Gank-oo!

One of the ways in which we sense the passage of time as the boys get older is with their changing speech. They both have these wonderful idiosyncrasies of speech and to be honest we are always a little sad when they learn the "correct" pronunciations. One of our favorite Jamie-isms (now long gone) was his rendering of "button": first "boppum" and then "but-TOOM". Another one that lasted until very recently was his thinking that a knife was "an ife". We did absolutely nothing to correct him and were hoping he would go off to college still saying it this way. His speech is very good now of course, but one little quirk is that he sometimes renders "t" sounds in the middle or at the end of words as a "ck". So when he marches into our room in the morning to announce that it's time to get up, we hear: "ICK's 7!!!" And lately he's been doing well with the activity of "conneck the docks".

Part of the problem with Connor is that Jamie feels compelled to correct him all the time, so we fear the loss of his little mistakes will come too quickly. One of his best is "Hangaber" for hamburger. It really is much more pleasing to say it this way, try it. Everytime Connor says it, we hush Jamie before he can swoop in to highlight the mistake. Connor still persists in saying "th" at the beginning of words as "g" and switching an "f" for "th" in the middle or at the end of words. Thus, if he wants you to come sit and read a book he will say "May you come and sit wiff me?" And when you do: "Gank-oo!!"