New vocabulary

I feel like living with Aaron is teaching us a whole new language. As his vocabulary expands, so does ours. We used to call pretzels "pretzels". Now we call them "setzels". Salami is "MAMI" (it sounds just like "mommy" but you can tell it is salami by the emphasis - he loves salami). Drink is "geet". Coffee is "coffeeeeeeeee". Giraffe is "raff". Even when Aaron is not around, we tend to use his words for things. Open is "o-o". Up is now "uppa". Car and star are both pronounced with a Boston accent.

Now I understand why my mom reminds me that lotion is "blotion" and why my sister reminds me that I used to say "trelve" and "trenty" instead of "twelve" or "twenty". Those first mispronunciations are so precious. I still say "flowder" in my head when I see flowers as my niece used to call them 8 years ago. And we still say "Ubba" Thom or "Ubba" Jim even though she long ago learned how to say "uncle".

Aaron used to say "mooo" when he saw a picture of a cow. Now he says "cow" clear as a bell. I'm going to miss all his animal sounds he substitutes for animal names. And I'm going to miss all his mispronunciations some day. So we hold onto them by repeating them and using them in our own speech. Fortunately we still have many more words to learn from him before he masters the English language. And I'm sure when he is grown up we will still call pretzels "setzels" and remember when Aaron was an adorable toddler.