An Official Translator's Guide for the Court

As I was walking upstairs last night with young Sir Elijah in our nightly attempt to put him to bed (generally successful) and have him fall asleep (generally unsuccessful-- he will often go to bed at 8:15 and still be chattering away or reading his books at 9:45 when we go to bed), the Queen traipsed by on her way to the sanity of the basement and told Elijah good-night. Immediately he responded, "Mama wrong! Or not go bed now! More five more minutes!" Everyone knew what he meant-- nothing further was said between the two of them; I told him he still had to brush his teeth or face the wrath of the dungeon without BOOKS, which is a very effective attitude adjustment tool, and the night ended happily. What I couldn't get over was how very effective our young sir has become at communicating without any use of pronouns, limited adjectives, and lack of general good grammatical sense... in short, he's pretty funny to listen and (as with most two year olds) borderline impossible to decipher. Without further ado, I offer the best of the "LJ-isms" and a quick guide to what he might be saying should you ever meet him in person:

"Mama/ Dada / Judah wrong!" Said with special emphasis on the 'wrong', this nifty phrase is his way of telling you he strongly disagrees with you. Often followed by "Elijah right." As a sidebar, I still don't know how Judah can be wrong; so far, to my knowledge, he hasn't said anything.

"You do it!" Our first attempt to teach him pronouns was not only an abject failure, but led to him thinking his name was, of course, 'you.' Thus, whenever Elijah wanted desperately to do something on his own, he would look directly at whomever was there and scream, "YOU DO IT!" What happened? Yup, you guessed. They would try and do it for him... leading to more tears and screaming. Sometimes the cycle would even repeat itself for a couple minutes. Fun for all.

"Or not." This beautiful turn of phrase (we're guessing he learned it from me, because the Queen's diction is far better than mine) negates everything he's just said, making sure you keep on your toes. As in, "Want Cocoa Krispies now..." (two-second pause) "or not." If you, silly parent, went and fulfilled the request immediately, you can come back with said Cocoa Krispies box to be greeted by "Daddy wrong!" (see above)

"No five more minutes!" Thinking we wanted to teach the young knight transitions, about two months ago we started telling him "five more minutes before bed" in an attempt to help him wind down. EPIC FAIL. Now, from 7:00pm on, about every five minutes, we hear "no five more minutes" as he lets us know that he has no interest in going to bed yet. Interestingly, Elijah has a close friend who, in an attempt to negotiate bedtime, told his parents, "not five more minutes-- two more minutes." They were happy to oblige their shrewd negotiator.

"F***!" What he asks for when a spoon won't do... it's a little shocking. We actually never ask him to say "fork" anymore, not do we ask him to repeat the word "sit." -- unless we REALLY want to hear a two-year-old cuss like a sailor. (Which, unfortunately, is really funny)

"Naughty!" This is his way of letting us know that he has done something REALLY bad. The funny thing about this is that when he tells us that he has been naughty, it's almost never actually naughty... it's more like the milk that used to be in his bowl is on the floor. For really naughty, it's generally silent (see 'Why Silence Isn't Always Golden'). The only other time he uses this is when he's playing with his Noah's Ark Animals and the 'baby cow' has to chastise the 'daddy cow' for being naughty-- why is it always the 'daddy cow' that's naughty?

Finally, "proud of you" or "Good job, Elijah." This is what he tells himself (special emphasis on the affirmation) when he has done something especially noteworthy in his own mind. Never one to let others have all the fun in praising him, our self-confident knight-in-training has taken it upon himself to let everyone know just how much he's accomplished lately.

It's not just the LJ that uses these catchy turns of phrase, either. "Dada wrong!" has become a catchphrase for even the Queen, and whether or not I started it, I have re-adopted "or not" into my own lexicon. There's only one cure for all this; Sir Elijah and I are going to huddle around the Square Table and read Strunk and White's Elements of Style.