Words a typical 18 month old might speak, “ball”, “dog”, “shoes”, “duck”, “roof”…wait a minute “roof”? Yes this happened with Lil’ E and I found this incredibly funny and thought I would share.

Anyone who lives in the North East United States can probably attest to the fact that this has probably been one of the snowiest January’s in recent history. So with that and owning an old house that’s not properly insulated, you sometimes have to go out and shovel the roof to prevent ice dams.

So every big snow storm either I or my wife crawled out on the flat part of the roof to shovel the snow off. The other parent would tell Lil’ E that “Mama (or Dada) is on the roof”. After a storm (or two or three) every week in January suddenly Lil’ E was saying “roof”…quite clearly. Pretty cool although we figured he was just copying what we were saying.

Then we realized he ACTUALLY knew what it was. While reading “Goodnight Moon” before bed time when we got to the “Goodnight little house” part he pointed to the house and said “house” like he always did…but then he pointed to the top and said “roof” and then “Mama…roof”. We had to restrain our laughter as we were in the process of trying to calm him before bedtime. Rolling on the floor laughing doesn’t exactly help the bed time relaxation routine.

So that’s the strange story of how my son came to say the word “roof”. What are your favorite stories of how your kids learned a particular word? Learn a word you wish they hadn’t?