My children have taught me some interesting things, a couple of which I want to share just out of sheer fun:  words that they have crafted through either misunderstanding, lack of ability to pronounce, or just creating them.  Most are common to most little kids, but not all.  It isn’t the first thing he’s taught me, and probably won’t be the last.  His talents are somewhat indescribable.

Our eight year old pretty much has English pronunciation figured out now, but she did not always.  “Movie-ator” was one that lasted a long time, and one that she even passed on to her little bother.  “Quash-quash” rather than wash cloth, went through a sort of evolutionary transient stage with “Quash-Quoff” before sadly working into an orthodox pronunciation just a year ago.

Our four-and-a-half year old is still in the word learning and experimentation phase.  He’s still likes pasghetti and the movie-ator, but there are other words that have crept into the vocabulary of the rest of the family. One is calling the door a “dorn”.  We have no idea where it came from, and we all have started using the word.  When something gets completed, I find myself say “Tot tot!” patterned after his exclamation when he would do something he was proud of in place of Ta da!  We still greet his sister, not ” Hi, sissy,” but ” Ak, Neet-nee”.

These are all words that make sense.  We can see why he uses them-where they came from, but there is one that we have no idea where it came from: Eever.  Pronounced “EE-ver”.  He uses it consistently in multiple contexts, but always consistently.  He knows exactly what he’s saying, we know exactly what he’s saying, but where it came from, we simply have no clue.  He might say, “I eever want to go to the store.” or “Heidi eever wants to go out the dorn.”  “I eever love this movie.”

It’s almost superfluous.  Take it out, and it still makes sense, but leave it in, and it is almost used as an adverb.  Possibly as a synonym for actually or “just” or “possibly” even “always”.

I eever don’t know.