The ement mixer doing instruction

While we were in the car on the way to my piano lessons this afternoon, Julia was doing her usual thing of remarking on everything she could see out her window, and she announced, "Hey, Mommy, I just saw an ement mixer!" "Oh, a cement mixer?" I responded. She has been frequently pronouncing this incorrectly, though we had talked about it on our last drive and she was able to correct it. After hearing the proper pronunciation, she replied, "Yeah, a cement mixer. Mama, sometimes I forget to say it the right way, so I said ement mixer instead of cement mixer. Sometimes I don't do it the right way, because I'm still learning." I find it interesting that lately she's noticing words she is not pronouncing correctly, like when she told me, "Mom, I said it like you do, 'Creat-ee-ive Movement!" which was one notch closer than her usual "Creavive Movement." And just the other day she said, "Mama, now I say it the right way and I know it's CONSTRUCTION, not INSTRUCTION." (I always found it quite amusing that the diggers near our house were doing "instruction," but her conjunctivits was an eye "confection.")

Though she's really making strides with her pronunciations of tricky words, her observation still has a little ways to go... shortly after discussing the ement mixer, she cried out in delight, "Look, Mama, I see a policeman riding in a REGULAR car!" I looked around to try and figure out what she was talking about, and realized she was pointing to a Brookline Driving School car, with the school's name on top of the car in the way that a cab has TAXI on its roof. So, not quite a police car, but at least I see what made her think of that.

And on the way home from piano lessons, she declared, "Mommy, I just saw a MESSED-UP house! I saw a house with a messed-up garage! It was messed up and had no coloring on it. It was kind of white, but a little bit brown. I think maybe it was old. Mama, I guess some people really like white, so they decide to have a white house." I'm still not entirely sure what a "messed-up house" with a "messed-up garage" looks like, but I told her perhaps the house/garage were being re-painted.
(Or perhaps it was about to be torn down and soon there will be an ement mixer there doing instruction and building an entirely new, non-messed up, full-of-color house...)