Things Franklin used to say

I first met my nephew Franklin on December 5, 2009, when he was not quite two. I met him at the airport and he was really shy. But he quickly warmed up. In the car on the way home, he was singing the "Elmo's World" theme song. For the next month, I heard him sing that song so much that it was more like his own theme song. The original song says, "That's Elmo's World," but he would sing it, "Maw, mawmo, maa!" The tune was right on, although the last note was a little flat. He would hold out the last note dramatically, and sometimes he would shake his head while he sang it. "Mawmo" was how he said Elmo, although a video indicates that prior to that time he did know how to say "Elmo" without the initial m.

He didn't say very many words, but he did learn my name was Mark, and he liked me. I remember one day I came home from Christmas shopping and he excitedly told his mom that I had come home (using just the word "Mark"). He inherited Preston's dramatic "Uh uh" when he didn't want something, and he would yell it. Once I was playing Minesweeper and we were talking about the bombs; he thought we  were talking about his "bum." He was very good at humming and he would often hum "Jingle Bells."

The next time I saw him was a year later, at Christmastime in 2010, when he was not quite three. I got him a toy stingray, and he knew what it was and could say "stingray." I think he even knew the difference between whales and dolphins.

I had often heard about the linguistic phenomena of overextension and underextension. I had witnessed overextension from Allie (for example, when she would say "bunny" to refer to all small mammals), but I had never seen underextension. But I think Franklin had some. He has a tendency toward physical violence, so on that trip he would hit me, and I would say, "No hitting!" He would say, "I not hit you, I punch you." I think that's underextension because he didn't think that punching was a kind of hitting.

My brother likes to play a game with his kids called "I'm thinking of an animal" where you think of an animal and everyone else has to guess it. On December 27, we were going to a store and playing that game, and we learned how Franklin played. When it was his turn, he would say, "I'm thinking of an animal." Preston said, "Is it an alligator?" Franklin said, "Uh huh!" No matter what Preston would say, he would always be correct. Franklin apparently didn't understand the concept of thinking of his own animal.

Here's a video I took of him playing with the dartboard my sister got them for Christmas. You can hear him say "I break it again," "Can you help," and "I did it!"

Then another year passed, and suddenly Franklin was really shy, even though he really warmed up to me in 2009 and 2010. They came and visited for New Year's in 2011/2012. On the way home from the airport, he was talking about zombies (from the Plants vs. Zombies game), but I really can't recall him saying much else that time.

Then they came out for a day in June 2012. The only thing I remember him saying at that time was "Uncle Mark, do you like Doctah Peppah?"

Then I visited in August last year, and I observed a strange speech phenomenon, one that he still does, even though he's gone to speech classes. Like many kids, he says his r's and l's as w's. But peculiarly, if there is a consonant cluster with one of those letters, he says it as an f. "Try" is "fy," "play" is "fay," "slow" is "fow," "strong" is "fong," "Quin" is "Fin," "tree" is "fee," "swim" is "fim," and so on. The only exception I can think of is "Preston," which he says as "Peston." It's weird, because I know that most of the time he can say the first consonant. This sometimes causes problems: Once he was biking, and I told him he couldn't bike far away because I had to supervise Baby and Baby went slow. He said, "What if I bike fowly?" I said, "You bike fully?" He said, "No, fowly." He meant slowly. Even though he couldn't say the consonants, I was impressed with his adverb use. Although he can't get the phonology down, I think Franklin's done really well with syntax and semantics.

One day they were creating their own Angry Birds games with clay, and Franklin said "bird" without an r, just like they would in England. I can't transcribe it because you wouldn't be able to understand how he said it.

We visited last Christmas, and he said some really R-rated things. He doesn't say those as much now, although he still says some inappropriate things, but they aren't as bad as they were.

Then we just barely visited them again. He still says the consonant clusters as f's. I also noticed he says "tary" instead of "scary." Next time I see him, I'll have to observe the conditions under which he says t. Hopefully, however, his language will be better sorted out by then. Sometimes when he would say "fay," I would try to get him to say it "play." He would say "pway," which is pretty acceptable for a five-year-old. I know he can say the consonants, but I don't know why he doesn't.

Once we were talking about my mom's children and grandchildren. My mom said, "I won't have any more grandchildren until Mark has kids." Franklin said, "But Uncle Mark is not a woman!"

