Say Say Say

“You are my nest,” he said, as he rubbed his little head into the fleece fold of my bathrobe. Charlie has always been a big fan of the robe, often requesting that I don it at bedtime so we can snuggle for stories.

Most of the writing lately has landed on the Jersey Mom’s Blog, but Charlie’s use of the word “nest” seemed so symbolic that I had to visit my much neglected blog. My thoughts this morning felt more personal than publishable so The Nest felt like the perfect place to put them.

When a random post of a cute kid quote appears on Facebook, I always read it. Sometimes I think, awe, cute. Sometimes I think who cares about your cute kid. Sometimes I think that there is no way your kid said or did that and that a lot gets lost in parental translation. Nevertheless, here I am waxing pathetic poetry about Charlie and his nest nuzzle.

The thing is, these cute things will probably get forgotten lest we write them down somewhere. Some, the really good ones, we will remember, but most of the day to day mispronunciations and hilarious one-liners will fall to the side once we hit the throws of adolescence. Perhaps one day when we may be lucky enough to be grandparents, our children’s offspring will trigger a bum rush of memories of our own babies and we will be able to clearly recall the nuances of our once newborns and toddlers. However, I do not trust my memory, so, annoying or not, here goes my kid quotes. I make them public just in case the damage done between my 20’s and 30’s make my ability to recall impossible and my chances of living to be a grandparent slim.

“I’ll have the grinilla cereal,” Nori’s response to “Do you want Gorilla Munch or O’s for breakfast.” If I say the “gorilla” clearly and slowly she will repeat it back, but most of the time that big hairy monkey is called a “grinilla.” Bryan wonders if one day she will go for “big grinilla juice heads.” Oh to think for a moment that our daughter could be like Snoookie. Terrifying to say the least.

Also in Nori’s vocabulary, “mazageen,” as in, “I will put Gre-Gre’s (my mother) mazageen (People) over here so she can read it to me later. Not sure what I worry about more-Nori’s mispronunciations or that special reading time with my mother includes Hollywood gossip.

Nori also has an accent, or speech impediment, depending on the way you look at it, that seems like it might be regional, yet I cannot pin it to any region we have visited. Words like Candy-corn, unicorn, more and even her own name, come out as “Candy-Kurn,” “unikurn,” “mur,” and “Nuri.” I blame the prodigious amount of Australian and Canadian children’s programming that streams through our television.

“Top Sir Hat,” stands in for Sir Topham Hat. Charlie says that he is scared of him because he is always, “so cross.” I am scared of him too, but mostly for his promotion of communism on the Isle of Sodor. Charlie also speaks in imperatives. “Mommy, you snuggle with me.” “Mommy, you get me more milk.” “Mommy, you play rescue helicopter with me.” This sentence structure, coupled with his sing song tone, make it impossible for me to say no. The combination of this early speech pattern and Thomas the Tank Engine politics could make him a fierce politician one day. Best to teach him about deleting text messages and email as soon as you read them right away.

There are more of course, but my already addled brain cannot come up with any right now. Nori’s coughing woke me up around 4:30 am giving me a chance to write between 5:30 and 7:00am. I am caught between grateful and goofy after my first cup of coffee. So I am off to get the second cup in the hopes that the creativity will continue for the next Jersey Mom’s post.