Pickles and Guckles

One night at dinner last week Zoë wanted something. We knew this because she kept pointing and grunting, "Ah more! Ah more!" We kept offering her the wrong things and each time she had to tell us "No!" her frustration grew. She pointed harder she grunted louder. Her dense parents simply couldn't figure it out.

Finally she, quite exasperatedly, shouted, "PICKLE!"

Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say.

I don't know why she didn't come out and say it sooner. Perhaps because she's never said that word before so she wasn't sure she could (though she definitely knows a lot more words than she lets on).

Pickle makes sense to me, though, because she knows the word "buckle," though she pronounces it, "guckle," and pickle isn't too different from that.


She substitutes G for B quite often, which I think is funny. Not only is there "guckle," as in "buckle up," there's also "gack" as in "rub my back." Some B words still begin with B, such as, well, "bee." Also "baby."

Oddly enough, when it comes time to say many G words, she substitutes S for G. So "grass," for example, is "srass." Not every G word, though, because "go" is still "go."

Maybe those consonant clusters (ck and gr) are throwing her off? Or maybe she just doesn't follow any pattern...

I'm trying to think of (recent) new words for her...

• buckle
• pickle
• back
• knee
• neck
• ice
• shower
• bath
• towel
• pool
• rock
• fall
• run
• see
• done
• cow
• honey
• milk
• guy
• girl
• dark
• dirty
• messy
• clean

I'm sure there are others. She seems to pop a new word or two out every day. She's also starting to put together small phrases. 

"My [blank]," is a common one, as is "More [blank]."

"Daddy home!" is a relatively new one. 

She likes to tell everyone to "Get up!" in the morning. 

A lot of her phrases involve a [name] + [verb or adjective] formula, for example, "Rachel fall!" or "I see!" or "Momma happy?" 

When we got home from the pool (yesterday?), Rachel got out of her seat to unbuckle Zoë and then when she was climbing back into her seat she tripped (?) and smashed her face on the seat in front of her (?!) clipping her nose on the little handle on the back of the seat quite hard (!). I'm not even sure how it all happened, but there was definitely some crying. 

Zoë was quite concerned about her big sister. She climbed out of her seat and onto Rachel's lap. "Oh, honey," she said over and over as she stroked Rachel's face and showered her with kisses. "Oh, honey. Oh, honey."

It was so sweet that it gave me a case of inappropriate giggles. I was really trying not to laugh at Rachel's mishap (but how does one even?!) but Zoë's sweetness pushed me over the edge and I got the giggles anyway. Rachel was laughing about it as well (Zoë's saccharine sympathy, not her little mishap), so I guess my laughing wasn't entirely out of line.