Pea-tin and Baby Fat

I just remembered the other day about some confusion I'd had when spending time with K in our bedroom a few weeks ago. Two or three times when we'd been in the room, she'd pointed up to the flower vase sconce above my bedside table and said, "Baby Fat! Baby Fat!" I was befuddled by that, with no clue where she'd have gotten that statement or what in the world she was referring to. It wasn't until later that I'd realized what she'd meant.

K had been so intrigued by my collection of "Mommy Books" -- books that I'd acquired and had had signed by their authors while working for Joseph-Beth Booksellers that I decided to get her a special book of her own -- one of my favorites. It's called Stellaluna, the story of a little bat who gets separated from her mother and is raised with birds. I was so excited to get this book for her because it was one I liked so well. I even had the little Stellaluna bat herself, complete with velcro on her feet that permits her to hang upside down from any available perch.

Unfortunately, Kirienne wasn't into Stellaluna at all. Though I tried several times to get through the entire story with her, she fidgeted and fussed, and we had to move on to other books. I'd even positioned Stellaluna to hang in her sleeping batlike way from the vase sconce above my bedside table. I'd told K that she was a "baby bat." Nothing seemed to pique her interest. But, in true K style, apparently she tucked those little nuggets of information into her brain and then, when nobody was looking, retrieved them. Her strange request in our room was actually for the "Baby Bat" who'd been hanging there during the Stellaluna episode.

We've also learned that, once K learns to say a word, she'll just continue to say it that way, despite the fact that her advancing language skills might permit her to say a word more correctly. One of these words was K's word for "peanut." Though she now says peanut like a pro, she used to say "pea-tin." You could ask her to say "pea" - and she'd say "pea." You could then say "Say, nut," and she'd say "nut." But, try to string the two together, and you'd get "pea-tin" 100% of the time. I'm not sure how "peatin" ever gave way to "peanut," but, by jove, I think she's got it.

Her one last holdout on incorrect word is "passau" - her word for pacifier. We're keeping that one, though, because I hate to refer to it as a "paci," and "pacifier" is a pain to have to say more than once a week. So, "passau" it is. Maybe she's German? ;)