Gay King Zachy!

Naomi fears no word. She tries words out as soon as she hears them, and then tosses them into her everyday speech like croutons in a salad. Except in most cases it's more like marshmallows or chocolate chips in a salad- it's good to see (hear) them, just maybe not exactly where they show up. As C and B, our recent visitors, can attest, she practices her speech skills nonstop, which is why she is so darn skilled at yapping. Some recent language development anecdotes:

- We checked out "Curious George Goes to the Hospital" on our last library run, and in one scene, George performs in a puppet theater (because his feet are like two extra hands), and Naomi said "That looks like Theodore!" Looks like is Naomi's way of saying looks like, sounds like, reminds me of. Theodore is an elephant with a bad leg in another book that we have. Theater sounds like Theodore, so now every time we read one book or the other, she points out that although they "look like" each other, theater is a place to see a show, and Theodore is an elephant with a bad leg. To take this one step further, when Jim was wearing a brace on his wrist, Naomi informed him that his arm had a bad leg.

- Also in the same book (the Curious George one), George gets an operation. Later, when we were singing a particular verse of "Bananaphone" over and over (because Naomi likes to hear me say "Operator, get me Beijing-jing-jing-jing"), Naomi observed that operator sounds like operation. Now we must have similar exposition of these related words when either of them comes up. And she also likes to inform people that Beijing is a city in China.

- Again with the Curious George. Who knew these books were such a source for vocabulary building? George rides on a record player, loses his "valance" (we have a b and v mixup issue), and flies through the air. Whoopee! Naomi insisted on knowing who said Whoopee! I explained that it wasn't George, it was the narrator. Remember learning literary terms in high school? Naomi now has a head start.

- This one is not so much about vocabulary- it's just funny. Some Pottery Barn packages arrived, and Naomi was very anxious to open the one that contained the curtains, because it is the right size to come from her Grandma with presents inside. I had to work hard to persuade her that it wasn't something nice for her. Here was her position: "Look at my hands! There are no any presents in them!"

- Occasionally I will not be able to figure out what Naomi is talking about, even after much interviewing on both sides. Recently, this happened when she asked me if I remembered Gay King Zachy. Wow! I didn't. Where did Gay King Zachy come from? Finally we revisited a wacky book, "Nonsense Alphabets" written by Edward Lear (of "The Owl and the Pussycat"), and it turned out that after the one time we read it, she had managed to retain the verse for the letter X:

X was once a great king Xerxes,
Xerxy
Perxy
Turxy
Xerxy
Linxy Lurxy
Great King Xerxes!

Hee.