I haven't done one of those "What's new in Jackson's vocabulary?" posts for a long time, I guess because it seems like one big brainwave day he just started talking like a person. No fanfare. It was, in fact, A Fanfare-Free Big Brainwave Day. (Oh, how I amuse myself.) And now I find him using sentences that hinge on words like "particularly," and employing the pluperfect subjunctive.

But it's his pronunciation that still makes him a little kid. A little kid who must've spent a past life somewhere in France because he places the emphasis so strangely in some of his words that I can only hold a previous incarnation as Cardinal Richelieu accountable for the following phonetic transcriptions:

1. GHOST-ez (n. pl.) A bunch of ghosts.
2. Ker-TAWN (n.) A cube of baked, buttered, and spiced bread not to be eaten in conjunction with anything green and/or leafy.
3. Mum-MAY (n.) A dead, dried-up Egyptian or Incan that WILL NEVER COME BACK TO LIFE.
4. Wer (pron.) "Yours, mine, and wer."

And I don't know which cartoon got him into the habit of saying "BEHOLD!" but I have to say, he doesn't overuse it, even though he knows it will get him a laugh, and he uses it properly, like the time when Jack was looking around the couch for something and Jackson knelt down with his hands cupped reverently in front of him and said, "BEHOLD! THE MIGHTY REMOTE!"