Don't shunk the baby!

This is a post that I've been wanting to record for a long time. Meagan is our creative little girl, she always has been, and especially lately, she makes up words if she doesn't know a proper one for the situation. For example, several weeks back we were singing Rock-a-bye Baby to her for her goodnight song. Nate was swinging her in his arms as we sang. When it came to the end, where you sing, "and down will come baby", he put her down on the floor. She got up and screamed, "No! You don't shunk the baby!" It took us a while to realize she meant that she didn't want to be put down, she just wanted to be rocked to the end of the song. But now that she's established this word, she's applying it to other situations. Today she was jumping on the mini-trampoline and half-fell off and pulled the power cord out of the TV. The kids came upstairs and told me the TV turned off. I couldn't figure out what was wrong at first, all I could get out of them was that Meagan "shunked" the TV.

She also creates words when describing things that she's unfamiliar with. It's a real chore figuring things out sometimes. The other day I was reading them a story when she described one of the pictures as "pag". You got me. I haven't a clue what that one is supposed to mean.

The only bad thing is that when we do figure out a word, like shunk, it becomes part of her normal vocabulary. I haven't said anything to her about it, because I think it's cute/funny and I want to encourage her creativity. The problems may come when she goes to kindergarten this fall and get frustrated/angry when people don't understand what she saying. I guess we'll see what happens.