Learning to Speak and Other Useful Skills 02

More than a year ago I mentioned some of the first words my boy, the Badda-Toddler, uttered. His vocabulary has since grown, and so has his sense of humor. He actually knows many words and can parrot back words and some phrases, sometimes bringing great trouble to Dad.

• He says his prayers before eating, although he's more enthusiastic about the "Amen" at the end... like a Baptist preacher. (In fact, I sometimes carry on and say, "Can I get an Amen? Say it one mo' time for the Lord! Now give me a Hallelujah! Now give me one mo' Amen!")
  
• Instead of saying "I" he typically says "my" as in, "My do it," or, "My want toys".
  
• He clearly says "please", "thank you", and "you're welcome".
  
• Not long ago he started saying, "I've got an idea!" When we're taking a drink he says, "Cheers!" (My wife just got him to say "Salud!" tonight.)
  
• When we give him a bath and wash his hair he says he wants to kiss my hand where soap suds are (because of a perceived "owie") and say, "Eeeew, (spit, spit, spit) it takes like soap!"
• When listening to the "Raiders March" from the Indiana Jones films he used to say, "Indy Andy Jones", but now he gets the name right or sometimes just says Jones.
  
• When listening to the "Cars" soundtrack he says, "Real Gone" while listening to that song.
• When "Route 66" plays he says, "Chuck Berry".
• When he hears, "Friend in Me" from "Toy Story" he says, "Friend in Me"!
• When he hears, "I Wouldn't Have Nothin' If I Didn't Have You" he says, "Mike and Sully"!
• When he hears the beginning to John Williams march for the Superman theme he puts his hand to his ear and says, "What's that?" then follows up by saying, "It's Superman"!
• When he hears the John Williams score for "Superman" for the hero sequence he asks, "What's going to happen to helicopter?" or about Lois Lane or if Superman will save them in time... or about the crooks by saying, "Will bad guys get away, Daddy?"
• He'll sing along to some songs if you prompt him with a word or a short line like, "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" or "Friend in Me" or "Old MacDonald" and one of the (many) songs on the various Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs called "Little Engines" (where he also adds the "toot toot!" in the chorus.)
  
• Or when playing with his toys he will use words like crash, cars, trains, planes, bulldozer, motorcycle, oh no, ooops, more please, my turn, get it, vroom, zoom, wham, sorry... and when he makes a train noise he puts his fist in the air as if he were going to pull a cord and says, "chugga-chugga, whoo-whoooooo!" very enthusiastically.
  

The sort of baby/toddler stuff parents love... at least if it's your kid. (If it's someone else's kid it's trivia and common... if you don't have kids it's tedious.)

Tonight, he made me proud...

One of his toys is a very large, stuffed animal... although it is a dragon. It looks kind of like a dinosaur (with a tail and raised spines down his back), kind of like a dog (with large, floppy ears), and kind of like a teddy bear (with a big belly). Since he also has what look like dragon horns we figure he's a better dragon than anything else. He stands about 3'6"... and we call him Reagan the Dragon. The rhythm and rhyme work, and I'm sure it will eventually annoy some of our left-leaning, Earth muffin, time out parent friends.

The boy has called him Reagan and Reagan the Dragon for quite some time, but tonight my father-in-law and I joked that a big monster was coming... a huge ogre named Osha. (My father-in-law works with telephone cables and construction so he loved that gag.) Then the boy and I ran around trying to hide from Osha and the first thing he wanted to hide behind (with a huge grin on his face) was Reagan. When my father-in-law heard that Reagan the Dragon was going to protect us from Osha and that Reagan would smash Osha he got a big laugh out of it.

Oh, he also has been saying, "booze" for about two months. I'll tell you about that some other time.