this:

Baa baa black sheep

Have you any wool?

Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full,

One for my massser, one for my LAME,

And one for the little boy who lives down the LAME.

I’m sure there are SO MANY more words than just these, but I’m sleep deprived and my capacity to remember is totally shot. I think I will keep a running list somewhere on my blog, so I can add to it as I encounter more Emmyisms.

How about you, or your kids? Did you famously mispronounce certain words as a kid, or does your child re-name objects with much more adorable names? If so, please share!

One Huge Little Word

The other night, while C and I were busying ourselves with evening chores (packing Em’s lunch, cooking dinner, briefly contemplating folding massive amounts of laundry, trying to scrape unidentifiable gook off the coffee table…) Emmy was entertaining herself with one of her beloved toys. I am so grateful that my daughter is now of the age where she is starting to engage her blossoming imagination in play. I love watching Em pretend her dolls (and teddy graham crackers) are alive, giving them squeaky little voices and animating their bodies with her hands. It’s just one of those things that makes me a very happy mama.

C and I sat down to eat dinner while Em was still playing on her own. I hardly noticed when Em tiptoed up next to me and tugged at my pant leg. And then I heard:

“Mama. Hepp”

Oh, lordy. My heart just melted.

C and I have been repeating the word “help” to Emmy in various situations. We’ve been trying to encourage her to tell us when she can’t reach something she wants, can’t figure out the way a toy works, or when she is just generally frustrated. Every time we’ve lent Em a hand with some toddler-sized trauma (i.e., weeble wobble stuck in weeble wobble house), we’ve prefaced our assistance with “Do you need HELP, Emmy? Let’s see if Mama or Dada can HELP.”

But to hear the actual word “help” (or “hepp”, as the case may be) come out of her mouth caught me off guard and sent me for an emotional ride I hadn’t been prepared for. I teared up, mouth agape. I asked my husband if he understood the gravity of the situation (he nodded, appeasing me). And then I took Em’s little hand as she led me to the “situation”. A toy she wanted to play with was stuck between the couch and rocking chair. Clearly adult intervention was needed.

I know, I know. I’m probably making a really big deal out of a not-so-big-deal kind of a thing. Every child learns to say “help” eventually. I’m sure my urge to throw a block party upon hearing my daughter’s first verbalized cry for assistance is a little over the top.

But here’s the thing. I have NEVER been good at asking for help myself. As a kid (and well into my adulthood) I’ve always assumed that asking people for help was being an imposition. I always felt like I could either figure the problem out myself, or just learn to “deal with it”. Why bother others with my issues? They’ve got better things to do.

I think it’s just one of those traits that I was born with. My mom often recounted a story of my experience in kindergarten. Apparently the teachers were concerned because I wasn’t getting my work done in class. I would just sit there and stare at construction paper. When my mother approached me about the situation, and asked me why I was refusing to do any of the assignments I was given, I told her it was because I hadn’t been given any crayons to work with. My mother then asked me why I didn’t just raise my hands and ask the teacher for crayons? I told my mom I was too embarrassed to ask for help.

Luckily, I’ve matured since kindergarten, and have learned (albeit rather late in life) that asking for help is actually a sign of strength, not weakness. It took true love, pregnancy, and motherhood to get me to a point where I can now raise my hand and ask for a box of crayons when I need it. I’m still not stellar at reaching out to others in times of need, but I’m evolving in that department. Slowly.

My daughter has conviction and courage that I find enviable. Even at this early age, she is daring, inquisitive, and opinionated. I love these traits, and hope that as her mother I can support her maturation into a strong-willed young adult (even if it bites me in the behind every once in a while), and a super confident woman. I hope that Emmy never gets embarrassed to ask for help, and that I can encourage her to continue to use this little word with big meaning as a sign of her strength, not of weakness.