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The other day, Miss Nicole at Sydney's school told Meghan that "Sydney is our little adult." Meghan inquired further and Nicole told her that Sydney talks like an adult and not like a 2-3 year old.

While certainly proud that Sydney apparently talks like an adult, we're still really not sure what Nicole meant. Sydney's pronunciation of words sounds like that of a small child to us. A number of sounds "L" and "R" for example are pronounced as "W". There are still Nappigs (napkins) and Alligators (elevators). Her vocabulary is growing but still missing many common words. She does, however, usually manage to get her point across verbally, and she does speak in sentences, with hand gestures, and tell stories.

I've been listening closer to Sydney since I posted the initial message, and she does say a lot of things in an adult way.

She strings together multiple sentences and rattles them off at full speed. She uses "Actually". She tells stories. She asks interesting questions.


Tonight we went to went to Leona's for dinner and sat outside. After sitting outside for a little while, Sydney noticed the mural painted on the side of the restaurant and gasped. "Who colored on the wall?!?" she exclaimed. We were then told that you get a time out of you color on the wall and that it's very bad.

On Thursday of last week Mike was working late so Sydney and I were on our own. When we got home from school, she said that she wanted to go the the little park, which is about a block from our house. I told her that I really wanted to go running, so could we go to a park that was further away? She did not like that idea at all. We finally decided to compromise and go to the little park for a few minutes, then go running and stop at the big park.

So we got to the little park and she played on the swings for awhile and then starting climbing up and sliding down one of the biggest slides over and over. After awhile I told her that it was almost time to go running. "Three more times on the slide," I told her.

After she had gone down 2 times I said, "OK, one more time." She put her hands on her hips and said, "Actually, Mom, six more times."

"No, one more time," I said.

"OK, how about 3 more times?" she asked.

"No, two more times," I said. "Why am I negotiating with a 2 year old?" I asked myself.

So yeah, she is a little adult. And quite the negotiator.