Polly Pockets and Play-doh ---> gifts you give to children when you want to really torture their parents. Like stabbing them and twisting the knife. Well, actually the twisting is when you get the little Polly Pockets accessories that no way in hell can go on her body and in the same bag are the "tools" for Play-doh that only gets the Play-doh stuck in them and then hardens and then can be found for years throughout your house.

Aww...hilarious...I have a pretty good combo myself...My fiance is Brazilian and she pronounces "towel" like "tower" and "what is it?" like "What it is?" which is great because we have a japanese homestay and I've seen his eyebrows raise up with big ??? on more than one occasion...
Awesome post and freezer finish!
PAPA

Re: the picture "Blurbodoocery" from today -- When I saw just the eye and before I clicked on it to see the whole picture, I thought to myself, oh, good, another picture of Leta. Well, I wasn't disappointed that it wasn't because it's a loverly pic of the two of you... and Jon's eye is identical, in my view, to his daughter's!

Glue the shoes on the Polly Pocket's feet and preferably when Leta is not around, then you have no explaining to do. Tell Jon that speaking with an accent is considered sexy, not annoying.

Here in Maryland, it's "WAH-ter" vs. "Wudder". Some of my parents most memorable "discussions" stemmed from her Jersey girl insistence on "Wudder". It still makes me happy when people say it that way. Tell Jon if he doesn't quit it, Leta will say "Sawl" till she's 92 just to irk her Daddy. Cause that's what girls do.:)

My daughter is not to the Polly Pocket stage yet, thank goodness, she's still into My Little Ponies. My son however, is constantly correcting me, the grammar Nazi, because I say "Cray-un" and "But-ten" for button. But he has to give me a quarter from his allowance every time he says "ain't"! Yeah, I'm mean, but he's 10 and I despise "ain't" almost as much as I hate hearing grown adults saying "I seen it".

It is dangerous to raise a child in Utah. So maybe they won't get shot on the way to school, but they will say mell instead of mail and sawl instead of saw and they will sluff and go wading in a crick and ever so much more.

We had clambered up the cliff from the beach one afternoon when my daughter was 3yrs old and she noticed she had lost a barbie shoe. All hell broke loose and nothing would do except my husband clambered back down the cliff to search(!) the beach for this miniscule shoe! I will never forget his triumphant face as he appeared with it 20minutes later! Stuff of legends!

Quoting from yesterday: "by the orderly way you've taken to organizing our cocaine in straight, easily-snortable lines". As a mother of an addicted son, I want to say that I hate these kinds of statements thrown out there just in an attempt to be humorous. IT AIN'T FUNNY. Please rethink the use of them.

There appear to be few regional differences among 3 and 4 year old girls however - my older daughter is 3 1/2 and we live in Canada and our house is infested with polly pockets and barbies and princesses and all things pink. Today I caught the girl pretending to put on lipstick and I don't even wear lipstick. Last time we lost a polly pocket shoe my husband found it in the (then 12 month old) baby's mouth. We couldn't figure out why the baby was rejecting her bottle - turned out she'd been gnawing on a polly pocket shoe for TWO HOURS. Sigh...we then had to banish all things polly pocket to girl no.1's bedroom as whenever girl no.2 sees any polly pocket accessories, she promptly tries to eat them. I am almost tempted to chew one myself, just to test it for tastiness, but have thus far resisted.

Here's some bullets for you:

- My sister always added some extra L's to words when she was growing up. 'Bra' sounded like 'brawl' for example. The one that always made me crazy was 'concreek' which should have been 'concrete.' She's 20 now and I swear she still slips says 'concreek' on occasion just to drive me batty.

- Your June masthead is fantastic.

and - My top three shows ever are Sigur Ros, Radiohead and Sufjan. You ever seen Sufjan Stevens live? Pretty fantastic show. Since our top two are the same, I can only assume that you'd enjoy my top three, as well.

did you see the reference one Heather Armstrong in US News this week? felt like i was reading about friend, i was so excited to see it.

I think *I* am a little in love with your husband.

Also, I'm glad to hear I'm not the only parent who is not only amused but even a little proud of my 3-year-old's proper swearing abilities. ("Oh, shit, we forgot my cup!" he says.)

Maybe Leta was trying to add a y'all to the end? That's how we speak "down home," as my mother insists on calling the part of Appalachia my family lived originally.
I enjoy driving my east coast husband crazy because I hear absolutely no difference in the pronunciation between the words "pen" and "pin." I still say there isn't one.

PS. Oh, I just have to tell you that the Captcha words I have to fill in are "modest hearts." Did you let a Mormom hymn determine them or something?

When I was little, all my Barbies came without shoes. I didn't even know Barbies were supposed to have shoes, and that's how my mom never had to help me look for them. Anyway, I'm from KY, so it made sense.

So, next time Leta gets a new Polly Pocket doll, just tell her it's Shoeless Yokel Polly. Problem solved. :)

Ya'll is one OR more.

Nope. Not surprised at all!

For some reason my son pronounces crayon as 'crown', also. Maybe he gets it from the Texas side of the family that pronounces water as war-ter? Who knows? Anyway, as long as you pronounce pecan as puh-caan and not pee-can, you're alright.

You are alright, aren't you? ;)

I'll bet when you put his underwear in the freezer, you'll open it up and find those stupid Polly Pocket shoes!

hahaha.

hysterical.

oh and i saw this and thought of you.

seriously--- if you read these--- check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6ylxWcwkUM

(has your child been tested for--- cooties?)

My dad was always the try-to-make-the-young-children-pronounce-words-correctly guy and it's basically a losing battle. All you can do is model proper pronounciation and grammar in your dealings with each other and the child.

I remember one terrible afternoon where my father tried to get my sister to pronouce "truck" correctly. She said, "Kruck." She couldn't hear the difference because she was a small child. I was maybe 6 and she was 4. I remember him saying, "Truck!" and she replied, "Kruck!" And he said, "Tuh-ruck!" and she replied, "Kah-ruck!" And he said, "TRUCK!" and she replied, "KRUCK!"

I remember wanted to make him stop. She just couldn't say her Ts at all. And before long she was crying because he wouldn't leave it alone.

My niece said a number of words incorrectly and he tried to correct her too. She also didn't take kindly to it. I think it's a problem in certain kinds of people that they can't just let the children develop language at their own pace.

But I'll tell you what: I'd pay real money to hear my niece say caminal (for camel) and planno (for piano) and she-she and shy-shies (for chicken and french fries) any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

They grow up so fast. Jon's going to miss Leta saying "sawl" before he knows it.

Okay, Polly Pocket shoes, as well as Barbie ones, are made to suck up in the vacuum. It is like the immediate gratification you feel power washing, nothing beats it. I know it sounds sad, but it is true.

As for the pronunciation of Crayon and Cereal, according to my husband I'm guilty of severe mutilation, it must be my rural Virginia upbringing. However, I think he sounds funny. I only correct my daughter when she says "funner", which apparently is now in the dictionary...my god, or when they end a sentence with "at". My classic response to the "at" ending is "between the a and the t!" Shit, I sound so much like my mother and I never wanted that to happen. Wait, I prayed for that not to happen. I guess my prayers would've worked if I believed in God, bummer!

This is probably one of the funniest things I've read in a long time!

polly pockets. my daughters love them. the best part is that i have to dress them. their tiny fingers can't get all the plastic clothes on! my girlfriend and i decided we were going to open up a one piece toy store. that's right. anything you bought would only be one piece and big enough not to get lost. both of us are fans of the vacuum to get rid of unwanted small toy objects!