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Thursday, October 5, 2006
By ELIZABETH TREVER BUCHINGER
In graf that starts Mom can you make ... the words "in a pan" should be in italics.
Babies turn into girls one word at a time
The morning began almost like any other. I was lying in bed with one eye closed and the other reluctantly looking out the window trying to determine whether I was looking at fog or the promise of a gray day.
My daughter _ who has that supersensitive hearing that all toddlers possess _ apparently heard my eye open, and before long she had opened the door. This is our morning ritual. Just as my eyes open, my little Buttercup pushes open the bedroom door, climbs onto my bed and tumbles over me to snuggle in between her parents.
On this particular morning, Buttercup's dad had gotten up at Ungodly O'Clock and left town on business, so it was just the two of us.
She wiggled under the quilt next to me and briefly assaulted my bare knees with her freezing feet before grabbing both sides of my face in her hands. "Can we go back to sleep for a little while?" she asked me.
"Oh, yes," I answered with great glee and gratitude. "We can go back to sleep for as long as you want."
"Do I go to school today?"
"Yes, you go to school," I said, already beginning to drift back into the haze of morning dreams. "But we've got a long time before we have to go. The sun hasn't even come all the way up."
"Mom?" she said. "I'm hungry for breakfast." And at that, dear friends, my mommy heart broke a little, burst at the seams and spilled something bittersweet and silver as mercury over my pillow. Buttercup is 3-years-old. She has never asked for "breakfast" before. Her request has always been for "brexys."
"Yay, Papa's home! He makes the best brexys."
"I don't want oatmeal for brexys. I. Only. Want. Mac. A. Roni."
"Mom. Can you please make me brexys in a pan?" (Read: Get with the program, Lazy.)
I love brexys. I adore the way it feels to say it, and I adore even more deeply the sound of my daughter saying it.
Brexys.
Not that long ago, Buttercup had entered a phase of educating us. She started giving us lessons in phonetics. "B starts with 'buh'. What does 'kah' start wif?"
She started teaching us our names.
"Say E ... Liz ... A ... Bef ..."
And she taught us how to properly pronounce the name of the first meal in the morning. "Say Brek ... Siss. Good job!"
Breakfast is pedestrian and utilitarian. Brexys is full of magic.
Every ordinary parent in the country has plain, old "breakfast."
We got something special. We got something that no one else had. We got to sit with our daughter every morning and have a glorious brexys. I'm going to miss it so much.
I'll miss it just as much as I miss the way my son used to call me Lileff. The year between his second and third birthday, I think the only two words he ever said were "No!" and "Lileff." Together. And in that order.
Now Buttercup is growing up, too. No more brexys. Next thing I know, she'll want me to visit colleges like her brother. She'll want to drive cars and have dates and live her own life.
It all starts here, with "breakfast."
In a pan.
Elizabeth Trever Buchinger is a freelance writer who makes linguists roll their eyes in disgust. She can be reached at VillageWordsmith@hughes.net
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