My sister and mom think they are hilarious when they tell the joke that goes, "Ask me if I'm a tree." "Are you a tree?" "No!" Yes, that really is the whole joke. Well, Franklin started making his own variations on that joke using explanations as to why he's not a tree or whatever. Sometimes these explanations are logical, sometimes they're just absurd. For example:
"Ask me if I'm a fee [tree]."
"Are you a tree?"
"No, because fees don't have underwear!"

"Ask me if I'm a gumball machine."
"Are you a gumball machine?"
"No, because gumball machines are aliens!"

Then on our way to the La Brea tar pits, he came up with this one--even though he didn't even know what a tar pit is:
"Ask me if I'm a tar pit."
"Are you a tar pit?"
"No, because I don't have big armpits!"
That made my mom and sister laugh really hard, so Franklin got the impression that he had really created a clever joke, so he kept telling it over and over. He thought it was clever because armpit and tar pit rhyme.

Sadly, this is all I can remember now. This is a result of me not seeing him very often and of him being very shy.

Things Preston used to say

Last week's memory post was about things my niece, Allie, used to say. This time I'm going to remember the language of my oldest nephew, Preston Xiang-an, who is eight (he'll turn nine in November).

Preston has had unique language environments. He grew up in a bilingual house, with English and Chinese. He did spend a lot of time in Taiwan, although most of his time has been in the USA.

Preston lived with us from the time he was a baby. One of the earliest language things I can remember is when he was one. He randomly stopped one day, bowed his head, crossed his arms, and said some gibberish words. It was his imitation of praying.

At sixteen months, he and his parents went to Taiwan for a few months. When they came back three months later, in June 2006, he had inherited some Chinese. Although I wasn't there, apparently one of those early days when they had come back my mom went to a store and brought him. He kept asking for something, but it was Chinese and they didn't understand. Then he saw some drinks and reacted to them. He was really thirsty and was asking for water in Chinese.

However, most of the time he spoke his own language. His gestures and intonations indicated that he knew exactly what he was saying--but it wasn't English or Chinese. He would even make sounds that I cannot imitate. It was really funny.

The only word I could decipher from his language was "ba." That referred to candy or other sweet things. We had a dish of leftover Valentine candy (and I mean really leftover, like four or more months) sitting on top of a shelf. He knew it was there, and he would sometimes point to it and say "ba! ba!" I think he also called Otter Pops "ba," so I wondered if it came from "pop" and he overextended it to everything sweet. But I really don't know.

He did know some words, like ball. I think that at that point he actually knew more Chinese words than English words.

One interesting phrase he inherited was "I'm done," which he said as "I duh," with the vowel nasalized. He used this not to mean "I'm done" but rather to mean "that's enough" or "I'm unhappy." So if, for example, I were spinning him and it got too fast, he would say, "I duh!" It was an interesting phrase in itself, but it was especially interesting because he actually inherited it from Allie. I think those are the only two kids who would ever use "I'm done" to mean what they meant.

He also liked Baby Einstein videos, which he called "Baby dah," with the vowel nasalized. (He said it the way you would pronounce din in French.) He also inherited this from Allie, who called them "Baby Stein." "Baby dah" was his attempt at saying "Baby Stein." 

Ya-ping was teaching him to say please in Chinese, which sounds something like "bye toe" if you were to terribly anglicize it. He would say "bye boe." Whenever he saw an airplane in the sky, he would wave and say, "bye bye!" in a cute high-pitched voice.

They moved to Nashville in August 2006, and Ya-ping and Preston came and visited the following November. At that time he called me "Marsh."

In April 2007, we went to Nashville. One day we went to a park that had a big train sitting in it. If we touched it, he would get really mad and yell "Nooo!" at us.

Ya-ping said that it was because she told him it was dangerous to play by train tracks, so he associated trains with naughtiness. (I'm not sure why he changed his mind to touch the train in this picture.)

Here is a video from that summer. I wasn't there for this, but it's a good illustration of his very own language. You can understand him say "Hello" and "yeah," and there may be some Chinese in there, but most of it is his own language.
In August 2007, they came out to visit, but since I was working swing shift at Walmart, I didn't get to spend much time with him. We went camping one day, and he was standing on the edge of a firepit (with no fire in it) and going, "Whoa, whoa!" as if he were falling in--but he wasn't. It was really funny. On that same trip, he got annoyed with me protecting him from doing "fun" things, so he would blow raspberries at me.

He would keep saying, "I want to go home." Ya-ping told me he would say that even when he was at home.

