Vocabularies

Both Julia and Madeleine seem to be building up their vocabularies lately, coming out with words I didn't realize they knew. Madeleine's new favorite is "bapboom," or, in adult English, "vacuum." She spent about twenty minutes yesterday calling for the vacuum, reaching her arm over the gate to the hallway towards the closet where we keep it. Since she had elected to dump her spinach into her lap and all over the floor instead of eating it, after dinner I fulfilled her wish by getting the bapboom out of the closet and going to town on the dining room floors. It turns out that Madeleine only likes the bapboom when it's not actually on, because as soon as I actually started bapbooming she stood, frozen in terror, in the kitchen, wailing her heart out. Once the cleaning was done, it was back to her old friend the bapboom, as she touched various parts of the machine and fondly called it by name.

The girls have shown off their expanding vocabularies quite a bit today; here are some of the conversations we've had:

#1

JULIA: Mama, do you know why I scurried down the stairs?
ME: No, why?
JULIA: Because I needed to go pee.


#2

JULIA: Mama, did you know there's a crack in the wall by the fuzzy stairs?
ME: No, I didn't realize that.
JULIA: Yeah, Mama, come here by the fuzzy stairs and look at the wall.

(The fuzzy stairs, it turns out, are the ones that are carpeted, as opposed to the non-fuzzy ones, which are just regular wooden stairs.)


#3

MADELEINE: (picking something out of the garbage) Atzat?
ME: Oh, yucky. No-no touch the garbage, Madeleine. Yuck.
MADELEINE: (putting the piece of garbage down on the floor)
JULIA: Aw, Mama, Madeleine looks distressed!


#4

JULIA: Mama! Look! (running over to show me a Golden Graham on her hand.)
ME: Oh, a Golden Graham.
JULIA: Mama! It looks just like a soft, wooly blanket.

That is exactly what I think of when I see Golden Grahams. A bowlful of soft, wooly blankets.


And the final conversation we had in the car:
#5

MADELEINE: (as we approach the commuter rail tracks.) Choo-choo.
ME: Yes, that's where the train goes.
MADELEINE: Daddy. Choo-choo. Bye. Bye.
ME: Yes, Daddy goes bye-bye on the train! You're right!

In fact, Madeleine has been so interested in the choo-choo lately that I'm thinking we may need to take a trip by train into Boston soon so we can all go bye-bye on the choo-choo together. Until then, I guess we'll just play with the bapboom, as long as she doesn't get too distressed about it.