My son Luke, 19 months, has reached the extremely entertaining linguistic stage of putting words together into short phrases and simple sentences. He says the words quickly and often under his breath, with no separation between them. It’s adorable. Written words don’t really do his expressions justice (but that won’t stop me from trying to describe them.)
Initially, these first attempts at speech are unintelligible, except to parents (if anyone.) They slowly but surely become clearer and clearer. It’s always fun to hear another family member or friend say with surprise, “Did he just say ‘(insert expression here)’?”
Yes he did. Yes he did. (It’s a proud moment.)
One of my son’s first expressions was an attempt at “I want to go with you.” If it looks like we’re going anywhere, or if he wants to be picked up and carried, he walks over with his arms spread wide, pleading, “gowitzou, gowitzou.”
It’s adorable, and he’s adding more and more phrases to his repertoire.
The latest: blessyou. (Did I mention that key words often get omitted? Sorry, God.)
If someone coughs, sneezes, sniffles, blows a nose, clears a throat…
blessyou.
We can’t help but react, and Luke eats it up. We’ve created a monster (a ‘monster’ that looks for the slightest excuse to bless people.) His sister’s the same way with a punch line or turn-of-phrase that gets a good laugh. She’ll repeat it days later with an impish grin on her face as she waits for the reaction.
Luke’s procilivity for blessing people is consistent with his affinity for saying grace and for shaking hands during the exchange of peace at church. When we sit down to eat, he’ll reach out his hands and repeat “Grace? Grace?” For awhile, he tried to initiate grace several times a meal. If he had his way, we would have been saying grace five or six times per sitting.
When we go to church for mass, he anxiously awaits the exchange of peace and the opportunity to shake hands with as many people as possible. Unfortunately, he’s in a heavy drooling stage, and his hand is sometimes in close proximity to his mouth. Yesterday, as I was exchanging peace with Karen and Charlotte, he was already reaching out to the people behind us with his saliva-covered hand. He exchanged a little more than peace. Oh well.
I hope you enjoyed today’s serving of ‘Mac & Cheese.’ (Luke would have preceded his serving with grace.)
