bye bye baby

As Sparky gets closer to his 5th birthday, I'm realizing that my baby is truly growing into a full-fledged boy.

My most recent example came the other day as he was sounding out the title to a book. Now mind you, Sparky has always had a bit of a nasally pronunciation to his words. "Animal" has always been "amidal" and "Thank You" more like "Fang You". But with normal development (and also the removal of his tonsils and adenoids) his pronunciations are now more grown up....and it makes me sad and proud all at once.

So as I mentioned, he was sounding out the title of a book which just happened to include the word animal. As he worked it out in his head, he finally got it just right and then looked at me a bit confused.

"But I always used to say Amidal"

"Yes, honey, you did."

"But its spelled A-N-I-M-A-L? And its Annn-i-mal?"

"Yes. You used to say it how it was easy for you. Now you can see how it is supposed to be said."

"Oh, Ok. Annn-i-mal."

And he continued to practice the feel of it rolling out of his mouth. And I thought back to my friend Emily's post about "goodbye yeddow" and then I sighed.

Goodbye Amidal.