Christmas and linguistics

First off, Merry Christmas!! What a beautiful, warm day we had to celebrate the birth of our Lord. I hope you all had as lovely a day as we did.

Curly Fry does not speak very clearly. There are a lot of sounds he doesn't say yet--like t's, k's, f's, any consonant combinations, etc. There are some sounds he can say, but only does in certain words for whatever reason. For example, He can say Mommy, but he won't say "moo" like a cow. Whenever we see a cow he yells happily, "Bow!! Boooooo!!!" (cow, moo)

Last night I was trying to help him ask to be excused when he finished his dinner instead of just yelling. A language learning opportunity! I had him repeat after me:

me: May
Curly: AAA
me: I
Curly: I
me: please
Curly: eeeeee
me: be
Curly: eeeeee

I stopped and said, "No, you can do this! Say, 'boo'." So he said, "boo."
I then said, "Good, now say 'be.'" He said "eeeee."
I said, "No, say 'boo'", which he did and then 'be', which he again said incorrectly. I was persistent and kept repeating the two words to try and help him make the sound connection. After a short while, the the ever helpful Junior Mint, with a wicked look in his eye, began chanting loudly, "Boo-bee! boo-bee! boo-bee!!"

Woops. I did not even see that one coming. Curly Fry still can't say 'be' and 7 year old Junior Mint won't stop yelling, "Booby! Booby!" Not exactly the linguistics lesson I had in mind...