Do you ever just sit back and think about how complex the English
language is?
Even though it's acknowledged as one of the easier languages
in the world to learn, there are still a lot of intricacies to it. The whole
past-present tense tends to trip up even the most seasoned English speaker from
time-to-time. Also of note is plural versus singular; I vs. we and other things
along those lines. Then, of course, we can't forget about verbs, pronouns,
adjectives, etc.
Confession, even as a 32-year-old adult, I still get tripped
up anytime someone asks me to differentiate between the aforementioned three.
Despite my shortcomings in that area, I still have the ability to speak and
write well (or at least, I think I do).
I've been thinking about this topic more often due to the
fact that Ellie is becoming more and more fluent with her speech. In fact, I
feel like she's been taking broad leaps just over the past week or so.
Ever since she first started speaking in sentences, Ellie
has gravitated towards speaking in the third person.
"Ellie eat apple."
"Ellie drink water."
"Ellie sleep stuffed animals."
"Ellie play Legos."
The examples could go on and on and on. For the past couple
of months especially, it's felt like I've been trying to have a conversation
with the Incredible Hulk while conversing with my daughter. However, despite
any shortcomings, it's still much easier it is to figure out what Ellie wants
since she started developing her conversational skills.
However, this isn't a broad, overarching story about her
conversational skills. Instead, it's a story about one sentence, uttered from
her lips that served to warm my heart to the nth degree.
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| Aww. |
After a morning of playing at the park, Ellie and I returned
home to eat lunch together before I sentenced her to a nap. I say 'sentenced'
because to her, a nap sometimes feels like an actual prison sentence instead of
the good thing that it is.
First of all, I gave Ellie the option of choosing what her
lunch would be. I had always planned on leftover sloppy joes for myself with
Ellie getting to finish off our leftover pasta. Ellie would have none of that,
though. In her little mind, it's not fair for us to be eating different things.
I'm not sure if it's because she feels like she's getting slighted or feels
like I'm getting slighted. Regardless, the end result was both of us eating
pasta.
I heated Ellie's pasta up first, allowing her to sit down and
eat while I heated up my own. It's a good thing I did as by the time I had sat
down, Ellie had already polished off her plate of pasta and was asking for
more. With little alternative, I shoveled a couple of scoops of my pasta onto
her plate. It quickly disappeared too.
While conventional wisdom would make you think Ellie would be
full after polishing off both plates of pasta, that was not to be. With my
daughter still requesting more food, I opened our increasingly bare refrigerator
to look around before settling on a lonely apple in the crisper drawer. After slicing
the apple up, I brought the slices back to our table to share with Ellie.
Shortly after I finished eating my four slices of apple,
Ellie again noticed a discrepancy in our food supply. Therefore, she proceeded
to rectify the situation by loving feeding me bites of her apple. When I asked
her why she would do such a thing, her response was heartwarming. "I like
my daddy."
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| **Stock photo** |
It's nuts how four little words can mean so much. First of
all, it's just really cool to see my daughter speaking in complete sentences
and getting all word usage correct. Second, and much more importantly, I've
always felt like Ellie values me less than she values Bethany. Given the
option, she will always choose to hang out with her mommy over me. Therefore,
to hear her say that she actually does like me means an awful lot.
Now, I think I'm just curious to see what she says next.
After all, it's not a far stretch for her to go from saying "I like my
daddy" to "I appreciate my father", or more likely, "I
can't stand you, Dad!" #DaddyWrite
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| I'm too cool for the likes of you, Dad. |
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