Mama Bean's little boy thinks everything has two syllables

It's pretty darn adorable.

I don't know where it came from, but for a week or two, Bean's been turning one syllable words - usually those with two vowels "walking together" - into two distinct syllables. I first noticed it when he was eating a meal, and calling the protein mee-yat. "Mmm, 'ummy mee-yat." Then I noticed he did it with eat, too: ee-yat.

He does it in this very toddler way, where his mouth moves extra lots, because little kids don't know that English is basically the laziest language in the world, we barely move our mouths to talk. So he's pursing his lips right together for the "first syllable" of shoes... "Mummy, put on shoo-ez? Put on shoo-ez, go ow-whut?" He looks like he's going to swallow an egg when he makes the ow sound of out :)

I'm sure this is a normal phase of language development, though I do repeat the word with an emphasis on its single syllable after he says it. But mostly I want to get it on video, because it's so darn cute!

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I have a word story for every member of my family, I just have to remember them. Sprout has learned her first sign, for "more." In my world, this is the word/sign that is most useful, because she can tell me what she wants. (I guess "please" is along the same lines, I'll teach her that next.) So mealtime is easier now, I'm gradually convincing her it's more effective to quietly and calmly sign, instead of screaming-grunting-rubbing-her-sticky-hands-in-her-hair-with-frustration. In fact, instead of please, I may teach her "all done." We'll see. Bean caught on to "milk" the fastest, but Sprout is not quite as addicted to that substance as my son was/is. Is. He is a milk fiend.

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On a recent car trip, Papa Bean and I were talking about Sprout pulling off her bib, to which The Precious (her soother) is clipped. I said he should have put on a bib with a button, instead of velcro, because she can't pull those off (as easily.) He said he didn't know we had bibs with buttons, which I didn't believe, because we had discussed numerous times when Sprout was young how we wished we'd known button bibs were so awesome when Bean was a baby, they're so much better than velcro. I rattled off the half dozen or so bibs I know for sure have buttons, to which he replied, voice dripping with semantical superiority, "You mean snaps, bibs with SNAPS?"

Oh pardon me. In my life, buttons and snaps are the same things, essentially. It's like squares and rectangles. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not always a square. A snap is a type of button, but a button is not always a snap. They're in the same family. I mean, surely it was not such a stretch of the imagination that when I mention button bibs, I'm not talking about some exotic bib creature the likes of which we've never seen in our (vast, trust me, vaaaaaast) bib collection, but rather, I'm talking about snap bibs that we use often, with great pleasure.

So.

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I don't remember what the word story about myself was. I'll try and remember for later.