Love Thursday: Words

I am a serious word nerd. I love them, make my living off of them, read them voraciously, and am continually fascinated by them. Way back when Brent and I were dating he used to tell me how attractive he found my vocabulary. We are truly that nerdy. I LOVED it. I had been made fun of for being smart and using big words for years and years. I think pretty much no teenage boy at PiHi found a big vocabulary attractive so Brent was an awesome discovery. Recently, words have re-emerged in a couple humorous and special ways:

1) First the funny - Brent and I have a bit of a word disagreement. I find I occasionally use "faux" or comingled words such as "ginormous" and "chillax." These words made of two other words - Gigantic + Enormous and Chill + Relax, respectively. I enjoy them as they are fun to say and would argue that somehow they are stronger than either of the individual words that make them. Brent, however, argues that each component word means the same as the resulting word so there is no point making a new word when either of the existing words would suffice. This recently led to rounds of hilarity at our house as I found myself explaining to Maggie that it is OK to just "chillax" sometimes -- you know, hang out, not crying, just being quietly with us. I felt compelled to explain that her Daddy thinks that word doesn't exist and shortly thereafter we were both explaining our point of view to a one month old, right...

2) Brendan's expanding vocabulary - As discussed in my earlier posts it grows and grows. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes sweet and occasionally sad. I will always treasure his little sayings of the moment as they change so quickly. For months we heard all about "Thomas the Tank Engine" I can still hear the inflection in my head, but it isn't something he says much now. We've moved on to "Baby sisters crying" and "KaChow-KaPow" among others. I know these too will be short lived and wonder what fun words and sayings are up next.

3) Just Us - Things are a little chaotic with two still so we're often in divide and conquer mode when we're both here. This usually means each of us has a kid we're trying to play with/help/feed/bathe, etc... This means we're less physically present both when awake and when sleeping as often one or the other of us is up with Maggie or sleeping with her. Therefore, we fall back to our experience with being apart and make the words count. We call during the day or talk on google chat. We catch up in quiet moments and say the words that matter. Sometimes "I Love You" has multiple meanings from wistfulness to I'm sorry to the sappier side of things. We need it and find our closeness through brief words in shared moments.

Words are big for us and they are my love this Thursday.