Since I barely got to see him on that visit, I went out to Nashville in November 2007, right before I left on my mission and right when he was turning three. When I walked into the house, the first thing he said was, "Grandma?" Not because he thought I was Grandma, but because he knew that I was always with her.

He was really funny that trip. He used the phrase "talk to me" to mean chastise or reprove. Once in the car I told him he needed to do something, and he said sadly to his parents, "Shu-shu talk to me!" (Shu-shu was Chinese for "uncle.") When Ya-ping would chastise David, he would say, "Mommy! Don't talk to Ba-ba!" (I know that Mommy" is not the proper spelling for the Chinese term, but it's close enough for my purposes.) On another occasion I was playing with him and I put a coin on my forehead. He thought that was funny, so he started putting it all over his face. When he put it in his mouth, I got serious and told him he couldn't put it in his mouth. He stormed out and apparently told Ya-ping that I had talked to him.

He had watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which Mike Teavee says "Die! Die! Die!" when playing video games. He inherited this "Die!" from the movie. Once he was watching a Land Before Time movie, and the mean dinosaurs came on. He said, "Die!" to them. Once we went to a playground in the mall. There was another kid playing where he wanted to play, and he didn't want to share the area, so he kept saying "Die!" but I don't think the other kid could hear. One day Ya-ping went to a Relief Society activity and I went with Preston into the nursery. A little girl, probably three or so, came up and said, "It's Preston!" He turned around and said "Die!" to her. She seemed quite taken aback. (I still feel bad I didn't reprove him for that and apologize to the girl.)

He liked to sing "Happy Birthday." On his birthday, we sang it to him, but he wanted to sing it as well, and sang it with his mom's name.

He liked to say nightly prayers, sometimes multiple times. His prayers went something like, "Ba-ba, Mommy, Shu-shu, go home, Ba-ba, Amen!" The "Amen" was especially dramatic, adorable, and hilarious.

Once he was shuffling around the kitchen and Ya-ping asked him, "Are you a penguin?" (She asked in Chinese, and I was pleased I could understand it.) He responded quite seriously, and almost defensively, "No, I'm Xiang-an." Once he took a flying bellyflop onto my air mattress, and David said, "Are you Superman?" Again, he seriously said, "No, I'm Xiang-an." I think he said, "No, I'm Xiang-an" a few other times as well.

My last night there, I sprained my ankle. While I was waiting in a waiting room, Preston saw a comics page with Peanuts on it. He said, "Is that Charlie Brown?" None of us knew that he knew Charlie Brown's name, and none of us knew where he learned it. I had to get a splint and bandages around my ankle, and in the car Preston became quite concerned that I didn't have my shoe. He kept saying, "Shu-shu shoe!" He kept asking, even though we explained that we had it. At one point Ya-ping made an exasperated sound because he kept asking, and he started crying. I left on my mission, but I heard that shortly after that they were in the hospital parking lot and he mentioned me hurting my leg.

I came home from my mission, and they came to visit for a long time that December 2009. He was no longer a three-year-old, so his speech had shifted to that of a five-year-old.

He would ask lots of questions, especially when watching movies: "What's happening? Is that the bad guy?" When you would answer him, he would say, "Why?" He still asks questions like that, but not as much.

When he didn't get what he wanted, he would say an overly dramatic and angry "Uh uh!" Both Franklin and Allie inherited this.

I also learned that although he used the pronoun "her," he didn't understand the use of "she." I first learned this one Sunday that December. Allie had gotten some clay at church, and suddenly she realized that she had left it out upstairs, so she needed to go up and put it away. At the same time, Preston headed upstairs, and for some reason she thought that since she was thinking about her clay, he must have been too. She called out "Don't you dare touch my clay, Preston!" and they both raced upstairs. Preston came down later and said, "He hit me, and I didn't do anything." I didn't know what male person would hit him, so I asked "Who?" When they told me Allie, I got confused. I didn't know he had pronoun problems.

I encountered this same confusion nearly two years later, in August 2011. I was cleaning up my apartment in Provo before moving out when Ya-ping called. I couldn't answer the phone, so I called her back. Preston answered, so I asked him about school. I asked him if he liked his teacher. He said, "He is so nice!" and told me some things about his teacher. I said to him, "Oh, so you have a boy teacher?" He said, "Umm...nope." Once again I was really confused, until I remembered his pronoun problems.

In December 2010, we visited Nashville for Christmas. I taught Preston the card game of War, which he called "Army."

