Girl/Grill

While Joshua has mostly grown out of all the cute but wrong ways he says different words, there are still a few things he says which are not the correct word or pronunciation of the word.  He has pretty much always been the first kid to wake up from naptime, and sometimes he doesn't nap at all.  So if either Meghan or I (usually Meghan) are getting everyone up to go downstairs after naptime, usually we'll tell him something like, "Okay, it's time to go get the girls up."  Somehow he misheard this at some point (or else we have accents of which we're totally unaware), and he will sometimes mention it on his own, except he'll say something like, "Is it time to get the grills up?"  Clara learns most what she needs to know in life from Joshua, so she has picked it up as well, except she says it like, "The gwillz are already up!"  I'm sure as soon as Hannah tries to says "girls", it will be the same.  A few of the other things Joshua (and usually the other two as well) says are:

• Pinky Square = Pinky.  Someone somewhere along the way taught them the concept of a "pinky swear".  Joshua misheard this as "pinky square", except he didn't realize that meant the act/concept of doing the pinky swear, and he thinks it's just the name of the finger.  So it he were to get a small ouchie on his pinky, and if I asked him what hurts, he would say, "I hurt my pinky square" while showing me his pinky finger.
• Hangaber = Hamburger.  I know when I was a little kid, I said hamburger as "hamberamber", and Joshua is continuing the tradition, as he started calling it a hangaber.  This comes up a lot, because almost every kids' menu has hamburgers, and Joshua really likes them, so he and Clara will often request a meal of "hangaber, fries, and bubbly (pop)".
• Bled = Blood.  Our kids love band-aids.  Most injuries real or perceived result in a request for one.  The kids rarely actually have any blood, but they know that if they do, a band-aid is pretty much guaranteed.  But Joshua misheard it in the past as "bled" for the noun (not for the past tense of the verb, which would of course be correct).  So we get a lot of requests along the lines of "Dad!  I need a band-aid.  I got bled!"  They always "have bled" or "got bled" if they think it'll help their case for getting a band-aid.
• I Spy Down = Upside Down.  Sometimes I'll hold the kids and flip them around and hold them or carry them upside down.  In that situation, Joshua might say, "Look Mama!  I'm I spy down!"
• Bullzdozer = Bulldozer, Escavator = Excavator.  Like most boys his age (or any age?), Joshua loves heavy construction equipment.  From an early age, he would like to talk about the different construction vehicles he would see in books or in real life.  One of his favorite books (and one of my favorite of his books), Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, talks about several different types (cement mixer, crane truck, bulldozer, excavator, and dump truck).  But he really latched on to the bulldozer and excavator, and he loves pointing them out, even though he can't quite say either one correctly.
• Sharpie = Sharp.  Somewhere along the way, Joshua determined that sharpie is the word to describe something that's sharp.
• Tape-a-Measure = Tape Measure.  Joshua loves tools, especially tape measures.  He always wanted to use mine or Meghan's, and I didn't want him to damage them, so I bought him one of his own.  He loves his tape-a-measure.
• Superzero = Superhero.  I'm not sure how this one happened, but it's funny because in a way it's the opposite of what he means.  At least, that's what the greatest actor and musician of our generation, Vanilla Ice, would have you believe.

He also said Clala instead of Clara for awhile, but he now says it as Clara.  In general, we don't correct him on any of these.  They are not serious enough and he's not at an age where it's critical enough that we need to correct him.  He'll start saying them correctly soon enough, and most of these are really cute, so we're trying to enjoy them while they last.