Proud Momma

Happy Mother's Day! I hope all of the mommies out in the blogosphere had a lovely day today. I am getting over the flu, but thankfully had some of my energy back and after a nice sleep-in was able to participate in a wonderful Mother's day with my favourite little guy, Liam, and my absolutely favourite person, Scott. Liam drew me a lovely picture and Scott and Liam got me a massaging chair cushion. Ahhhh. In Liam's picture, Scott wrote Liam's name, but Liam spelled it for him. He tries writing it, but for now, it's just light scribbles. He traced over the word, "Mommy" in the picture with a scribble for each letter. Soon he'll be published like his Mommy and Daddy, I'm sure. ;)

So, since the last post, Scott and I have been writing down more Liamisms so we can add to the list of Daily Fun Things Liam Says. So here are some that we've noted, BUT, I've made it into a game! Try to guess what these things mean (some are obvious, others...not so much!):



-bi-mins

-puddo

-panno

-hai-pin

-effint

-fis

-dis

-ahbow

-hockey

-kisses

-hugs

-us-suh down

-woos

-side

-cuddohs

-"Ho-hi!"

-ohgurt

-bargage

-"feddy"

-fuhd

-"bess oo"

-ah-keem

-bah-rees

-a-bet

-finiture

-fengine

-assauce

-gu-ul

-dude





And here are the answers:


-bi-mins = vitamins

-puddo = puzzle

-panno = piano

-hai-pin = airplane

-effint = elephant

-fis = fix

-dis = this

-ah-bow = elbow

-hockey = hockey

-kisses = kisses

-hugs = hugs

-uh-suh down = upside down

-woos = woosh

-side = slide

-cuddohs = cuddles

-"Ho-hi!" = "Hello?...hi!" on the phone

-ohgurt = yogurt

-bargage = garbage

-"feddy" = "your food is ready"

-fuhd = the song "What a Wonderful World" (world)

-"bess oo" = "bless you"

-ah-keem = ice cream

-bah-rees = batteries

-a-bet = alphabet

-finiture = furniture

-fengine = fire engine

-assauce (tee hee!) = applesauce

-gu-ul = girl

-dude = dude


:)


Some are pretty clear--he actually has a lot of clear words that he says that I didn't include, these are just the cutest ones to hear him say.

{Edited to add: Mom reminded me of one more Liamism that I have seemed to have blocked from my memory. As Mom, Liam and I were headed to the library a couple of weeks ago, for storytime, Liam told he he wanted his "fockers". I said, "You're what?!" "Fockers!!" and he went to the closet and got out his frog shoes. :) }

Yesterday he did something amazing: he generated his own rhyme to a word! This is pretty cool...when I did my research study for my Master's thesis project, I tested 4-5 year old non-reading children about their awareness of phonological knowledge, including rhymes. The kids had to tell me if two words rhymed (yes or no) and then a harder task was to actually tell me the part of the word that rhymed for a set of word that I gave them. A lot of them could indicate yes or no to a pair of rhyming or non-rhyming words, but it was significantly harder for them to identify what part of a word rhymed my given words (ie "at" is the 'rime' of cat and hat, so when given the two words, the kids would have had to say "at").

But yesterday Liam was able to generate his own rhyme! This is kind of a step between the two tasks above. Scott was trying to get Liam to guess the colour 'pink'...so he said, "it rhymes with 'ink,'" and then we both kind of laughed and said that he probably wouldn't understand that, so we started listing off rhyming words like drink, sink, think and then Liam piped up with "wink!" (there's this library book that he LOVES that has a boy winking in it, so he always flips to that page and puts his finger to his eye to wink.) We were pretty amazed! So, Liam is surpassing my research study kids...although, he woudn't have qualified anyway for the study, since all of the kids who could read were "disqualified" as being too advanced for the study. And Liam is up to reading about 18 words now: me, no, go, Mommy, Daddy, Liam, baby, Nana, Poppa, pool, book, cat, dog, cow, cold, hot, food, stop, bee; and some that I will have to check on but I think he can read are: car, milk. So, about 21 words.

Needless to say, I have a lot of reasons to be a proud Momma, but most of all, Liam is just a sweet, funny, hugable, laid-back kid who I just love to hang out with day after day. I'm a very lucky Mommy.

love

b