Today he will ask "What is it?" when other people are laughing and he wants to know why they are laughing.

And a development he just barely started is overuse of the word "awkward." Yesterday I was at my house looking at the Cake Wrecks website, and Preston was looking over my shoulder. He kept saying, "Who are these awkward people making these cakes?"

And just as with Allie, I know I will remember more stuff after I post this.

Things my niece used to say

Since I have a long stretch now without any holidays, I thought I would post about the linguistic development of my niece and nephews. Since my niece Allie is the oldest, turning ten this month, I will start with her. I'm sure that I will remember more things later on.

I can remember one day in the fall of 2004 when Allie was one. My mom told her to go put her diaper in the garbage, so she did. I was amazed, because that was the first time I knew she could understand English.

In November of 2004, when she was sixteen months, there were only a few words she could say. I think she attempted to say "Xiang-an," the Chinese name of my nephew Preston, but she later only would say "Baby." She could say "turkey" because she loved the inflatable turkey in our yard. Shrek 2 came out that month, and she grew to really like the movie, calling it "Shh."

The following March, I remember her coming into my room on Good Friday, after we had just gotten Easter gifts. She brought Preston's new toy, which had a picture of a dog on it, and said, "Woof!" That was the first time we knew she knew what a dog said.

She learned that our cat's name was Jenny, so she learned that word, only she pronounced it "Genn," with the g hard as in get and girl. My mom thought she was actually saying "kitten," but I'm not sure. She was good at the linguistic principle of overextension, which is using one word to refer to more things than it means. "Genn" was her word for any cat or cat-like animal. Shrek 2 became known as Genn, because of the Puss in Boots character. (She called Monsters Inc. "Boo" and The Incredibles "Bob" and sometimes "Bob, Dash, Baby.") I remember a trip from Yellowstone when Allie was about two in which we stopped  at a rest stop for lunch. There was a squirrel by our table, and when we left, Allie said, "Bye Genn!" On that same trip, she wanted to watch The Incredibles and said, "I miss Bob." That was only the second time we had heard her say "I miss [something]"; the previous time had been one Sunday when she said, "I miss Mom."

For her birthday when she turned two, she got some fake food. She called a fake cookie "cake." But that overextension didn't last long; her go-to dessert word became "pie." At that same time she called all fruits "apples," and she often would request a tomato, calling it an apple. (She requested tomatoes because they look much sweeter than they are.) She later added "bunny" to her vocabulary, which replaced "Genn" as the go-to word for small mammals. She called squirrels bunnies, and she had some Minnie Mouse sandals that she would refer to as bunnies.

One day that same summer (2005), we were looking at pictures and she started calling everyone by name. At that point she had learned to call my dad Pop; I'm not sure why. She kept calling Ya-ping "Gawgo." It was  really funny. We don't know where that came from, but the name stuck. After that, my mom and I were the only ones who didn't have a name from her. She finally started saying Mark, so Grams was the last name she had to learn. Of course, she didn't say her r's, so "Mark" was more like "Mawk." Once I walked into a room and my sister said, "It's Mawk," and Allie said, "No, it's Mawk." She knew my name wasn't Mawk, even if she couldn't say it right. On my birthday in 2005, someone said, "It's the birthday boy!" and she said, "No, it's Mawk."

She used to talk about all of our cars, but she would say it as "ky" (rhymes with "guy"). She would say, "Pop's ky, Mommy ky," and so on.

At the Halloween season in 2005, she became terrified by many Halloween things, even simple things like jack-o-lanterns. As the season progressed, she became a little more tolerant. She would say, "I not scary," meaning she wasn't scared. Once she said, "Pumpkins aren't scary."

In introduced her to Charlie Brown, which she called "Sally and Brown"--although looking back I'm not sure if she was actually saying "Sally and" or if that was her attempt at saying "Charlie."

My sister for some reason introduced Allie to Disney Princesses, and she grew to love them. In October 2005, Cinderella was released on DVD. We put the DVD in and watched the trailers. Allie identified Cinderella as "Wa-wee." Our best guess was that was an attempt to say "Relly," as in "Cinderelly."

