That pesky "R"

A couple of fun stories....

Meredith has always been a fan of picking up little rocks out of our landscaping. Quite a while ago, when she was just starting to walk on her own, we would go outside for a walk and she would pick up a rock and carry it in one hand for the whole walk (while she held my hand with her other one). A couple months ago she started saying the word "walk," which was really helpful if I was carrying her around somewhere and she wanted to get down and walk. She said "walk" yesterday when we were coming back inside after being in the car. Seemed like a strange time to say she wanted to walk (she was already walking)....then I turned around and watched her pick up two rocks from the landscaping. Then she looked at me and said "Walk." Aha...she was not saying walk. She was saying "rock." They just sound identical :)

Yesterday we were at Walgreens and Meredith was pointing out a bunch of helium balloons to me. Usually she would say "boomboom" -- that's always been her word for "balloon." Yesterday, she was pointing and saying "hot." I mentioned in an earlier post that she knows the meaning of the word "hot." Knowing this, I tried to figure out what was "hot" about the balloons. We had never talked about hot air balloons, so that wasn't it. So we had the usual type of conversation:

Meredith: "Hot!"
Mommy: "Do you see balloons?"
Meredith: "Hot!"
Mommy: "Honey, what is hot? I see balloons. Do you see balloons?"
Meredith: "Hot!"

At this point Meredith was pointing to a specific balloon. I looked up at it. Did it have a picture of a fire or a sun on it? Was there something that reminded her of heat? No. It was a heart-shaped balloon. Heart. Take out the "R" and you've got something like "hot"! So I said "Oh! Is that balloon shaped like a heart?" This was, as usual, followed by the excited happy sound of a little girl who had once again, with great persistence, made herself understood. What a trooper.