Friday 10 December 2010

Calebites

"Mom, I'll be Yoda and you be Wacka-nabba-nobi." (Obi-Wan-Kanobi)

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Today Caleb and I built spaceships out of the Crazy Fort sticks and balls. I built a shuttle with a door, two wings, a nose, a control panel and a stick shift. Upon seeing it, Caleb pronounced:
"Now, we will switch ships. I built a ship for you and you built a ship for me."

My ship was three separate sticks.

Caleb climbed into his ship, then narrated the story for me:
"I'm flying my ship, and my ship is much bigger than yours. Now I bump into you and your small ship explodes into pieces."

I didn't hold it against him. I was marveling at his imagination, as he came up with a story about enemies coming near, needing to go to "red alert" when his ship was damaged, crawling through a small space to find a launch button, my small ship coming to the rescue, a quick and dirty repair job, and then us teaming up to vanquish the enemy.

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Caleb seems to have adopted a southern drawl. It is most obvious when he says "yeah," his he pronounces in a long, drawn out "yay-yah." He likes to draw out most of his vowals in short words, like "day" (day-yah) and "home" (ho-ohm.) For the longest time we wondered where on earth he had picked it up. Then I noticed a couple of words in my own speech had a bit of a southern twang in them (like "I can get that for you" - "I cay-yan get that for you")! I have no idea where I picked it up; perhaps it is a result of needing to speak so much during the day and yet keep what I'm saying comprehensive to a three year old. Whatever the origin, it sure adds a little southern sunshine on these cold, dark winter days!

2 comments:

heather80 said...

Shea sometimes sounds Italian (more Super Mario Italian than actual Italian). "I'm Mickey da Mouse, I fix it a-good!"

For a while, he called school buses, "School-da-bus".

His teacher keeps asking me if I'm sure that he's not part Irish. She swears he has an accent. The closest we have with that is his uncle is British.

heather80 said...

What's funny is he actually pronounces French words perfectly.