Mustard Truck

Remember the game of 'telephone' you played as a kid, where you whisper something to someone, and they whisper it to someone else, and by the time you get to the end of the circle it's unrecognizable? Talking to a 3-year-old is like that, except they're the whole rest of the circle.

There are different variations on the theme. Some are just inability to pronounce things (pasketti [spaghetti], chawt-lick [chocolate], etc.) Another is replacement of one phrase with another that sounds similar, but is comically incorrect. Mind you, this happens with all of us--like mis-hearing Jimi Hendrix's "'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky!" as "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy!" and so on (another friend of ours misinterpreted the Ramones' "I wanna be sedated" as "I wanna piece of danish" for years, with encouragement from her older siblings).

Alana has several of these that we enjoy:
Her friend, Tommy, has a bit of an obsession with trucks; construction trucks, big rigs, you name it. The other day, we were getting out of our car and Alana points to the pick-up truck next to ours and says, "Look, it's a mustard truck!"

Hunh?

She says, "Just like Tommy's mustard truck!"

After wracking our brains, we finally realize that she's saying 'monster truck'. *LOL*

She also has a "barbeque doll" (you've all seen these...statuesque figure with narrow waist, boyfriend Ken, etc.)

And, finally, when we're all in the mood for french fries she asks if we can go to "Old McDonald's".

Her own language

Sometimes, we have trouble understanding Alana because her diction isn't quite perfect (or she's speaking in Taiwanese which makes it tricky for Keith). Other times, it's because she's made a whole new language of her own...

Every morning, Keith heads off to work. Every morning, Alana faithfully waves goodbye from the window, calling out, "Aladdas in the biddas! Don't forget your piddas!" ... Every morning.

When we finally asked her what that meant, she shrugged and said, "Goodbye."

That's our reflection, silly!

One day, we all went out to a restaurant. The ceiling was mirrored in the entrance area. Keith was looking up with Alana and asked, "How can we be up there when we're already down here?" Alana looked at him like he had cracked his head and said, "That's just our reflection, silly!"

Baby Kisses

AC was so happy when Alexander, at a little under three months, would open his mouth and try to air kiss her when she kissed his face. “Look at him imitating us!”, we thought. “What a clever little boy!” Finally, one day, when she kissed him, he whipped his head around, locked onto her lower lip and started sucking away with an effort that would impress the whole Oreck/Dyson/Hoover crowd. Which isn’t to say he isn’t clever, but he sure does like to EAT.

Psst…she didn’t really cut my hair, Mommy!

Alana, her Mom and her A-ma went to Linh’s for haircuts. Linh cut Mom’s hair, then A-ma’s hair. Alana’s hair had been trimmed recently, so she didn’t really need it cut. When she asked if she was going to get a haircut, A-ma didn't have the heart to say no so she asked Linh in a whisper to just pretend to cut it.

Linh spritzed her hair with water, snipped the air around Alana’s head, and brushed her hair, then asked if Alana liked it. Alana just looked at her strangely, then turned to her mother and said in a whisper, “Mommy, she didn’t really cut my hair!”

Mmmm….Eye of Newt!

At a restaurant, family friend Mark turned to Alana and said, “What are you going to have? Want some Eye of Newt?” Alana thought about it for a moment, then said, “OK, sure.” Mark smirked and gave her the maraschino cherry from his drink, sans stem. Alana said “Thanks,” popped it into her mouth, and ate it. “So Alana,” I said, “what does Eye of Newt taste like?” She looked at me with a little smile, and said “Ummm. It tastes like cherry.”

My favorite part...

We just spent last week out in Whistler, BC with my whole family. Alana got to do a lot of sightseeing, play in a really cool playground, see a bear pretty close up, and ride in a Hummer. When asked what her favorite part of the week was though, she informed us that it was jumping in the puddles with her grandfather.

Where is me?

In an effort to convince Alana that she needed to have her seatbelt tightened, we told her that she would squirt out if there was too much slack. She looked at us thoughtfully for a moment and then said, "Then you would be looking around like, 'Where is me?'" After laughing hysterically for a minute or so, we finally managed to tell her she was right.

Little Buddy

Alana gets along fabulously with her little brother. She started calling him 'My Darling' when he was first born but has now settled on "Alexander" or "Little Buddy".

It's great to be a kid!

So Alana turns to me today and says "It's great to be a kid!". I said, "Oh really?" She replies with "Yeah, and sometimes, it's great to be a girl." *LOL* I had to tell her that she might want to reconsider that since she was going to be a girl the rest of her life but a kid for only part of it.