Sultanas under the carseat

Antigone, like many other two-year-olds, has a repertoire of words, phrases and expressions that she’s made her own. Here, briefly, is an arbitrary selection:

• Lady and the Trampoline (her name for Lady and the Tramp, the 1955 Disney Animated Film)*
• Pasghetti (what child doesn’t pronounce Spaghetti this way? Oddly, she begain saying it properly, and it morphed into this)
• Bops (her name for Patrice’s breasts, also giving rise to the related gerund ‘bopping’ from the verb ‘to bop’. Can also be found in the form ‘to have bops’, ie. to breastfeed)
• Balounce (said to rhyme with ‘flounce’. Her musical way of saying ‘balance’, as in ‘I’m balouncing on this’)
• Nani (a Greek baby word for sleep, is in ‘to have a nani’)
• Nuts for squirrels (Eucalypt gumnuts, or pebbles and stones, gathered for imaginary ’squirrels’ whenever we go for a walk)
• Salad for squirrels (dry and fresh leaves. See entry above)
• Stir fry! (always said with emphasis and excitement. Any hokkien-noodle based stir fry dish)
• Noodles (alternately, flat or round wheat-noodles, or pasta. We had to sell pasta to her as noodles because she liked the latter but would vehemently reject the former if offered under its proper name)
• Shushi (Sushi; the Japanese style of vinegared rice, topped with different ingredients. Her all-time favourite food, alongside pizza)
• I’ve got everything I need (uttered after gathering a full complement of something: bath toys, blocks, soft toys, dolls. Basically involves filling her arms with a vast array of objects and advancing towards you with this phrase, dropping the odd thing as she comes)
• You need a toy, ….. (said to dolls being put to bed. They need a toy to help them feel safe and comfortable in bed, just as she does)
• Deco-ashun (decoration, often Christmas decorations)
• Potashun (invitation, particularly birthday invitations)
• Fufluns (This one has a long, long history. In Greek, a light is called a ‘foss’, which is also the word for candle, and a baby game for turning the lights on is to blow at them — with an adult standing by to flick the switch at the exact moment the child blows. For a long time, Tiggy just blew, ‘fwuuu’ at the lights as I turned them on, but I gradually started to say ‘Fufluns’ instead, and so did she. Fufluns is the vaguely ridiculous Etruscan, pre-Roman name for Bacchus or Dionysos — or at least a God like them into whose divine portfolios his attributes were collapsed, much as some of Dionysos’ later ended up in Jesus Christ’s profile. I find it more than a little funny that Tiggy employs the name of a forgotten Etruscan God to turn on the lights)

I am sure there will be more to add to this…

* Early August: This has now changed. It’s just plain old Lady and the Tramp.