Me love you long time.

Parents have lots of jobs to do when it comes to rearing their children. You have to teach them to poop in the potty, not to poop in the plant, not smear oatmeal all over themselves and the dog, how to properly strike a soccer ball so that it bends just a bit around the outstretched arms of a diving goal keeper and into the upper corner of the goal, and how to talk. Sometimes little things that we do can affect how our little offspring begin the process of learning, but often these aren't visible to the rest of the world. Not so with the process of learning how to talk.

For example, when Ryan was young he wasn't very specific when it came to his desires. A whine could mean anything, and even if he was pointing in the general direction of whatever it was that he wanted, it was often a guessing game to determine what, exactly, he wanted.

"You want this?" we would ask holding up a cup. Ryan would shake his head.

"How about this?" as we held aloft one of his many Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Again with the head shake.

"This?" More shaking.

This could go on for many minutes until we finally picked up on the one thing in the car that he was looking for. As a result, he spent several months thinking that everything in the world was called "this". Sippy cup, train, stuffed animal, goldfish crackers, it didn't matter. His misunderstanding led to him simply pointing at anything and saying, "This," which wasn't much of an improvement on the point-and-whine system we were used to. It was still a guessing game ("This?"..."How about this?") but now he was using a word instead of a sound.

We have recently run into a similar issue with Ethan, but it doesn't seem to be so innocuous. He doesn't call everything "This" like his brother did, and in fact he is fairly good at knowing the names for things he wants. He might use his own particular version of the word but at least most things have their own sound. For example, "Peng" is his penguin, "juice" refers to any liquid that is not milk or water, and "weenie" is Tortellini, his favorite dinner.

He is also remarkably good at delineating when something belongs to him, and when it belongs to someone else. "Ethans juice" is clearly his juice, while "Ryan cookies" are Ryan's cookies but with the caveat that if Ethan wants them he should be entitled to them.

One issue that he is having, however, is telling the difference between "me" and "you". This is understandable given that whenever he wants something, like a book read to him, we ask him "Do you want me to read to you?" He now comes up to me and says "Read book to you," which means "Read the book to me". We are trying to get him to use the proper word, but he is still only 2 and there is plenty of time.

All of these little errors can lead, however, to a big misunderstanding. This afternoon, for example, I was preparing tortellini for his lunch, and he wanted to make sure that everyone knew that it was his tortellini. He also made sure to throw in the fact that he wanted his tortellini as soon as possible. All of these ideas are not remarkable, but today at lunch when they all came out of Ethan's mouth, it sounded like this:

"You want Ethan's weenie now?"

To me, this sentence simply means that he wants his lunch right away, but a poor babysitter is going to think that she is being propositioned by a two-year old.

We'll just have to make sure that tortellini is not on the menu when Jen and I go out before dinner.