f is for horse and hoo (and other speech phenomena of Zoralee)

Zoralee starts some h words with the letter f. The rest of us see horses; she sees forses. We understand the owls in storybooks to say, "hoo;" until yesterday she was pretty sure they said, "foo." And for the longest time, she wanted to "fold you," which meant hold you. Yet for house, hurt, help, happy, and hand, we've always been in agreement. She's starting to outgrow this, and it makes me pretty sad. But it would be wrong to encourage her to say h words with an f just to be cute, wouldn't it?

She calls Papa, Papa. Grandma, Grandma. And Grandpa Gene, Grandpa Gene. No problem. But to her, Grandpa Larry is, randomly, Grandpie. It reminds me of this Fuzzy Memory of Jack Handy:

For a while there, instead of calling Grandpa "Grandpa," I started calling him "Grandpappy." But he didn't like that, and asked me to go back to Grandpa. So I did, but I changed it a little. I put an "e" in instead of an "a," so it became "Grendpa." At first he didn't notice, but then he said, "What did you call me?" "Grandpa," I said. But then I went back to calling him Grendpa. Finally he just said to go ahead and call him Grandpappy, which I did, only I changed it a little bit to "Grendpeppy."

Uncle Dave and Luke are Unkin Dave and Unkin Uke. We hear it most when she's being allowed to play around with the cell phone. She pushes buttons and says, "Send message Unkin Dave."

And were you aware that bugs are female? Yes. As Zoralee watched two bugs outside recently, one climbing a wall and the other exploring a pile of popcorn seeds I'd made her spit out after discovering them squirreled away in her cheeks, she exclaimed about the bugs, "She's going bye bye!" and "She's coming!" I responded some with, "Yes, he is," to see what Zoralee'd do, and she kept them female.

Some of my favorite, regular Zoralee phrases:

• Oh, honey! [directed at me when she spills something or needs help or feels there's a crisis]
• Who's that? Who's that? Who's that? [asked about any person or thing she doesn't know or understand, until we satisfactorily respond - it's in the vein of how some kids ask, "why? why? why?"]
• Good job, Mama! and Good job, Papa! [if we eat a bite she feeds us, or if we help her with something, or if we're doing a chore, like sweeping the floor]