Then you wouldn't have to say that you loved me

Some other Nolan-isms that are popular these days:

-"Noney." This is what Nolan calls himself when he refers to himself out loud, as he does frequently.* Sometimes we call him Noney as well - I was at a playground last week (on the one really nice day we had before the goddamn blizzard hit us) and there was a little boy with his grandmother, and I guess he calls her "Nonney," so he kept looking at me funny when I called out "Noney!" to Nolan. At first I thought his name might actually be Noney, and I was thinking, "Is that actually a real name someone might name their kid?" until I realized what was going on.

(I usually try to call myself "Mama" or "Mommy" when talking to/with him, and I try to call him "Nolan" (or "Noney") as much as possible. The whole I/You pronoun thing is apparently very confusing for little kids. Who wouldn't be confused? Try explaining it out loud to someone else - "When I say 'I,' I'm talking about me, and when I say 'you,' I'm talking about you. But when you say 'I,' you're talking about you, and when you say 'you,' you're talking about me." Yeah. Clear as a bell. It gets old, constantly saying, "Give that to Mama," or "Let's find Nolan's shoes," but I think it helps him a lot, clarity-wise.)

*When Nolan was a newborn and we told one woman his name, she told us this great story from when her son was young. He had a friend named Nolan, but he couldn't say the "l" sound very well, so whenever he talked about the friend, he called him "Nowun." This led to such Who's-On-First conversations as: "Who did you play with today?" "Nowun." "No one? But who's that little boy?" "That's Nowun!" and so on.

-"Gake o wick" This is what Nolan calls Jake, one of our cats. A long time ago when I worked at HBO, my boss would refer to someone she didn't get along with as a "jerkowitz," which I adopted into "Jakeowitz" for Jake. "Gake o wick" is Nolan's take on Jakeowitz.

-"A-lowa" Our other cat, Lola. For some words, Nolan can't just start with the consonant, he has to put a little schwa syllable in there at the beginning. It makes him sound like a small Italian tourist. When he's just woken up or gotten hurt and is crying for me, he always says, "A-mama! A-mama!" I'm still waiting for "Molto bene, that's a-nice a-donut."

-"Huggle" When I'm holding Nolan and comforting him, I usually call it a "snuggle." As in, "Ooh, that looked like it hurt. Do you need a snuggle?" The other night while I was getting him in his PJs, Nolan put his arms out to me and said, "Huggle." Which just killed me, it was so cute. He has a hard time with the "s" sound, it seems, so he usually substitutes an "h" instead. "Hock" instead of "sock," "uh-het" instead of "upset." This leads to some confusion occasionally - he'll say something like "hide uck," and I wonder if he's going to hide the truck or if the truck is on its side.

-"Nunnel" What Nolan calls a tunnel. (There are LOTS of tunnels at Gymboree, so he has plenty of opportunities to use this word.) Not sure why he substitutes the "n" for the "t," because he can say the "t" sound in other words.

Sometimes I wonder if it's a bad thing that I can understand him so well, because then he doesn't have to try harder to pronounce words correctly and make himself understood. He still says "Gah" for "star," even though I'm sure he could probably get quite a bit closer to the actual pronunciation if he wanted to. I think that's the case with "tunnel," too. I know what he means when he says it, and I'm usually around to translate for him, so he doesn't have to work at it.

I don't know. I guess I need some sort of "summing up" paragraph here, but I can't think of anything and I just wanted to list more of Nolan's phrases anyway. Thptpth.

Thanks for reading.