VIVI
Vivi spent much of Wednesday morning showing off new skills. Looking at a puzzle piece showing a purple cephalopod, she pointed to it and said, "octapud!" Just a few minutes before, she had showed off her newfound ability to build sixteen-piece block towers as tall as she is.
JULIA
Julia, on the other hand, is well past the building-blocks stage, either with respect to language or the actual wooden things. The last three bathtimes, she's endlessly repeated "stodd pee coog," a sentence that cracks her up and which has been variously translated as, "I am a cougar," "They speak French," "Don't forget to wash my ears," and a zillion other zany things.
More usefully, and in true Minnesota fashion, she's appending "and whatnot" to any list. "I would like more broccoli and bread and whatnot?" Or, "Daddy, do I need to wash my body and my hair and whatnot?" It works with almost any sentence - declarative, interrogative, or whatnot.
I fear the day when she starts using Minnesotans' classic passive-aggressive response to things they don't like: "Oh, Daddy, that shirt is... different."