Jones Jargon

I confess, I'm one of those parents that tends to think most everything her children do is cute. I find their jokes funny. I laugh at their antics. I find their mispronunciations endearing. For that reason, I've never been one to correct them when they say something wrong. They always figure it out eventually. Usually, sooner than I'd like. In the meantime, I enjoy their charming kid lingo. In fact, a lot of times, we adopt their jargon into our own conversations.

It made me a little sad when J finally stopped calling the fuzzy red monster "Melmo." Or stopped asking for milk and "risins" (raisins) when he first got up. He used to like playing "bakaball" (basketball). He asked for "woman cereal" for breakfast. (The Smart Start box had a picture of a woman running on it.) For snacks he liked red crackers (Ritz) or yellow crackers (Wheat Thins) or veg-e-ta-ble crackers (vegetable flavored Ritz - pronounced with 4 syllables).

He called Target "Treats to eat" for a long time. It was a line from one of his story books: "Sometimes we'll visit the mall down the street, we pick out new clothes and have treats to eat." That combined with the fact that we often got popcorn when we went there, and the label stuck.

Chocolate chips are "brown bugs" in our house. Back in the days when he was still naive to the existence of sweets in the world, I was baking cookies. He asked what those things were, and I said, "Oh, you don't want those. They're brown bugs. Ick" (Yes, my children will never be blogging about how shocked they were to discover as adults that their mother had once lied to them.) He soon discovered that he liked eating brown bugs, and we've called them that ever since.

The only one I notice that's still stuck in J's language is "prentzels." He hasn't figured out yet that there's no "n" in that word.

H doesn't have quite as many of these in her vocab - Probably because big brother takes it upon himself to correct her whenever she mispronounces something. He recently corrected her for asking for Papa cereal. "It's mini wheats, H," he insisted. I defended her, because I'm not quite ready to let that one go. It has been Papa cereal or Papa yo's (short for "cereyo" - the toddler version of "cereal") for years around our house. The rest of the world may know them as Frosted Mini Wheats, but since our Papa used to eat them 3 meals a day when he was driving truck, J labeled them "Papa Cereal," and the name stuck.

J tended to shorten the names of fruits and veggies. He asked for "tatos" (tomatoes) and "banas" (bananas). H, in contrast, liked to add extra syllables. She requested "tenamatoes" and "banamanas."

H used to like "mice" in her drink. I'm sure her little ears heard us ask, "Would you like suh mice?" instead of "some ice?"

One of my favorites was her referring to big bumblebees as "fuzzy buzzies." It might have been even cuter if she weren't terrified of them. She would usually call them that as she was running away in tears after having seen one. "Mommy! It's a fuzzy buzzy!" She called lady bugs "baby bugs" until recently. I still like to call them that. She's afraid of those too - She's her Mama's girl!

Someday, they'll be all grown and know the real names for things, but I suspect there will be certain names that will remain in the Jones family for years to come. I have "Papa cereal" for breakfast every morning, like to make "brown bug pancakes" on occasion, and enjoy eating at "Salmon's" instead of Damon's.