An Update On The Boy

I am pleased to announce that after much intensive family coaching, The Boy has started to talk in sentences. They are two or three word sentences, mind you, but we are happy and relieved nonetheless.

However, he still has a problem with some consonant combinations. For example, anything that starts with an 's' seems to stump him. His solution is to drop off the offending 's' and pronounce the rest of the word. So shoe becomes 'hoo', sleep becomes 'eep' and so forth. This was not a problem for us until the Maytag repairman came to visit.

On that fateful night, our refrigerator was the repairman's last call of the day. The Princess and Grandma were at church doing some kind of grandparent/grandkid thing, so it was just me, the SO and The Boy in the house. We had tried to wait on dinner until after the guy was finished, but he was having a tricky time getting the requisite part installed, and was still beavering away at the fridge a good hour after he arrived. We decided that we couldn't hold up The Boy's feeding time any longer and apologetically sat down to eat.

As we sat in awkward silence, the boy decided he wanted a spoon.

"Poon!" he shouted. "Poon poon poon!" The SO and I grimaced at each other. Around these parts the word 'poon' has a rather raunchy meaning.

I quickly handed him a spoon, which he received with delight, and began to sing, "Poon, poon, poon, poon, poon, poon, poon, ....."

I glanced at the repairman, who was very manfully trying not to laugh out loud. His shoulders were shaking but he made not a sound.

"Dude!" interrupted the SO. "Ssssspoon. It has an 's' in it. Poon is something else."

The repairman snorted.

"Say it. Ssssspooon. Ssssssspoon. Say 'ssssss' like Daddy", encouraged the SO.

"Sssssss" said the boy.

"Good! Now say sssssspoooon."

"Poooooon!" repeated the Boy.

The repairman stopped working for a second and made a noise that sounded like an agitated seal's bark crossed with a stifled snicker.

The SO sat back in his chair and shrugged his shoulders in a "oh well, what can you do?" fashion. He and the repairman shared a meaningful look that spoke volumes about the way the male mind works. He smiled proudly at him and said, "That's my boy!"