Kids do say the darndest things

Like the jargon of any organized group, families all seem to have their own secret language that only the members share – and it’s the children who bring the unqiue words to us.

The funny little expressions they use as they are learning ways to express themselves are often fleeting, but sometimes they stick. Just ask my uncle, Carlo, who is still called “Caco” as my sister reaches her late twenties. It could have been worse, though I’m not sure that Coco would be much better than Caca.

Since these are so fleeting, I thought I’d take the chance now to share a few of Isabelle’s particularly cute or funny ones:

- greffast: as in “Daddy made me pancakes for greffast”

- dewey: not the decimal system, but rather “dirty”, now largely outgrown, but we heard it a lot during the fastidiously clean phase that preceded her current ‘devil may care’ hygiene rules

- eye-spy down: as in “pineapple eye-spy down cake”

- eye-spy up: the reverse of eye-spy down

- mamote control: oddly, Isabelle could say “télé-commande” in French well before she could say it in English and just recently dropped mamote term

So, readers, share your favourite cute ones with me…