Forgotten

Cailan likes to use the word ‘forgot’.

Sometimes he uses it to talk about inanimate objects, especially when they’re not where he thinks they should be. When we were visiting my family at Christmas, Cailan and Debbie were playing with some magnetic letters one evening, and when they were done we put the letters back in their metal box. The next day, Cailan found a W on the floor and said “The W forgot to be in the box.” Another time he found one Automoblox in the dining room while all the others were put away in the living room and said “This car forgot to be on the shelf.”

Of course, he seems to really like to use the word when Mommy or Daddy forget something. If I’m singing to him while I’m putting him to bed, and I don’t sing his favorite songs in the right order, he’ll tell me “Mommy forgot to sing the song about going for a bike ride.” If Chris fixes him a snack but doesn’t get him something to drink, Cailan will let him know: “Daddy forgot the milk.”

The other evening, we were all on the couch in our before bedtime ritual, reading volume of Dinosaurs of the World. Each page of the book is about a different dinosaur, with the dinosaur’s name in big letters on the upper left, a short, bold-faced introductory paragraph right below the name, and then more text and a few pictures. We usually read the dinosaur’s name and the introductory paragraph, then talk about the pictures.

So we got to the page about Stegoceras, where the introductory paragraph goes:

Stegoceras was a pachycephalosaur (thick-headed dinosaur) that lived in Western North America in the Cretaceous period. No complete skeletons have
been found, but scientists can tell a lot from its skull.

Chris read the paragraph but omitted the little parenthetical phrase:

Stegoceras was a pachycephalosaur that lived in Western
North America in the Cretaceous period. No complete skeletons have been
found, but scientists can tell a lot from its skull.

Cailan was apparently reading along quite attentively. He said “Daddy forgot to read about thick-headed dinosaur!”