An Alixicon

The fun thing about having an almost-kindergartner around when your second child starts talking is that there's someone taking even greater delight in all the cute mispronunciations than the child's doting parents do. The other day on the way to school, Edith and I had great fun tossing back and forth our favorite Alicisms.

Of course the audience for such things falls off pretty rapidly after parents and siblings, but for posterity's sake, and in case any grandparents and/or linguists out there have a modicum of interest, I present here a partial Alixicon. Her total words number somewhere in the several hundreds by now--we've stopped counting--and many of those are crystal clear. But others are still in that wonderful (if limiting) stage in which the pronunciation is unique to the speaker. And so, some of our favorites:

• Dee-Dee Edith. I've mentioned this one before, but at this point it's fast on its way to becoming our family's Beezus equivalent. Today the older toddler teacher at the girls' school told us that she is known as Bela Deedee to her younger sisters, because in Gujarati, Deedee is the appellation for "eldest sister." Perfect!
• up-a-dow up. Specifically, Help me get up on this [bed/chair/table/stone wall/etc.]!
  
• dock (sing. or pl.) the soft knitted garment that fits closely over a foot; they usually come in pairs.
• eush (pl.; vowel something of a German umlauty sort) They go over the dock.
  
• nage What she needs, and often requests, when her diaper is dirty.
• boppy Once she learns how to use this fixture, she will no longer need nages. As it is, Alice seems to think boppies are a class of (admittedly interesting) seats usually found in the bathroom. They include a small blue footstool used during baths and the bathroom scale, which Alice has designated her personal boppy. Boppies are not to be confused (definitely not) with nursing pillows of a homophonic brand name.
  
• wockee That stuff Mommy and Daddy seem to drink an awful lot of, steaming hot in a mug or iced in a plastic cup.
  
• puck I meant, ...iced in a plastic puck.
• lo-lo Unlike Edith, Alice enjoys climbing into the lo-lo for a walk around the block and frequently asks for such a treat...when she's not pushing her dolls in their own miniature lo-lo.
  
• lo-lo-lo The neighborhood's adults, by contrast, seem to prefer pushing a noisy lo-lo-lo methodically back and forth across the lawn, especially on dry Saturdays.
• plyplay Those enchanting insects seen in the June twilight.

***

Meanwhile, some more Edith talk. The maturity of Edith's conversational gambits has long struck us, but there's a whole new quality to it when a child in a carseat is casually discussing from the backseat what type of car she plans to buy when she gets to Colorado. "I would prefer a Jeep...forest green is what I was thinking." Since when did my preschooler develop opinions on, and hankerings for, particular automotive vehicles? What's more, she is receiving encouragement: Despite our having purchased a new Mazda in 2008 (with parental help), some members of the family seem to think it's already time to revisit the car question. The Mazda 5 was intended to haul a 110-pound dog who is no longer among us, and it does not have the 4-wheel drive that everyone keeps telling us we'll need. Tom has long yearned for a small Toyota pick-up truck or, apparently, a Jeep. Now father and daughter are colluding to build their castles in the air together.

"You know what I'm going to do," says Edith suddenly. "When I get home I'm going to empty out my piggybank and give away all my saved money." To whom? I ask. "For the Jeep," she says. Tom immediately promises to contribute his quarter collection to the fund. That will be a lot of money, Edith says. "But not enough to make us poor, I don't think." I suggest that if it were enough to make us poor, then buying a Jeep would be a bad choice. Edith quickly agrees, which I take as a reassuring sign that her material dreams haven't overrun her grip on reality.

Tonight one of the standing committees at church hosted us at a lovely farewell dinner. A committee member who used to work in the veterinary pharmaceuticals industry gave the girls each a smooshy foam dog, like a stress ball but shaped like a dalmatian. Then he gave me and Tom one as back-up in case Alice eats or otherwise mutilates hers. When we got home, Edith asked what Tom and I were going to do with "our" dog. I told her I didn't know and asked if she would like to take care of it for us.

She nodded. "I could probably handle two dogs," she said with casual confidence. "I have experience taking care of small animals. Small stuffed animals. Two people who used to have a real dog who died probably shouldn't take care of a rubber dog. [Ouch.] They might not know how to care for it. Like, you might give it real dog food, but a rubber dog doesn't eat real dog food. So that wouldn't be good."

I agreed to entrust Spotty to Edith's expert care. With all the rest of our responsibilities this week, that's a load off.