Does Batman Eat Ice Cream?
 Batman in a top hat
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 Eidan with his wizard hat and cape
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 Kai in his home made Iron Man costume, battling Eidan in his Spider Man / Darth Vader / Wizard costume
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 Eidan and Kai goofing around at home
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Eidan got a new Batman costume last week, and he’s been living it since he opened the package. So far we’ve succeeded in removing it only once, just long enough to wash it. The first day he wore it, he started stomping around the house scowling and flinging foam rubber batarangs, but then broke out of character for a minute to explain the look on his face, “I not mad mommy, I Batman.” After dinner we had ice cream, and after eagerly picking up his spoon, Eidan then hesitated and looked at us with great concern, “Batman eat ice cream?” We assured him that Batman loves ice cream, so he ate up.
Maria and I have picked up a phrase from Eidan: instead of saying “it’s getting dark,” he says “it’s darking.” Once it’s completely dark, then it’s “big darking.” Since English is a living language, it’s rules change as common usage changes over time. If we can get enough people to adopt “darking” as a verb, maybe we can get the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) to recognize it 
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Eidan has also developed a knack for asserting his own reality. Often when he gets in trouble, he’ll say, “you not mad Daddy, you happy!” Then to demonstrate, he’ll plaster a big grin on his face. If he asks me for something, and I say no, he’ll usually come back instantly with “Mommy say yes.” It hasn’t worked yet, but he keeps trying. If I ask him “why?” about anything – why are you doing that, why do you like it, etc – all I ever get back is “’cause yes” or sometimes “’cause no.” And one time, after I carried him and his big wheel most of the way around the block after he decided he didn’t feel like riding it (or walking), I told him I was tired and he’d have to walk the rest of the way home. “You carry me Daddy. You not tired. You shirt not wet.” Since I wasn’t sweating profusely, I wasn’t working all that hard, right?
And Kai is turning into the next Yogi Berra. Here are some of his latest linguistic gems:
- On his way to a friend’s house, Maria asked him if he remembered our home phone number, in case he needed to call us. “Yes, mommy, of course I remember, I know it like the back of my head!”
- While playing with action figures with a friend, he said, “let’s pretend it’s the day after yesterday.”
- Right after he did something he just said he wasn’t going to do, he explained, “my brain has a mind of its own.”
- “I’m starving, my stomach is fully empty!”
That Darth Vader/ Spider-man / Wizard costume is the most amazing thing ever. The size of the helmet in relation to his body reminded me of Rick Moranis in Spaceballs.
The Iron Man costume is pretty cool also.
And what not pictures of Eidan as Batman?
Now updated with a batman picture – batman in a top hat, no less. I should post another picture of the Iron Man costume too. After this picture was taken we painted it.
I’ve been very strict with Seth about speaking “proper” English. However, after reading this perhaps I will let up a bit. We could make poems up like:
The sky is darking
The dog is barking
The moon is full of harvest
I understand that the time sequence of days is really important to kids. We stumble into the “day after yesterday” all the time. We have to sit down with calendars and give time visual volume and sequence.
Hi Alis – good to hear from you! It’s been a long time. I’m not a linguist, but I’ve read a bit about how kids learn languages. The mistakes they make usually come from either inconsistencies with the rules themselves (and English has a lot of inconsistencies) or their intuitive attempts to apply the rules they’ve learned to new situations. Hence “darking”. “Light” is both a noun and a verb after all, so it’s an understandable mistake. We generally try to correct his mistakes so he’ll continue to learn, but in this case we enjoyed the mistake so much we wanted to hear him make it again (and again…)