Frank has acquired quite an English vocabulary in just two short months. It’s amazing really how much he’s picked up. However in just two months your new vocab is still very limited. So it sometimes makes conversations with Frankie rather mundane and gives you a certain case of déjà vu when chatting to him about tractors, or monkeys or Ella or how old he is, how he’s doing and what his name is.
Some of his most commonly used and favorite words are jump, wait, come on, tractor, Bible, amen, hallelujah (weird – I sure don’t go around using this word a lot!), Kayo NO, horsie (pronounced “Forsie”), donkey, banana and his most favorite of all it seems, poop. Now I have no idea why my children like to talk about poop so much but it does seem to be a common theme in our household, especially with Frank. I try to be patient since I know he doesn’t have the vocabulary to talk about a whole lot, but still....
Picture this: Grace at church sitting for two hours on a wooden pew (unpadded I might add) with her thirty pound son sitting on her lap. Frankie, the thirty pound son, does pretty well and Grace, who is supposed to be a missionary after all, beams with pride when her small son shouts out “bless you!” to the guy sitting beside them who sneezes, or when he shouts out at random “Jesus!”, “Amen!” and “Bible!” People around them smile. Grace feels good. Then Frankie shouts out “POOP!” Uh, Grace doesn’t feel so good anymore and tries to find a good way to shush Frankie without making him cry or causing a scene. Smiles fade from the faces of their fellow congregates and eyebrows raise. Just what is this “missionary” teaching her son, they ponder?
Such is my dilemma. Now, he is only two years old and potty training and bodily functions are a big part of a two year olds life, not to mention that he doesn’t have a huge variety of other things to talk about due to his limited English vocabulary. But still, it does get old and I really don’t notice other people’s children talking about poop all the time. Meanwhile, my kids seem obsessed with it :(. I told him to stop talking about it today, using a nice, happy, upbeat voice (which is much different than my cranky, I-mean-business bitchy voice which has been known to cause children, and some adults perhaps, to burst into tears) , and the boy almost started to cry. He didn’t want to talk about bananas – he wanted to talk about Kayo pooping!
We are trying to help him learn more and more English so hopefully he’ll have more to talk about and this is just a faze. I found helpful little Ella teaching him “butt cheeks” the other day... Yes, my kids are weird.
