Language skills

I forget how awesome Julian's speech is, until I see him in the company of other children his age. He now has fully-fledged sentences, that are quite elaborate. I take them for granted, so I'm not even sure I can recap them, but he'll say things like, "Mummy, I need a hedge-trimmer. I need my earmuffs too because it's very noisy." He doesn't drop a single word of grammar. When I think about it, it's quite astounding.

Anyway, his big topic of conversation usually centres around the garden, or our gardener named Ken. Several times a day, he will demand "Story named Ken." I thought I was crafting rather beautiful stories about Ken for him - ones that involved a magic wheelbarrow or Ken living in a house made completely from folliage or Ken helping a rainbow with its missing stripe by planting a stripe that colour. Nope, turns out that Julian's favourite Ken story is one that David made up: how Ken went to the beach with his two whippets and made them catch a stick. Go figure.

He is loving the new kitchen I got him recently, even though I assembled it back to front, which means that the dishrack hangs above the stove instead of above the sink, and the oven has fewer knobs that it should. He doesn't seem to mind. He also likes his new Rosh Hashana set, which includes candlesticks, challah and a shofar. He is really into all the rituals of being Jewish, talking about making a kiddush, saying a "bracha", and lighting the candles.

There are some drawbacks to his language skills, though. Namely, he has picked up expressions I or my mother say, such as "Oh my god!" or "I can't believe it!" It's funny when it comes out of the mouth of a two year old. Lately, flies and other harmless insects freak him out, so he says "Oh my god!" whenever he spies some of them. Sometimes, like today, he cries when he sees one in the car with him. He will say, "Flies are annoying, shoo fly, I'm not scared of the fly," but it's hard to believe him when he's crying so hard.

At the Aquarium

 
  

  

  

Julian's language is getting better and better. Today in the car, he got worried because he thought there was a fly there. (He has a real aversion to flies.) I told him it was just a little insect. He replied, "Oh. I'm not worried about a little insect." He said all those words together! He also counted to eleven - something he's only done twice before, but not for ages. His language skills are funny, though. He knows so many Wiggles songs by heart, and of course all of his favourite books.