Dear Santa,
I have been good this year and for Christmas I want an iPad.
Love, Ireland (age 3.5)
In reality, though, Ireland had recently bonked heads with another child in her class and they were both given an ice pack. This was a novelty. What could be cooler than an ice pack?
In Ireland's eyes—and perhaps quite literally in her experience—nothing.
And that is what she asked Santa for—an ice pack!
Not an iPad. An ice pack.
"Ireland is kind of hard to understand sometimes," Rosie explained.
I have to say that this story made me feel a little bit better about things because we recently took all the kids for their well-child checks and, well, our doctor always gives me a little bit of a hard time about homeschooling. Like, I feel like it's some sort of pop quiz on child development.
The doctor was concerned about Phoebe's speech because...Phoebe wouldn't speak to her and because Phoebe elides many of her initial sounds, such as /f/ and /s/ (so Phoebe is "Ebe" and frog is "wrog" and "stop" is "top"). She also substitutes some sounds for others. Rather than saying, "I want to play a game," Phoebe will say, "I want to tay a bame."
It's funny...in part because she has all her sounds (aside from /k/ and /g/...but we're working on those). She just...doesn't use them all the time.
She can say "FFFFFFFF...Phoebe" when she's prompted and is willing to do so. She can say "SSSSSSSSS...Santa" as well.
But when she's just blabbering it's Ebe and Anta.
And that's what we've got right now.
The other day, though, she said, "She said..." just like that...so we know she can put those sounds together. She just doesn't.
But from my professional opinion, Phoebe speaks just fine for a three year old.
I'm a linguist, so I get to have one of these—a professional opinion, that is.
I get to have the three-year-old because I'm a mom of a three-year-old.
Both very good reasons for having things.
The other thing about Phoebe is that she doesn't actually like doing things when she's asked to do things. She might have been willing to shoot the breeze with the doctor if the doctor had tried engaging her in ordinary conversation—"Hey, Phoebe! How are you? Did you do anything fun for Thanksgiving?"—but, no! The doctor had to walk in and start testing her, pointing to objects and asking, "What is this? What is that? What is this?"
Such games are beneath Phoebe.
She watched with silent disdain while the doctor tried desperately to get her to speak. Phoebe finally answered that a frog was a "wrog" and, well, the doctor wasn't too happy with that.
The other other thing about Phoebe is that she likes to mess with people.
She came out of the womb ready to mess with people. I'm not even kidding you—she has been keeping up a three-year-long running joke where she "mixes up" Rachel and Miriam.
I assure you she knows who is who, but every now and then she'll get a wicked glint in her eye and will walk up to one of those big sisters and call her by the wrong name just to hurt their feelings. She does it on purpose. And it's kind of hilarious.
For example, if Rachel does something nice for her she'll say, "Oh, thank you, Ach..." but before she can finish saying Rachel's name her face will erupt in an impish grin and she'll say, "Miriam!"
Yeah. It's a thing she does. She thinks she's funny.
So when the doctor held up a red folder and asked Phoebe what colour it was and Phoebe said, "Ed," the doctor hemmed a little (though technically speaking, ed was the right answer...without the initial /r/ sound) and decided to give Phoebe another chance. She held up a green folder.
"And what colour is this?" the doctor asked.
I watched Phoebe's face transform from compliant-child to sneaky-imp and knew what was coming.
"Orange," Phoebe said, quite clearly.
Okay, I wasn't expecting orange. Not precisely. What I was expecting was anything but green. And I was not wrong.
"That's not orange!" I said in a sing-song voice. "You know your colours! Go on, tell the doctor what colour it is."
"It's 'reen," she said, leaving off her initial /g/.
Oh, 'reat—another colour she can't say properly.
"So I have some concerns about her speech," the doctor said. "I'm pretty good at understanding toddlers and I just don't think she's where she ought to be. Strangers should be able to understand 75% of what she's saying. Do strangers understand her? Does she get the opportunity to interact with people outside of your home? Perhaps preschool would..."
"She does interact with people outside of our home," I assured the doctor and then I pulled the linguist card. "And I'm actually a linguist. I'm getting my PhD right now in Language and Literacy Education—applied linguistics—and my background is actually in linguistics. I'm well aware that she elides her initial sounds quite regularly. We're working on it at home and I think she will get there soon. You've hardly heard her speak. She's said all of ten words to you. People are often astounded when they hear her talk because she speaks in long rambling sentences—paragraphs, even—and uses words they don't expect a toddler to use. But, I assure you we're working on getting all of her sounds sorted out."
"Oh, you're a linguist, oh, okay. Well, then I guess when you say you're working on it at home I can believe you. Most parents don't come in here using words like 'elide' and 'initial sound' so it sounds to me like you know what you're talking about."
I do, actually!
And I also know that she's doing just fine compared to other three-year-olds. Phoebe can say iPad just fine, for example. There are thousands of other things she says incoherently, but iPad, for better or worse, is not one of them.
So I'm not worried at all.
*****
I was worried earlier this week when my poor sweet niece Millie was in the hospital with RSV. That poor girl has had recurrent pneumonia this year (including a couple of other hospital stays) and now she's dealing with RSV! Poor little thing!
I recorded some bedtime stories to send to her the other night and hope that helped keep her entertained at the hospital (though it sounds like she also did a lot of sleeping and just...breathing).
*****
While Millie was in the hospital with RSV this weekend, my niece Olivia was in the hospital as well—to have her baby! Her sweet boy was born late on Sunday afternoon.
When I would show Rachel the updates from my sister (6 cm...starting epidural...8 cm...etc.), Rachel was visibly bothered and said, "I don't know why I am finding this so hard! I've had cousins have babies before! It's because she's my age, isn't it?"
That's probably it, actually.
It's one thing for Rosie to have a baby because Rosie has seemed grown up to Rachel for so long (she is about 10 years older than Rachel), but because Olivia has always felt like Rachel's peer (she's about a year older than Rachel), it felt more personal for her cousin to have a baby.
That's understandable.
Olivia is a mom now! And I am a great-aunt again!
This is my...seventh...time over becoming a great-aunt!
And I'm a pretty great great-aunt, if I do say so myself!
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