At some point that year, my sister began buying bags of cheese sticks that had two flavors, a white one that was Monterey jack, and a yellow one that was cheddar. We would refer to these as white cheese and yellow cheese. Then Allie converted white cheese to Snow White cheese. And then since she had Snow White cheese, the yellow cheese became Belle cheese. I didn't like those cheese sticks; I preferred mozzarella string cheese, so whenever we got regular string cheese, those were called Mark cheese. These cheese names stuck for a really long time. Eventually my sister quit buying the yellow and white cheese sticks and just bought regular string cheese. That was still called Mark cheese, even though there was no other cheese to distinguish it from.

In November 2005, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came out. That was another movie Allie liked, but it led her to pick up the word "stupid," as Mike Teavee would say, "It's stupid!" In that movie, Willy Wonka once said, "Scaredy cat," and Allie would combine two words she learned in the movie and say "Stupid cat!" She would call Willy Wonka a girl.

Once when she was two and a half, we had a rotisserie chicken, and she kept calling it a "bum."

At some point when she was two, she picked up a habit of assigning characters to a member of the family. I can remember doing this some as a kid of about 5, but only when I was watching movies. Allie took it to the extreme. Near my high school was a car lot with an inflatable witch and an inflatable gorilla. She said the witch was her (because she had been a witch for Halloween) and the gorilla was Preston. In January 2006, we went to Target and bought Corpse Bride. She looked at the DVD and said that she was the Corpse Bride and Preston was Victor, and Pops was the skeleton dog. Around that time, I got the second season of Bewitched on DVD. She did similar things on that DVD. There was a picture of Darrin and Samantha and their new baby--that was David and Gawgo and Baby. There was a picture of Darrin as a werewolf--that was me. And the little animated Samantha was Allie, since she usually made any witch her. (She also kept saying that the animated Samantha was Sleeping Beauty.)

However, the most common and consistent name assignments were with Disney Princesses. She had these down pat. She was Belle and Preston was Beast, my mom and dad were Cinderella and her prince, Gawgo and David were Ariel and Eric, Susanne and I were Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip, and our aunt Sue was Snow White. Our cousin Peter was the huntsman sent to kill Snow White. When she would read Princess books, she would substitute family names. All of her replacement names sometimes led to her saying some funny things. Once she was watching Beauty and the Beast and said, "Mom! It's the scary Preston!" Once she said, "Peter tried to kill Sue!"

In 2006, I wrote a blog post about her fascination with "naughty words."

In the spring of 2006, she started calling my mom "Grandmamother" (pronounced "Grammamudder").

Around the summer of 2006, she picked up a lot of words and phrases from movies. All of a sudden she began calling me "Crazy woof" (wolf), and we didn't know why. Then one day I was watching Hoodwinked! with her, and heard Red say, "You crazy wolf!" One summer morning she came into my room and said, "Get up Sully!"--quoting a line directly from Monsters Inc. Once she said something about "a smile like a sick pumpkin"--a line from A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Once I heard her say, "You mean old thing!" facetiously, a line from Cinderella.

She would also memorize words from her princess books; you could read to her and stop and she would fill in the words. Once she said to me, "Did you like looking for treasures when you were a little mermaid?" That was shortly after she said to me, "Bird seed is so gross. I tried it once when I was a little bird, and it was yucky."

Once we were driving through a cemetery, and Allie looked out the window and said, "Oh my gosh! They're darling!"

That summer Ya-ping's sister Shu-hua came for a visit, and Allie began calling her her best friend.

This summer she pronounced my cousin Jesse's name as "Jeshy."

That summer we went camping at Moosehorn lake. One day we drove to see a waterfall with my uncle John and his kids. Allie fell asleep in the car, and when we got there, everyone got out to look at the waterfall. My mom was staying in the car with Allie. After everyone had walked off, I noticed that Allie had woken up, so I looked in at her. She said to me, "Go look at that faterwall!" Another time on this trip, I was watching her walk around. She didn't like my supervision, so she kept saying to me, "No, Prince Biwip [Phillip]!"

In August or September of 2006, a Halloween costume catalog came in the mail, and Allie became obsessed with Halloween costumes. She knew all the costumes in the catalog, and she had decided what all of us were going to be for Halloween. I think I was going to be a ghost. I remember being in the backyard with her one day, discussing the costume situation. I was asking her what people should be for Halloween. I think she said my dad was going to be a turkey. After I had gone through everyone in the family, she said, "What about my best friend Shu-ha?" So I asked her what she should be. She saw the garbage can in the backyard and said, "A crash tan!"

