Three Talk

Oh, the things my son says now that he is three . . .

• He loves to mix his languages -- English, Hebrew, and the Spanish he learns from Dora the Explorer. It's Spanheblish, if you will. The other day he said, "Okay, Dora, I'm going to count to ten and then it will be time to get out of the bathtub. Tres, mayo, dos . . . ." He also gets the "Aw, man!" that Swiper the Sneaky Fox says on Dora the Explorer, confused with the Amen we say at the end of prayers; his exclamation of disappointment sounds like, "Aw, mane!" But my favorite is his all-purpose made-up Spanheblish word cinco b'nai which can be used as almost any part of speech and whose true meaning remains a mystery. As in, "Oh, you are cinco b'nai!"

• The kid loves cars. Or perhaps I should say he is obsessed with cars. He can name several makes/models by sight, including the Toyota Camry, the Ford Taurus, the Chevy Cavalier, and the Mercury Grand Marquis. Down the street from our house is parked a Hyundai that has been in a nasty crash. He talks about it all the time. Today as I gave him a nectarine that had gotten a little squashed on its way home from the supermarket, he said, "It's smooshed up like a Hyundai!" He has also nicknamed the Hyundai after his great-grandmother who has had several falls and broken bones -- because it's "all crashed up" the way she is.

• He says a lot of grown-up words like pedestrian, kaput, and ignition, but he still has some endearing mispronunciations. A couple of my favorites: "I can't wait to go to preschool! I'm going to be so besided!" and "Hunk the horn, Daddy!"

• He has a flair for the dramatic. (Wonder where he gets that?) Today, when asked why he hit his sister in the head, he responded, "Because my baby sister is not my friend and I won't let her in my room because I am a bad man and I might die some day!" Well, okay then. Sheesh. When he was two, he just said he didn't know.