Evaspeak

Eva's burgeoning vocabulary continues to astound us. She's a verbal machine these days with her non stop chatter. She's saying full sentences, singing songs. I'm taking a moment to get some of the words that she has created before she masters the English language.

Moppies: I love to bake, and Eva loves to eat my creations. One of her first words was "moppy," which is her word for muffin. She obsesses over "pumpky moppies," and croons for them until I grab my apron and wire whip and start mixing away.

Hummy: Toddlers go through phases with foods but "hummy" never gets old in our toddler's book. She would seriously eat hummus and crackers for every meal if she could. It's out of hand. She calls anything that remotely looks like hummus "hummy" too. She broke my heart the other day, however, and called it by its true name. I vowed never to correct her again. I curse the teacher in me that has to model the correct word!

Mommy Do See, Daddy Do See: This one took us a while to figure out. Basically, whenever she wants to see one of us, or just sees us, she says "Mommy do see" and/or "Daddy do see." I think that she took the logic of my incessant prompting (again, the teacher in me) "Eva, do you see the truck?" and flipped it to a declarative sentence indicating what she wants or what she sees. It makes total sense, doesn't it? Talk about making your heart melt. Every time she says it, or I hear her say this phrase about one or both of us, it makes me weak in the knees. For the record, it is her preference that we are both in the same room with her all the time. );

Mahma: Jeff's mom, Grandma Kennan, made quite an impression on Eva during her visit in Cleveland. Eva asks about "mahma" all the time. Just about every time I open the computer screen she exclaims "mahma" (which means that she thinks we are going to Skype) or "babies" (blogs, facebook photos of our baby friends). To her the computer is a worm hole to friends and relatives. She loves her "mahma" and can't get enough of her.

Nosnow. Again, this is another Cleveland creation. Eva saw her first snowfall in Cleveland and parroted back "nosnow." Whenever we correct her she looks at us like we are crazy and says "nosnow" again. She does the same thing with airport. Whenever she hears an airplane, she points up to the sky and says "airport, way up high." I correct her and say, "yes, Eva, that is a plane in the air, just like the ones that you saw at the airport. " But she looks at me like I'm a crazy mama (I'm starting to get accustomed to this feeling) and then she says with greater intensity, "airport, way up high." What really kills me is that she loves to play "airport" with me even though it's actually airplane. What's a momma to do but love the girl and her budding language skills!