Whereas she had been terrified of Halloween in 2005, she loved it in 2006. She would always insist on driving past houses with lots of decorations. One had a giant spider, so she called that house the spider house. The Loveridges had an inflatable Frankenstein, which she called "Stankenfrein." Once this inflatable was not properly inflated, so for a long time afterwards she would tell us about how the "Stankenfrein was on the ground." She called skeletons "skilligans," probably on analogy with Gilligan (since Quin used to watch that when he visited).

On September 17, 2006, we visited my aunt's house and she fell off the couch and hurt her arm. Then we went back on October 29, and she said that she was going to fall off the couch and hurt her arm. On our way home that day, she started calling me Piggy. She even said, "Oink oink!"

At that same time, she told me that Santa Claus was going to go to Target to get her toys.

This was around the same time she started calling Willy Wonka "Winky Wonka." 

One fall Saturday, I took her outside and played with her in the leaves. She got a leaf stuck to her hair near her eye. She said it made her a pirate. Then she said it made her look like an Indian.

A day or two after Halloween, the Thompsons were at our house, and Allie told Sue, "My mouth's having issues," referring to the rotting face of her jack-o-lantern.

At Christmastime in 2006, she became interested in nativities, which she called "antivities." She called Joseph "Jophes." She would play with nativities like action figures. Once we watched a video of the nativity, and she got the idea that they were giving a baby blessing, and would often incorporate this idea into her playing. Once when she was playing with a particular nativity, I told her, "They're not really giving a baby blessing." So she asked for the box. She said, "It says, 'They give the baby's blessing.'" (The box, in fact, said no such thing.)

Around this time we began to teach her the names of family members. She began to refer to her mom as "Susanne Arena" (her middle name is Sarena) and she would sometimes refer to my dad as Ricky or Rick. She once went to a party with family members of her mom's boyfriend. She later told us that she had told some girls there that Rick's mom had died. I remember thinking how funny it must have been to have this little three-year-old telling these girls about how someone they didn't even know had his mother die!

I remember a day in January 2007 when she named her stuffed animals Allie and Mr. Brucey (Bruce was the name of the dog of her mom's boyfriend). Another night she was watching a Princess Sing-Along and said, "Is this a Valentimes show? 'Cause it has hearts in it?"

One day in February or March the Thompsons were at our house. Quin called her a silly goose. She retorted, "Silly duck!"

My mom got a calling as Activity Days leader, and Allie loved those girls. She called them "antivity girls."

For spring break in 2007, we went to Nashville, and Susanne and Allie took a plane there. I asked Allie how she liked the plane. She said, "It was a little fast."

Then on Easter Sunday, I tended her. I tried to tell her the true meaning of Easter, but she wouldn't have any discussion of death: "I don't want you to die, because then you won't live with us anymore!"

That spring she saw a picture of a city and called it New York. (It was actually either Las Vegas or Salt Lake.) (Maybe this actually happened the year before--I can't remember.)

One day in May, my cousin Jesse came for a visit. She said to him, "You table! You chair!" Jesse found that really funny.

She had a phase where she began words with "bee." Banana was "beenana," pajamas was "beejamas," and Fiona on Shrek was "Beefonia." (Her interest in Shrek was rekindled when Shrek the Third came out.) She also called marshmallows "smarshmallows."

 Memorial Day weekend 2007, we went and saw the new baby of my cousin-in-law Kalia. The baby was wearing a bow, and Allie said, "Just like Baby Shrek!" Allie also said, "Our baby walks." The "our baby" she was referring to was Preston, who was two and a half. I found it funny she called him "our baby," especially since she herself wasn't even four yet.

Then came the summer of 2007, when I was working at Walmart, working in the nursery, and getting ready for a mission. Allie became really funny that summer as she was turning four.

I was once filling out a job application. I asked my mom and sister what I should put on a certain line, and they said, "None." Allie said, "The Flying Nun?" In August that summer, she was playing with her mom, and randomly blurted out "Flying Nun" and "Surfer Buddy!"

There was once a sign on a fence that said "Welcome Home Elder D!" My mom told her what it said, and said that they could make one for me when I got home that said "Welcome Home Elder Mark." Allie had not heard the word "Elder," so she understood "Elder D" as "Letter D," which really does make sense. For the next few years she kept saying that she was going to make a sign that said "Welcome Home Letter Mark." I was quite sad when I got home and the sign said "Elder Mark"--apparently the six-year-old Allie insisted on "elder," even though my mom and sister wanted it to say "letter."

