What did you say?

Noah has clearly been listening to us and picking up lots of new words, but we're not sure that he fully grasps what we're saying.

This weekend, he said he wanted to "irritate and grow smaller." We asked him what it meant to irritate, and he said it meant you would get smaller.

He used "reasonably" in a similarly odd context the other day, which had us laughing hysterically. Don't recall exactly what he said, unfortunately.

He also frequently makes up words. On Sunday he stepped on something and thought he hurt his heel, so he came back into the kitchen asking me to fix his "shpood." What? "I hurt my shpood. A shpood is what you hurt when you step on something and you can't walk." Fair enough. I'm beginning to think the Sandra Boynton song, "Nobody understands me" (from Philadelphia Chickens) was written about a 3 or 4 year old.

But we can't fault him for trying, and for listening (when he chooses to, of course; ask him to do something and that's another story). We were driving to school last week and listening to a Tom Chapin song, and he asked "Why did the car go bay?" We had to explain what a plane's cargo bay was, but whether he really grasped that has yet to be determined.

Similarly, whenever we read Horton Hatches the Egg (or listen to that part of Seussical the Musical) Noah will ask, "Why did Horton throw away his cookies?" (when he was seasick).

Adam cautioned me when I explained that an hors d'oeuvre whets one's appetite. ("I can just imagine him asking, 'Why did your appetite get wet?'," Adam commented.)

A final recent Noah-ism. In case you didn't know what a flatbed truck is for, he explained that "flatbed trucks scoop up beds and dump them in people's houses so they can sleep."

Makes you realize all those "out of the mouths of babes" emails that get sent may well be true quotes!