Tuesday 1 April 2014

What in the heck is 'Gamato'?

Thom is rushing Ethan around the grocery store the other day.  As he scurries down the aisles, Ethan is pointing his little finger everywhere, exclaiming, 'Dinosaur.  Rawr!'

Thom couldn't see any dinosaurs, and after a while asked, 'Where?'

Ethan turned his finger around to reveal a tiny dinosaur sticker on the end of his pointer.

And so it goes, as the little man soaks up language like sponge and then surprise us with it later.  He still has a language all his own, and it frustrates him when we don't get it.

For several weeks, he would turn to us and say, 'Gamato' with such certainty and be wildly upset when we couldn't figure out what it was.  At first we offered tomato, but that wasn't it.  It reached the height of desperation one evening with Thom peering into the fridge with Ethan on his hip, pointing to various food items to find out what was Gamato.  Every item got a big 'No!' from Ethan.

We would spend evenings stewing on it.  Discussing it and mulling it over into the night.

Finally, the other day we BBQed and I was cutting up a tomato to add to dinner.  Ethan pipes up: 'Gamato!'  Our jaws drop.  We only offered him tomato about 300 times when he'd pleaded for Gamato before.

I held one up to him.  'Is this Gamato?'

'Yes', he stated matter a factly, reaching for it.  We sat down to dinner.  And you know, he didn't eat a single one.