In 2007 she would sometimes call me a name: "You ball-head baby!" We didn't know where that came from. Once when she called me that, my mom reproved her, and she seemed kind of taken aback that she had been reproved: "I just called him a ball-head baby." Then one day she was watching some pre-teen movie, and I found out that's where she got the insult, although I think the movie actually said "bottle-head baby."

That summer, my aunt started the divorce process and kicked her husband out of the house. That apparently inspired Allie to tell me I needed to move out if she didn't like something I did. The first time she did this, she said to me, "Your mom will kick you out, and you'll have to go live by Uncle Wayne!" She did this often, and would sometimes say, "Pack up your stuff and go!" Once she said, "Remember when you broke your leg when you were a little boy? That's why you're moving out!" I wasn't sure why that merited moving out. Once she said "You'll have to come live by us!" since she and her mom had just moved out. Then came the Sunday that fall when she told me to move out, so I began walking out. She said to me, "Don't forget your stuff!" I said, "I have everything I need," and I walked out. Apparently she said to my mom, "He didn't have to leave." She looked out the window and saw me standing in the driveway, so she invited me back in. For weeks she would randomly apologize: "I'm sorry I made you move out, Mark."

But although she no longer told me to move out, she continued to do other threats. On General Conference Sunday, she said to me, "You can't go to nursery anymore! You have to go to Sunday School with your mom and dad!" One day we went to the new Walmart in Centerville. On our way in, she told me about a Spongebob episode she had watched, and said, "Patrick said to Spongebob, 'We're gonna go in a can!'" She didn't want to ride in the cart, so we told her that she could walk around, but if she walked away, she would have to go in the cart again. Well, at one point I found she had wandered off into another aisle, so I picked her up and put her back in the cart. She didn't like that, so she said, "You're gonna go in a can, just like Spongebob and Patrick!"

One Sunday, my mom told her that her mom had packed two dresses. Allie said, "Why did she do that? She's such a retarded sauce!" I figured out that was a misunderstanding of Spongebob's interjection "Tartar sauce!"

Once she was at our house, and she said to her mom, "Your belly's getting big. I think you're going to have a girl!" Susanne said, "Nope, no baby. I'm just fat." At which point Allie pointed to my mom and me and said, "Oh, just like her and him?" My sister took her up to leave. My dad hadn't been in the room (and therefore hadn't heard the conversation), but she called out to him, "Your belly's sure getting big, Pops!" Another time that fall we were at their apartment and a weight-loss commercial came on. Allie said, "Look, Grandma, her belly's as big as yours!" Susanne said, "Allie, that's really not nice." To which Allie said, quite innocently, "I didn't say fat."

Then I left on my mission. I didn't get to talk to Allie during those two years, of course. But I do remember one email she dictated to me in which she said, "I promise," but it didn't make any sense. I talked to her on Christmas 2008. I told her she sounded so big, and she said, "I know, because I'm five." She also told me that she had seen a thing on the news about a Santa Claus tracker, and said, "It kind of freaked me out." On Mother's Day 2009, I talked to her and said, "I can't believe you are five!" She corrected me: "Five and a half."

Then I came home from my mission. On the car ride home, she told me that Preston would wake up with a frowny face. One day that month she said, "I aren't." Then she corrected herself, "I amn't." One day we talked about having family home evening, and she said "hamly foam evening." On December 29, my sister was trying to get her to eat a pork sandwich leftover from my homecoming. Allie refused and said, "My belly doesn't like meat on Tuesdays!"

On Groundhog Day in 2010, my family came down because my car needed to be towed. I was in my Intro to English Language class, and I needed to observe Allie linguistically. I heard her say, "Do you renember that?" She said her favorite February holidays were "Valentimes and Groundog Day."

The Saturday before Memorial Day that year, my parents picked me up in Provo and we drove down to Fillmore. Allie had a stack of movies she was watching, one of which was Mamma Mia! I told Allie I didn't want to watch it, since I don't know of any PG-13 movies that fit my standards. After agreeing to watch something else, Allie told me that I could watch it because it had boys in it. She also told me I could watch her Barbie Princess and the Pauper movie because it had boys in it too.

Fall 2010 I lived at home. She would say "gooder" instead of "better." She would also say "care" instead of "matter." Once I challenged her on this, and she got quite defensive: "It doesn't care what you say!" She would even say "news" instead of "use," a relic from her toddler days.

In June 2011, we were meeting my uncle John and his family (who live in Delta) at the aquarium. Allie asked, "Will their license plate say Utah or Delta?"

