There's Butter on His Beagle

Isn't it funny how one little letter can change the entire meaning of a word or sentence?

Saturday, we went to the dog show. It's only a couple towns away, so it's a short drive, but boxers started at 8 a.m., so we ate in the car. I made T Junior a bagle with butter, and here's what I heard in the car:

"Mommy, Mommy! My beagle has butter on it!" Then a few minutes later, "Mommy, Mommy! I dropped my beagle!"

He gets lots of little words or things mixed up and it's so fun. For a while, he called every bug a bumblebee. He calls spiders, "fiders."

Sometimes he gets it all right, but it's just so funny to hear it from a 27-month-old. At the dog show on Sunday, pointing to (hyperactive doesn't even begin to describe) Bennie in his crate, T Junior told a handler we know, "This my bouncy boxer Bennie." On Saturday, as handlers, judges and dog-owners hurried past him (most likely not even seeing this small person), T Junior hollered at them: "I'm at the dog show!" If he was not acknowledged, he chased after them..."Hey, wady! Wady! I'm at the dog show!"

He also told me the metal pole holding up a tent was for, "the firemans a slide down it." And I know exactly why he's thinking this. The Fire Engine Book. He actually gets quite a few things from our book-reading habit. Once, I put him in his bed and he looked at me and said, "A cozy bed" (from The Napping House).

His language is so developed. His words are so clear, it's not that often when I (or someone else even) can't understand what he's saying. His "L's" are "W's" and his "S's" and "Th's" are sometimes "F's," but everything else is just about right on. People are constantly asking, "How old is he again?" I ask myself that a lot, too, especially when he uses the correct tense or corrects himself when he says a word wrong by repeating it the right way.

I also wonder if I should be doing more to keep the momentum going. Should I be teaching him the alphabet? I mean, we sing the song sometimes, but that's about it. I think I'm just going to enjoy his funny words and narrations for now.