Steve

What do you call the night before Christmas? If you're Isaac, you call it Christmas Steve.

I think one of the reasons Craig and I find this phrase so hilarious is that we recognize it as the end of an era. Isaac doesn't make many errors in his speech these days. A year ago I wrote about his charming mispronunciations, including amblybince for ambulance, but they've mostly all died out. (He still can't say R, but that letter can be a long time coming.)

As far as Isaac's remaining language errors, he does sometimes say quetzal instead of pretzel, although I think he may be doing this for his own amusement. And he claims that the opposite of lowers is hires, as in to make something higher. (So in his world a crane hires, not raises, the beams to the top of the building.) And he sometimes says things like gooder and more better, but I've known middle-schoolers who do the same.

Otherwise it's astounding how thorough a grasp he has on the language, and it's fascinating to watch his understanding blossom beyond the strictly functional. Craig continues to sing Isaac songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and although Isaac has been singing along for quite a while, he's now beginning to demand explanations. Just the first few verses of "When I Was a Lad" from H.M.S. Pinafore have raised questions about office boys, attorney's firms, the Queen's Navy, junior clerks, and serving writs. Not topics that come up in the sandbox, but Isaac still wants to know what they mean.

And it's hard to explain what an attorney does.