Word stories

When Matt is home he often tells the Littles stories when we're putting them to bed.  He tells Old Joe stories sometimes, but those tend to be a little advanced for Kate and Daniel.  So we've morphed into much beloved"Word Stories."  That is when each child picks a word and then Matt (or myself, if I'm Daddy isn't home) comes up with a story using those three words.  The one rule is they can't pick the same word twice.  

For a few months now Kate would be in bed asking for a "Wod Stowy."  Depending on the time and our the naughtiness of the Littles we would decide if they got a Word Story.  It's very rare that they don't get one, but sometimes it is late and/or they have been jumping on beds, running around naked, screaming, hiding, not being reverent during prayers and scriptures (discussing a scripture story and the verse that goes along with picture), or other such naughtiness as to not get a word story.  But most night Matt says, "Alright.  What are your words for tonight's story?"  Excitedly, Kate will say, "My word is..." and then pause as she thinks of what she wants.  She comes up with quite a variety of words, sometimes related to something we've done or seen that day, like vacuum or rainbow.  Other times it seems completely random.  

When Daniel wasn't talking much he was make different sounds and Matt would interpret them, trying to pick a word that sounded like the jabber that he was jabbering until Daniel agreed to one of the suggestions.  He surprised us one night by saying, "My word is..."  and then pausing as he thought.  He was saying lots of words, but it was just jun/surprising to hear a sentence that was grammatically correct pop out of his little almost-2-year-old self.  e still needed some help from Matt or Kate on deciding a word. It's been the last 2 or 3 months, however, that Daniel is very capable of coming up with his own words.  Shark, lemon, fork lift boogy (that one is a whole different story), dog, balloon, etc.  It took Daniel a little while to pick up on the "no repeated words" rule because every night for quite a while he requested the same word, "My word is... monkey!!"  He had such a funny way of saying it that Matt and I would chuckle and tell him that he'd already used that word.  "Oh." he'd usually respond in his low voice.  "My word is... MONkey!!"  Then one night he surprised us with a new word, "Gramma."  She was really high on his favorite people list for a while, as evidenced by our experience at Bear World (he only wanted to be with her) and was equally evident in his request for "Gramma" to be his word on a regular basis.  

I snapped this picture tonight as I fed Oliver Mac and Matt told the word story.  The light from my phone distracted both kids and they sat up.  Tonight's words were canoe, lemon, and vacuum (preceded by rejected requests of MONkey and Gramma, of course).