Gareth Discovers Intonation

[dr_pretentious]

The other night, Dan was putting the boy to bed. "Bath?" said Gareth. It was the first time he'd asked a question with clearly recognizable question intonation. We hadn't intended it to be a bath night, but what can you do the day your kid discovers the spoken equivalent of the question mark?

Gareth's comment on the drawing of the bath: "Duck duck duck duck duck!" He discovered the exclamation point some time ago.

In other news, my recent progress on the Ria story involved going through the bracketed [FIX ME] notes and the bracketed preliminary notes about scenes, and deleting all the bracketed stuff that I'd already acted on. The story's closer to finished, but it's shrunk by about a thousand words since my last word count bar. I know, I know. Deletion is not orthodox NaNoWriMo conduct. Memo to Robert Frost: It turns out that tennis with the net down is better than no tennis at all.

Comments

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

Gareth has inherited great language genes.

Huzzah!

[laradionne.livejournal.com]

The question mark will now begin to feature nearly as frequently as the exclamation point, no doubt! Most likely in the following ways.... "what's that?" and "why?" possibly followed closely by, "toast?" and "up?".

In addition, I'm thrilled to hear that progress is being made on Ria! If you need a reader, let me know!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

That, and I'm working my ass off studying how small children generally and male children in particular learn stuff. My local librarians know what books to set aside for me.

Re: Huzzah!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I will certainly be wanting readers for Ria, hopefully in November.

The question mark hasn't recurred yet, but he can now point to details in pictures when we ask about them. Where's the duck? Good! Where's the cow? We're way more interested in the fact that he can do this than he is in doing it, though. After all, he knows he knows which animal the duck is, so he's not revealing any cool new powers to himself.