Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Adjectives

So my 2 year old has started using adjectives a lot. It's amazing how useful they are. In my creative writing clases and in my technical writing classes adjectives were always kind of looked down on. It turns out that adjectives should be used very sparingly, especially in poetry. I constantly revised my work and threw out adjectives. Adjectives equaled laziness and redundancy.

But now that Soapy can use them life is awesome. I think part of the reason for this is that she uses them honestly. Instead of a garnish to an idea they are the whole idea. In fact, she tens to omit the words they modify which makes them more meaningful. It's not a big truck it's just "Biiiig!"

Here are her favorite ones:

silly, happy, sad, fun, cute, all the colors, big, and, baby (this is the opposite of big).

She likes the colors. Now that she has words for colors she talks about them all the time. She loves horses, but the color of a horse is as important to her as the horsiness of the horse. I think I kind of remember this as a kid, the importance of colors, when it really mattered what color your toothbrush was.

My favorite adjective of hers is "fun." She uses it after an event, kind of like a closer. She'll say, "Fun, Mama?" and I'll nod and she'll laugh and say, "Fun! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

It cracks me up every time. The other day I decided to take them to the park. It was really cold so I bundled them up despite ear-splitting protests of "NO SWEATER" or when I got the baby ready "MY SWEATER!NO BABY!" We finally got to the park but Soapy was too cold to play and ended up crying as I half carried/half dragged her and the car seat back to the car. Soapy took turns whining and crying expect for a few seconds of concentrated silence when she blew her nose on my shoulder. Anyway, I got them buckled in, got in the front and started driving thinking what a miserable idea this had been when suddenly I hear this little, upbeat voice. "Fun,Mama?" I laughed a little incredulously, and I guess she decided that was confirmation because she said, "Yay! Park fun! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" It 's awesome because in her mind, that trip was a wild success, and since the trip was all for her anyway that means the trip was a wild success. This is extremely gratifying. Also, it gives me hope she will have a happy life.

5 comments:

Kathy Haynie said...

I love 2-year-olds. They can be so aggravating (maybe you should teach that to Soapy as an adjective?) but they are also VERY cool people. Yay for Soapy. Good job, mama. :)

Bridget said...

That is hilarious. I am glad for this peek inside a 2-year-old's mind.

Lisa Lou said...

I can just imagine her saying this in her little voice. hehe.

Bryan Lewis said...

wow, soapy is WAY more advanced than the way i imagine her. i guess it's because i imagine her to be like olivia. that's really cool, though. i don't remember ever caring that much about colors. olivia only knows one color: purple. and she says it every time she sees the purple chameleon in one of her books. actually, she might just think that specific chameleon's name is "purple."

Becky said...

Very well written and explained. I love two year olds! And we miss Soapy!