Daddy they’re Triangles, not Tri-angu-lees! That’s silly!

Thus marked the moment it all started. She’s growing up. Can’t stop it. Don’t really want to stop it. I don’t think. But I was hoping to hold onto the vocabulary for a little while longer. I mean she’s pronouncing things properly now. How long before she’s a know it all teenager who hates her parents?

I will say we are finally to a place where the experiences with Anne Marie are starting to be similar to that of her older brother. Her early entrance into the world, subsequent 6 month stay in the NICU and another 6 with a heart monitor, followed by a year of isolation from germs sort of robbed us of all the experience we built up with Frank.

And I will say his transition from Panfer! to panther and from Hippothomas! to hippopotamus marked the beginning of the end of his toddler-hood. So this isn’t without precedent. Still sucks though.

A friend even warned me about it. Preschool will cause them to speak properly he said. They’ll lose that fun, funny way of saying things he said. They’ll seem older he said. He was right on all counts. Is there anything cuter than Hippothomas? No. Not even close. The only difference here is Frank never has corrected me when I say it the old way. Once he started to pronounce it correctly he just moved on.

The girl on the other hand… The first time we read the series of books called Bob Books it was a level 1 set where I was introduced to Seth the Square, Sally the Circle, and Tanner the Triangle. Although with that literation you would figure Sally the Circle would be Cecily the Circle. But hey who am I to judge.

Anyway these are the books she wanted me to read to her for nighttime. I gotta say after the first run through I needed to spice things up a bit. I mean not for nothin but the Bob Books are very short, zero plot lines, devoid of suspense, and almost no character development. Sally was the only one who got to stretch her story line a bit when she got upset during a game of hide and seek. She got so flustered she held her breath and lost her circular shape and was thus indistinguishable from the rest of the foliage.

It wasn’t until Seth and Tanner broke down crying because they couldn’t find Sally, (even though they were so close had either one of them sneezed Sally could have handed them a tissue), that Sally released her breath and returned to her circular shape. She then became visible to Tanner and Seth.

Not to go all Sigmund Freud here but Sally clearly has some self worth issues coupled with a need for attention bordering on the pathological. Who the hell can hold their breath until they lose their shape? If it was that easy to not be round I’d still be holding my breath. And don’t even get me started on the shallow brain pans of Seth and Tanner.

Regardless, save that one particularly interesting volume, the rest of the books are quite boring. So I would amuse myself by reading in different voices, attempt to do it in a few different languages where I know some words. As it turns out, Ach tung! Seth kommen zie hier!, which is my father’s loose German for Come over here Seth!, doesn’t go over well for bedtime stories.

I did try singing one of them once. But my voice makes Jesus cry so I had to stop. Then I struck comedy gold when I began changing the syllables of the words or pronounced them phonetically when I could.

So Tanner the Triangle became Tanner the Tri-angu-lee. Sally became Sally the Circ-u-lee. She roared with laughter. The kid has a phenomenal belly laugh. Even at two years old she could bust a gut laughing. And it only took one time for her to start calling any circle or triangle by my made up phonetics.

The kid is a riot. Well I should say, was a riot. I used the tri-nagu-lee on her the other day and got, “Daddy they’re Triangles, not Tri-angu-lees! That’s silly!”

My little girl is not very little anymore.

Kommen des Alters, es saugt. 

(Growing up man, it sucks.)