Reston Mom: Kate on Funny Words

My oldest son, Oliver, has been somewhat slow to get with the talking program. While his vocabulary increases steadily, it’s often hard to understand what he’s saying. For example, it took days to identify “ca-pour” at catapillar. Who knows how much of what he says is lost on us.

One word that features prominently in his daily chit chat is “careful.” (Gee, I wonder where that one came from…) Sometimes it’s directed at his siblings and sometimes it’s just a note to self as he tries something that he knows I would discourage. But it took us a while to understand that what he was saying was “careful.” It doesn’t sound like “careful.” It sounds like “cat poo.” Chris and I love this so much that we now say it all the time. As I’m climbing up a window sill to pull down a Christmas wreath: “CAT POO!” As Chris balances on a banister to retrieve a balloon from the ceiling over the stairs: “CAT POO!” We really need to stop, or Oliver is going to think that this is the true pronunciation (and the twins will show up at daycare telling each other to be cat poo).

Every day offers the challenge of deciphering words in the scramble of Oliver’s language. Another current highlight is “get out” (as in “get out of the booster seat, the shopping cart, the fort of pillows under which he is trapped…”). This registers phonetically as “gay out.” We have had hours of fun with that one. But one that has really made us stop in our tracks, is the word “frog” (his current favorite animal). When Oliver yells “FROG,” it sounds a little more like “FOG,” which when pronounced with a very hard “G” is unnervingly similar to something else….