Procrastinet

Syllables, Snot, Spam and Sparseness

filed under: Dadditudes , Idle Chatter

Spam: a three day comment spam attack left infestations on almost every post. All cleaned out now, which also whiled away most of the morning.

Sparseness: what can I say, Procrastinet and I have hit a tricky phase in our relationship. We're working through it. Ironically, during the prolonged slump, I was told that we were mentioned on NPR - specifically, the Despatches from Nick in Jordan (happily, one of the few bits of real content lately) - by a caller on the Brian Lehrer show. So to all those tuning in from that, a belated welcome and I hope the dearth of postings hasn't bored you away again.

Snot: Max decided to celebrate the Blizzard by coming down with his first real cold. Since Friday he's had sheets of snot blanketing his face like Venkman lying on the hotel hallway floor. He has also, as of today, lost his voice, which is sad and adorable all at the same time - understanding his ever-increasing speech is already something of a guessing game, let alone when he sounds like he's honking or quacking on his vowel sounds. Which leads to:

Syllables: Up until now, Max has been taking an admirably spare approach to the English language. Early on, he conceived a deeply-held belief that all these syllables are extraneous, and has dispensed with all but the final syllable of all words and phrases.

Hence, when he shouts "Er!" it's up to us to determine by context whether he means Grover or Tigger; "Ett!" could mean Piglet or a rabbit; "Gehn!" means "again" (and doubles for "more" - i.e., he'll eat a piece of cheese and shout "GEHN!" while grasping at the air in front of us as if he's starving).

Sometimes he'll include the consonant that leads into the last syllable, sometimes not. Sometimes he'll invent a whole new opening consonant, hence his continued insistence that the clock (which he, vulgarly, leaves the "L" sound out of... shout it out loud to yourself, see the looks you get...) tells us the "pime!"

Just yesterday, however, he added a syllable to his version of "shampoo" - which has up until now been simply "poom!" - so now once his head is wet in the tub and I ask him "what comes next?" he announces, confidently, "heck-POOM!"

A strange side note to his cold is that the only thing that will calm him down when he wakes up drowning in his own snot and is therefor inconsolably hysterical (which he expresses by crying punctuated by awful wheezes, like "waaaaah - HUUUOOOOOGH - waaaah - HUUUOOOOOGHHHHH") is what we have taken to calling "punk rock" as in "do you want the punk rock?" which means I play Green Day's "American Idiot" and pogo around the room with him. This can take place day, night, or in the wee small hours of the morning.

He asks for this by name now, either as "DAYYY!" or as "WOK!" and I'm counting the hours until he looks at me, sobbing and snot-drenched, and uses his newfound syllabic aptitude to plaintively request "puck wok." A dad can dream, can't he?

Posted by rjt at January 24, 2005 05:36 PM