Loud, Loud, Loud!

And so begin the Toddlerisms!

TLG has a new-ish-to-us Sandra Boynton book called “One, Two, Three!” It counts up to 10 and says something about each number, like ‘one is good for a quiet walk’ and ‘eight makes a very fine class in ballet.’ For number 10 it says “Ten makes a celebration LOUD! LOUD! LOUD!” TLG loves that page in the book – probably because it’s one of the busiest illustrations and also probably due to the way I hammed it up for when I read it to him the first couple of times. He will go find the book and then quickly page through it until he finds that page and then point at it and look at us expectantly. Today, he really got into trying to say “LOUD! LOUD! LOUD!” himself. He doesn’t really have the consonants, but it was very clear what he was saying from context. And he definitely has the pipes. Only instead of three times, he might say it 6 or 7 times. He does definitely get that it’s something to be said loudly, too. It totally cracks us up. The next time he’s doing it we really need to try to get a recording. I should also mention there’s a song that riffs on “Loud Loud Loud” off of Boynton’s recent music collection, “Blue Moo” (recommended) that may also be contributing to TLG’s fascination with the phrase. Definitely going to have to warn his teachers on Monday not to be alarmed if he starts hollering “Owr! Owr! Owr!” at school.

Another favorite page of his is from another of Boynton’s counting books called “Hippos Go Berserk” – the climax happens in the middle of the book, when 45 hippos and a beast are having a big party and “All the hippos go berserk!“. He finds his way to that page quite often. It’s again one of the busiest illustrations. In each case, his favorite pages also have big (as in font-size) words in bold. I started poking around to see if Boynton sells prints of any sort, because blown-up versions of these pages would be great art for his room.