Miss Vocabulary

“Miss Vocabulary” has shown off a string of big words and complex sentences lately. For example, a couple weeks ago Grandma H was watching Zoe at our house while I took Zachary to his Dr. appointment. Grandma indicated to Zoe the wooden shelf cat sitting halfway up our fireplace column (which rises up two full stories in our living room), and asked Zoe what the cat’s name is. Zoe looked around blankly and Grandma had to point it out to her. Yes, the cat is probably 20 feet up from the floor, but Zoe is a girl that notices EVERYTHING. Apparently she hadn’t noticed the cat, which is exactly what she said after looking at it intently for a couple minutes, “Oh, I hadn’t noticed it before.” Do two-year-olds talk like that?

A week ago on my routine Thursday trip to hand off the kids to Dear Husband at his office on my way to work, I began telling Dear Husband that I again had some trouble with the automatic doors working on the family-mobile. As Dear Husband was getting Dear Daughter out of her car seat, she chimed in, “Yeah, I was having a heckuva time!”

A couple days ago Dear Husband was listening to his voice mail on his cell phone, and Dear Daughter wanted to “talk.” He told her she had to wait her turn. She followed this by saying, “Okay, when you are done, then I will have an opportunity.” OPPORTUNITY???? Where does this stuff come from and how does a 2 ½ year old learn to use these words and phrases correctly?

A couple days ago we also had a visit from our Parents As Teachers educator. She got a good laugh out of Zoe when Zoe was telling her about the bats at the Wonders of Wildlife. As she tried to explain what they looked and sounded like, part of her (quite long) explanation went like this…”Actually, they make a sound like ‘tweet tweet tweet!” The PAT educator laughed and laughed and laughed at Zoe’s (correct) use of the word “actually.” I informed her that Zoe has been correctly using the word “actually” since she was barely 24 months old.

Tonight Dear Daughter was making a “Get Well” card for Great Aunt Pat, and as she was examining a sheet of stickers, she states, “Well, that’s something you don’t see everyday.”

And just yesterday morning at Dear Daughter’s well child visit, the Dr. asked us, “How many words does Zoe say?”