I Want Candy

We are having a slight problem with baby talk at our house, and I am trying to counteract it with giant vocabulary words. Jack knows that "dede", "geegee", and "teetee" are not acceptable and that he should be trying harder to say, "fortify", "magnificent","transubstantiation", and "existentialism" whenever possible.

Meanwhile, Luke is interested in grammar, and he just read the kid's version of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, and he cracks up at the ways a comma can make a difference. At dinner tonight we had already addressed the baby talk (baby talk is a gateway drug to potty talk, if you must know) and I was trying to get Jack to eat his dinner. I said, "Eat your beans." He said, "No! Candy!" And I said, "That's right. No candy." And Luke said, "He means, No, comma, candy."

Then we started talking about hot-chocolate, the noun that means a chocolaty drink, and hot the adjective, that describes chocolate that is very warm. Dave said in some countries, there isn't a difference, and I said that the problem with this country is that people say hot chocolate when they mean hot cocoa. And Jack said, "Momma, cocoa is a baby word and that's not ok."


* Am I mildly worried that the grammar in this blog post is terrible? Yes, but not worried enough to proofread.