Talk That Talk

"Hey." That was the first word Zephyr uttered. It was the day we brought him home from the hospital, so obviously it was merely a random jumble of sounds that broke through between piglet-like grunts and baby pterodactyl caws. Jon and I still remember just how beautiful it was to hear his voice ring out like that, so pure and sweet.

From the beginning of his more intentional speech, one of Zephyr's patterns has been to take the middle consonant of a word and use it at the beginning of that word as well. Examples:
Conor= Nonor
Zephyr= Fephyr
Computer= Pomputer
Coffee= Foffee
Breakfast= Feckfest
Helmet= Melmet
Eyebrow= Beyebrow
Drive= Frive (I'd like to add that Zephyr always prefers Mommy in the friver's seat)
and one of our personal favorites:
Elbow= Belbow

A few days ago, Jon came in the room and I told him sadly, "Zephyr said 'elbow.'" He knew exactly what I was getting at.
"What did you ouchie?" he asked.
"My Belbow." We looked at each other and smiled. It was a fluke.

All of Zephyr's 2-year-old friends also have certain language idiosyncrasies, of course. And Zephyr has an interest and ability to pick up their speech patterns for fun from time to time, sometimes while spending time with them, but sometimes just out of the blue. (One friend says that maybe this means it will be easy for him to pick up other languages- I really appreciate her positive spin on things!) One day last week Zephyr was looking around at the traffic as we ran errands. He started pointing out the trucks. In Conor-ese. Which means you drop the "tr." And replace it with an "f."

Also, his friend and neighbor Lucia calls "water," "juice." For example, one day she was watching Jon run around in the rain, closing car windows and covering boxes with tarps. "Jon's in the juice," she told her mother. This can be tricky, since when we're all together, Lucia asks for juice and is quite content with the sippy cup of water she receives. The other kids think Lucia received actual juice, and they want actual juice, not mere water. So I explained to Zephyr, "What Lucia calls 'juice,' we call 'water'." Zephyr went though a stage where he would walk around the house solemnly explaining, "We call those apples." "We call these shoes." "We call this a couch."

I grew up knowing that when my sister was a toddler she said "foyfoy" instead of toothpaste and "rump jope" instead of "jump rope." (Interestingly, I don't know any word substitutions I made. Sigh. The fate of the secondborn.) These are some Zephyrisms that might become part of our family legacy:
Smoothie= Foofie
Cookie= Tookie
Lemonade= Mamamade (and it usually is)
Scrambled Eggs= Rambled Eggs
Refrigerator= Shaker shaker
Little= Ithel
Pajamas= Dambanas
Bananas= Dambanas (See above. Context is key here.)
and...the true sign of an extended nurser:
Thirsty= Nursty