Matthew Says...

Q: What do all of these words have in common? (Beside the fact that spell-check doesn't recognize them.)

Ike

Unch

Ook

Ightning

Eg

A: They share a preliminary "L," which our son does not pronounce. In fact, he doesn't even seem to realize that he's omitting an often-critical consonant. Dave regularly gets a laugh out of Matthew's oblivion by baiting him shamelessly...

Matthew: Daddy, my eg hurts.

Dave: Your egg hurts?

Matthew: Yeah. No, my eg.

Dave: Where is your egg, buddy?

Matthew: Right here. My eg.

Dave: Shouldn't you keep your egg in the refrigerator?

Matthew: (now on the verge of tears, violently gesturing to his thigh) Nooooo, my EEEEG!

One of our long standing favorites from Matthew's vocabulary is the way he pronounces a certain animated race car's name. Ladies and gentlemen, "Ightning Umpeen!"

Or how about "girl," which features that tricky "L" right at the end of the word? Matthew does his best, but his version sounds almost nothing at all like the original, as he ends up with something like "Goo-er."

I find that there's an irrepressible smile on my face as I sit here typing. Oh, how we love our funny little man! And the surge of affection that I'm experiencing right now is one of the primary reasons I maintain this blog.

Honestly, friends, it's challenging for me to love and serve my Matthew much of the time. He's three. He bounces off the walls. He's whiny. He's waaaaay overly emotional. And he's all boy, a phenomenon to which this brotherless mama is still getting accustomed. But sitting here and capturing these sweet, fleeting aspects of his personality and speech stirs up my heart and rekindles my love for him. To me, that's why it's worth doing! It is well worth doing!

Ohhh, but I really need to do an extended video interview with him soon so that some of these cute verbal idiosyncrasies get captured on video as well as on the blog. Because I know that, as soon as I blink a couple of times, he'll be several inches taller than me and using words that I don't even know...

And it won't be because he can't pronounce the letter "L."