Friday, December 21, 2012

Ryssie and Rivvie

I love the way my nephew speaks. He’s a very typical five year old. He has been the measuring stick by which Olivia has often been compared. Except, we don’t really. She’s watched him do things, figured out how to do them too and life goes on.

Jaxon has always been so perfectly typical that he was actually born on his due date. ON. HIS. DUE. DATE. How does that happen?

But the best thing about this boy is his speech. I hope no one ever corrects his pronunciation of sandwich, which sounds very much like sramrich.

He’s full of energy, like most five year olds. He runs, full speed ahead, from one end of the house to the other.

The minute I walk in the door to my mom’s house he beseeches me, “Please, Tommie, don’t take the girls home. Can they please stay here at Dram’s with me.”

I always reassure him that I’m not going to take the girls right that second but he latches on to the fact that I am, in fact, going to take the girls at some point and then he’ll be stuck with Dram and Pawp all by himself and then he’ll be bored and then he cries.

Poor kid, it’s so hard being five. Really, I’m not even be sarcastic, it can be really hard to be five years old and have all these giant people making all the decisions and the decisions they make are usually wrong, wrong, wrong.

I think I get a kick out of Jaxon’s speech because he is so typical, he’s so unselfconscious about the things he says. He’s so much like Alyssa was at that age. Or maybe she was younger. She was the kid who was speaking in full paragraphs at 15 months. But she also called macaroni ‘macamoni’ for several months. She also said, “Aww, bap.” Which was awesome because she meant “Aww, crap.”

Olivia, on the other hand, seems to be aware of her own difficulties with speech and so she’s very careful to enunciate her words, to speak clearly and not mangle her any of her sounds.

Jaxon, on the other hand, doesn’t care that he calls Alyssa “Ryssie” and Olivia “Rivie.” In his mind, we know who he’s talking about and to and so we should just get over it.

I love this kid so much because of his ‘typicalness’ his sense of self and his unselfconscious love of life. He’s been such an amazing addition to our family and I feel very lucky that my girls have such a great cousin to embrace, learn from and yes, perhaps even teach over the year.

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