Boonts!

Jack has been making quite a bit of progress in his speech over the last month. I can no longer measure his vocabulary in neat and easy terms such as "Yeah, he has about a dozen words." I can no longer list all his well-used words off the top of my head, and I am not the only person who can understand his words anymore.

Despite his advances, the last week or so, he has begun adding his own flair to his words, that are a funny but frustrating development. He is adding a "ch" or "ts" to the end of many of his words. One of his most-used words, fan, has become "fanch." Hands have become "hants." Spoon = "foonch." Even his brother has gotten a new name - "Bents."

My new favorite evolution though is his new word for balloon: boonts!

Yesterday, I bought a bag of water balloons and they kept us busy all day. I must have filled and tied hundreds of balloons. Keeping up with three boys who can explode them faster than I can fill them keeps a mom occupied (and more than a little wet.) Every time Jack needed a new balloon filled, he would hand me an empty one and say, "boonts! boonts! boonts!" until I finished filling it for him.

Now half a dozen "boonts!" for every balloon I filled for him equals A LOT of the same word over and over again!

It must have been cute and catchy enough though, because the rest of us eventually started calling the water balloons "boonts" as well, and now they big boys say it without even using a baby voice or laughing. That is just what they are calling them now, apparently.

Today promises to be another hot one and with daddy out of town, I think we will probably use up the rest of our "boonts" (and possibly the rest of my sanity as well...)

Another One Bites The Dust

Shortly after putting the boys to bed tonight, I heard a loud "pop" followed by a flood of tears. You might be wondering what they could choose as a bedtime snuggling toy that would make such a sound, but I didn't wonder at all; I knew exactly what it was and who was crying and why.

Ben is quite fond of balloons. He loves those giant balloons that have the rubber band attached to one end that you pound back and forth against your hand. He doesn't play with them in the traditional sense of the word, he draws faces on them and they become (for their extremely short life-span) his best friend. They get named, they sleep with him, and they wait in his breakfast chair for him while he's at school.

Now some of you don't like to get goldfish for your kids because they don't last long enough and you don't want your child getting upset by the death of a "pet." Well, balloons are even harder to keep "alive!" One time, his "best friend" landed on a box with some packing tape still stuck to it and when Ben tried to rescue him from the box, he popped. Ben wailed, "Oh no! I will miss Mr. Blue so much! He was my best friend!"

So tonight, when he took his new friend to bed with him, I didn't think much of it until I heard that terrible "pop" signifying the death of yet another great friend. Again, he was devastated, but decided that he maybe should not have tried to scratch off his face with his fingernail to re-draw him scarier.

My Ben can be so sensitive sometimes. It can really get on my nerves (like when his shoe falls off) and seem silly at times (like when his balloon pops), but on the whole, I am proud of his empathy and sympathy for others. He really has an ability far beyond his years to feel for other people and I am excited to find out how he uses that talent some day, once we conquer not crying over shoes unexpectedly falling off.