February 21, 2006

Chatter

You girls crack me up! I love reading the comments that you leave, I really do. Every so often you give me blog ideas, like this comment that I received from Dawn:

"Laney-I'm just curious...how many words does Joe speak (without being prompted). Just wondering what is "normal" for a 2 year old. Been a long time since I've had a 2yo in the house? He seems to be a well spoken little boy."

He is a well spoken boy, all of my boys were very verbal at early ages. When they spoke in public and strangers overheard them, there was no need for me to interpret "toddler" into English. People frequently comment on their language skills.

We never did baby talk, we always spoke to them like they were adults. I would carry on conversations with them when they were just infants and I would pause for them to know if was their turn to speak. I never substituted words for things that they wanted. I had a friend who referred to her son's cup as his "ba-bee." That drove me bonkers! It's a cup, call it a cup.

Sometimes, I think it has all come back to bite me in the behind because they never stop talking!

Joe is really funny, I am amazed at how his mind works. He sometimes refers to himself in the third person:

Joe's tired.
Joe sit with mommy.
Joe go bye-bye.

He reminds me of the wrestler who refers to himself in the third person as "The Rock," The day that Joe says, "The Joe wants apple juice now", will be a scary one indeed.

Joe also has a huge vocabulary and does a running monologue of his every action. He can be really bossy, not sure where he gets that from *snort*. When he wants me to play with him he says, "You play mommy. You have the garbage truck." The same goes for books, "You read Caterpillar."

His newest thing now is bossing the boys around and then adding, "You hear me" (my favorite tagline) to the end of his statement. The other day I heard him say to Jeremy, "You go upstairs, you hear me?"

He is a lot of fun to listen to and to talk to, it's like talking to a 30-year old man sometimes. Unless you have heard him talk it's hard to convey exactly how he is. So anytime anyone wants to visit...

Anyway.

The packing is coming along nicely. THe boys leave on Friday for my mom and dad's house and then I will finish all of the packing. We are in good shape, though. Hopefully it won't come down to stuffing our personal items in garbage bags.

School is still going on. Yesterday the boys had the rare pleasure of Kevin doing their work with them. I had an 8:30 class to teach so dad took over. We had a jam packed day including lunch with about 10 of the boys friends at the McDonald's with the enormous playplace and then we took the kids rollerskating. I wanted them to get the basics done because after Friday it will probably be two weeks before they crack a spelling, Latin or grammar book. They had a blast and I really wanted for them to be able to see their friends before we go.

Joe, of course, wanted to rollerskate. I told him he was too little. His response, "I not little, I ROLLERSKATE." Oy-vey!

Look to the finish!

7 comments:

Heidi said...

I have to say I love your blog...I do daycare at home, and part of that decision was so that when we have kids I could be here to home school. I do enjoy being at home even though the kiddo thing hasn't happened for us yet. You are the homeschooling Mother that I dream to be when it does though!
And I have to say I almost spit out my coffee when I read the part about Joe talking like the Rock!!! Too funny!

Mindy Buller said...

Oh yes, the joys of early talkers!! I know them well. :-) Have fun packing.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Laney. And to mention me in your blog ***(aw shucks)***, now I feel famous. :-)
I treated my children exactly the same when they were babies. There was no baby-talk, we referred to things as what they were called. My husband was deployed when the kids were little a LOT, so most of the time, they were the only people I HAD to talk to. So it was great that they had the ability to talk to me in return.

Happy packing today!
-dawn

H said...

2 of mine were early talkers too. The littlest one is almost 3 now, and he has a soundtrack. He accompanies himself with music quite often - intense music for action, comical music for funny times, etc.

Last year my (then) four-year old provided himself with a laugh track.

I think maybe we need to watch less television!
LOL! :)

J-Lynn said...

I treated all my babies the same way and #3 still had speech issues. I think a LOT of it is the environment but sometimes it's just the child. My other 3 talkers have been articulate from early on.

Joe and Isabelle would be so cute together! So grown up but so little. ;-)

BTW, I often talked to mine as babies, I always described what I was doing etc... And I'm very anatomically correct but I can't resist the occassional baby talk! ;-)

Googoo little bookie bear...

Jess

Unknown said...

Hi Laney! I thought that I might add that my sis may have asked this particular question b/c of my son. You see, she now watches my son on a somewhat regular basis, and I'm afraid he is not anywhere near as good of talker as your son. My son is nearly 2 and a half and says maybe 5-10 words without being prompted. If we prompt he will say maybe about 20 words(not legibly). We have been worried about him for a very long time. He's jsut not a talker. Or I would like to be able to jsut write it off with just that but it seems as though it may be more than that. Either way, we are taking him back to another pediatrician in 2 weeks, we are hoping to get some answers or at least some future testing. Pray for easy answers. WOW, that was a long explanation, and yet so much more to it than this... hope I didn't bore you. :-)

CMB said...

I would like to state for the record that I had the pleasure of spending yesterday evening with Joe and he is a complete joy. He speaks perfectly and he is so much fun. He is loving and so happy. Thank you Laney for giving me that opportunity - you are awesome!