Names and Anya-nese

Anya, our dynamic two-year old is revolutionizing our family's English. This new dialect we have fondly termed Anya-nese. We try to resist using "baby words" in an attempt to teach our kids to speak properly but Anya-nese is hard to resist. She has changed Talmage's name to Talby and all of us call him that at least 50% of the time (she does 100%). Talmage even calls himself that when he's talking to her. Next she has named Wheat Thins "daddy crackers" and we all call it that. The other day we were writing a grocery list and Aaron reminded me that we needed more "daddy crackers". "Ani do it" is another standard phrase. Though when I say it, i is an exasperated "Ok, Ani do it" because she has been yelling "No Ani do it, No Ani do it" at me. You gotta love two-year old independence. Other words that we have resisted so far are "wady" (water), "bookoo" (Blues Clues), "puter" (computer), "dipee" (diaper) and "tum ni" (family night). But she did succeed in getting us to call potty "pa wee".

Aside from regular words we all have new names too. Talmage, I have already mentioned is Talby, and Anya is Ani. Lately she has been into the full name thing and was mixing up her name Anya Mae Kay to be Ani Kay Mae. We straightened that out by teaching her that all of our names end in Kay. So now we are Ani Mae Kay, Talby A'n (Aaron) Kay, Daddy A'n Kay, and Mommy A'n Kay. The Aaron part works because that really is Talmage's middle name and Aaron's first but I have no Aaron in my name. The kids are both baffled by the idea that I would be called any thing but Mommy or occasionally Dear. In fact Talmage was calling me "Mommy Dear Kay" last night to teach Anya that my name isn't Mommy Aaron Kay. What a little helper!