In keeping with the theme of Maritn’s use of language, I thought would survey his top ten most commonly used language constructions for conveying frustration:

1. “BAH!”
2. “I don’t like that plan.” or “That is not my plan.”
3. “What is going on with you guys?” (One of many phrases that Martin has heard from one of his parents and turned around to use against us.)
4. “I’m very very mad!”
5. “Go Away!” (Usually followed by, “I need my space.”)
6. “I wanted to be FIRST. Hmph!”
7. “But I can do it ALL. BY. MYSEEEELLFFF.”
8. Hitting the nearest person, animal or object.
9. “You did [X] and I do not like that because I do not like [X].”
10. (random sniffing and grunts to convey a mixture of anger & saddness)

Several of these are often used in combination and the order is somewhat random though “BAH!” tends to come first.

I’m not suggesting that any of these are unique to our child and in fact many of the key terms used, particularly “space” and “plan”, come from his preschool’s lexicon.

Martin’s on his first of two swimming trips of the day. He’s in the wading pool with dad now and we head to the community center for mom & me lessons tonight. He loves the water and is convinced he’s already an expert with nothing left to learn. We aren’t quite as sure he’s ready for solo diving board adventures as he is!

This one trip emphasized the need for light rail before we even made it to the ribbon cutting ceremony.

1. We walked over a bus top and arrived 10 minutes earlier to take the 6:26am south bound 358 bus. It never showed up. Instead we got on the 6:41am bus that, thankfully, did arrive on time.
2. Arriving at Union station at 7am (exactly when we SoundTransit asked us to be there), we rushed through to find the shuttle bus that would take us to the ribbon cutting ceremony at Mt. Baker station.
3. The shuttle bus got lost and nearly ended up stuck in a neighborhood with small streets when it tried to turn around.

Never-the-less we did make it in time to listen to some back-patting speeches and then board the first trains open to the public. We had an option of taking a north-bound (Downtown Seattle) or south-bound (Tukwila) train, and I had decided earlier in the week that I wanted to ride to the south terminus and then back to downtown. The entire trip was great: the stations, tracks, & trains appear to be well built.

One thing that dawned on my wife and I during the speeches was that our son would never know a Seattle without light rail. Additionally, as he reaches voting age a number of SoundTransit Link extensions to the existing system will be finished and Seattle will have to vote on when & where to continue this great project — so I hope today will instill a bit of excitement about mass transit for him. Hopefully when he mails in his future voting ballot, he’ll remember his cranky old father reminding him that “it wasn’t always this easy, you use to have to take 3 buses to get from there to here.”

A new favorite of ours is:

Pick me down

A variation of “pick me up” of course. Awesome.

Also interesting is his use of:

sit on my lap

What he really means is, “Let me sit on your lap”.

Sometimes it doesn’t work.

I want not go outside

moments later…

I not want go outside

Besides testing his world with language, Martin has many phrases (often used in a socially unacceptable ways) that tend to get a chuckle.

We’ll often be on a busy bus headed home from a long day when Martin will point at someone and say:

I want that guy get off bus.

He enjoys when people get off the bus because the door opens and the floor/ceiling lights come on. Still, these moments make you blush. Last week he at least asked someone to sit next to us.

Along the “that guy” lines, there are a number of inquisitive phrases he uses with either males or females. The pattern is usually: (WH-word) "that guy" (verb)?

What that guy do/doing?
Where that guy go/going?

Martin also has a pretty direct approach to asking for stuff:

Hey mommy/daddy read this!
Hey mommy/daddy eat this!
Hey mommy/daddy play trains in my room!

It is a fun time to be a parent.