On New Year's Eve that year, she was playing with Preston with some sticky dart things that stick to the wall. She caught one as it fell off the wall and said, "Caught red handed!"

She went through a time where she would use "awkward" to mean "weird," and she would use "creepy" all over the place. It usually meant "weird" as well, but it was different than "awkward."

She has often had a habit of saying "Yeah" or "I know" when you tell her something--even if you're answering a question she asked.

Well, that's all I can think of at the moment, but I know there have been lots of other funny things she's said!

July 5

Last year I didn't get around to writing about the day after the Fourth of July, so here it is.

2012. I think I had to go do a source check in the library for work, and it was raining quite a bit. It made me really happy. It felt like September. I remember the cool weather made me think of "The Great Pumpkin Waltz," but then I had to remind myself that it was still more than two months until the beginning of the Halloween season, let alone the holiday itself. Then that day some of my "horse" friends wanted to go to a production of Cyrano de Bergerac in the HFAC. I was going to go meet Carissa, the one who had suggested it. While I was on my way to her apartment, I met my former roommate Jeff Anderson. I talked briefly to him. Then I went to Queen's Arms apartments, but I didn't remember which was Carissa's. So then I went to my apartment to find her apartment or phone number on lds.org, but the ward directory was down. So then I just went up to the HFAC. I went into the play, and I saw my roommate Cameron sitting there. I went and sat down. Then Hanna and Kristen (and maybe someone else) came in. They told Cameron that Carissa was outside the theater waiting for him, so he went out and met her. We moved seats just before the play started. It was an abbreviated, happier story than the original Cyrano. After the play, we walked home, and I talked to Hanna about how it felt like September. She was from Rexburg, so she didn't know what Utah Julys were usually like.

2011. I woke up in the morning in the apartment below me. I didn't make my bed, but I took my Fourth of July pillowcase up to my apartment. When I went back to that apartment to sleep that night, Jimmy (my temporary roommate) had made my bed.

2010. We didn't have school, so I slept in. I think my roommates bought some maple bars and made bacon to put on top of them--but I was still sleeping when that happened.

2009. Our investigator Nick Montez was supposed to come to church, since he was getting baptized that week. He showed up during the gospel principles class--he was late because his truck had broken down. He met with President Landeen, the branch president of the Lewis-Clark YSA branch, and President Landeen gave him a serviceman's scripture set. President Landeen approved it, so then we went to the stake center so that Elder Hinebaugh, the district leader, could interview him. He passed!

2008. Elder Bramall and I had to get up early. Elder Bramall was the district leader, so we had to go meet with a member of the stake presidency, along with the district leader of the Spanish area. When we showed up, we saw the Spanish elders about to knock on a door on the other side of the street. Elder Bramall called out to them and asked what they were doing. They said that the stake presidency member had given them the wrong address, so it was a good thing we got there just in time to prevent them from knocking on the wrong door--it would have been like tracting at 7 or 8 in the morning (I can't remember what time it was). I think we had some kind of breakfast. Then we were singing a hymn to start off our meeting. Elder Bramall said that President Clark liked "Saints Behold How Great Jehovah," but the stake presidency member didn't want to sing that. After our meeting, we went home and took naps, since we had gotten up so early. Then we had a service project because a less-active part-member family was moving into our ward boundaries. The Wenatchee 3rd elders, Elder Bates and Elder Major, helped them move, too (that was the ward the PMF was moving from). The family provided us Costco pizza. It came up that I didn't like mushrooms, and Elder Bates said that he thought that I would like them. He knew I wanted to be a vampire, so he thought that I would like something that grew in dark, damp environments.

2007. I had to have my pre-mission physical. There was someone being trained, so Dr. Cope asked if that trainee could observe. They gave me an extra sheet for modesty.

2006. I think I was casually eating the crumbs leftover from the Fourth of July cake we had bought.

2000. Since the next holiday was Halloween, I took out my small Halloween decorations, including my school art projects, and put them up in my room. (I don't do that anymore, although I still get a little sad at the holiday drought that starts in July.)

1996. I seem to remember throwing snaps outside the backdoor of my paternal grandparents' house. There was a puddle from a sprinkler, so the snap didn't work. I purposely tried to do that because I heard that it made a cool sound in water, but it didn't work. My dad told me about the time he ended up at the hospital the day after the Fourth of July because he was trying to light leftover fireworks.