The Desire to Keep Our Children Cute and Stupid

When Ruby was smaller, her favorite food was pizza.  But for some reason she could not/would not say “pizza.”  She called it “pizzi” and, after a while, so did we.  “Ruby, do you want pizzi for dinner?” we would say.  But eventually it became clear that if we all kept calling it that, someday Ruby was going to end up in 1st grade, asking for pizzi, and getting teased, so we finally started calling it pizza again, and now she does too.  But I still miss my little 1 or 2 year old getting so excited when it was pizzi night.

In a similar, but seemingly more permanent, case, Simone’s mother decided that she wanted to be called “Nina” by her grandchildren, but Ruby once again had trouble with this, and called her Nini.  She still calls her Nini.  We all call her Nini.  The only trace left that she was ever called “Nina” is in the very beginning of Ruby’s baby book, before we all made the switch.  This one is less embarrassing though, so we’re okay with it.

The problem is, I like it when Ruby mispronounces things.  It’s so cute!  I wish she could be a funny-talking widdle girl forever!  But as a parent, part of my job is to make sure that she knows how to fit in with, or at least deal with, society.  We are social creatures, like it or not, and dang it, my children are going to know how to pronounce the names of common school cafeteria food!

Besides, there are always new little things to latch on to.  Yesterday I lost another one, when Ruby finally managed to sing “The 12 Days of Christmas” correctly, instead of saying “7 Swans of swimming!  6 Geese of Laying!”  My fear is that eventually, she will stop saying things wrong and will start pronouncing everything correctly.  I guess I’ll have to start planting mistakes in her vocabulary.  From now, I will refer to kitchens as chickens.  That will be hilarious when she picks that up!  Wait, no, too obvious.  She already knows both those words.  Okay, okay, from now on instead of saying “spaniel” I will call all those dogs “Samuel.”  Great idea!  Except that would be too mean, and I can’t do it.  *sigh*  I guess I will just have to let her grow up and be a normal person.  Or at least as normal as one can get in this house.