MY BILINGUAL BEAUTY

SA is really progressing in her French along with me. As you might imagine this a little humorous as she is just 20 months old and learning English at the same time! Actually I am a little scared about keeping up with her in French once she starts to preschool. "C'est pas juste!" Translation: it's not fair! ( how children learn languages so much more quickly than adults). Seriously, we are so happy with how she is picking up French here. She goes to a French babysitter twice a week so I can go to class, and she and I hang out in the nursery at church on Sundays and with our French friend on Tuesday mornings which gives us lots of exposure to conversational French. Other than that, she lives in an English speaking world. That is why I am surprised at how much she is picking up. She has been saying "Bonjour! Aurevoir! Oui! And Coucou! (the French equivalent of peekaboo) for a while. But lately, she has really started surprising me. When we were looking at dolls in the store the other day she said, "Poupee!" (translation: doll). Then when I gave her some applesauce the other day, I told her that it was apple/ strawberry after which she told me, "pomme/ fraise!" (translation: apple/ strawberry!). C'est incroyable! Translation: It's incredible- to me the way she is just picking up things that I am not even consciously teaching her! In public, I say, "Pardon" quite frequently as I am always needing to make my way through crowds holding a baby or pushing a stroller (not to mention that I am just bigger than mostof the petit(e) people in this country). She has picked up on that expression, and the other day she told me, "Pardon, Mommy." as she maneuvered her way past me while I was cleaning. The wife of our proprietaire i.e. our landlord, told me that SA can repeat in French without an accent, which made D. very happy!

Lest the grandparents be discouraged, she is also learning English very well! She tells everyone, "God bless you" after they sneeze, and lots of other really sweet things in English. She is getting proficient at using "please" and "thank you". And when she is excited about anything, she says, "Oh Boy!" which her little American/ British friends who are 3 and 4 years old really get a kick out of. Tonight at dinner, she held out her hand and told me, "Blessing, Mommy" to remind me that we needed to say the blessing before eating. She calls D. "Honey Daddy" because she has heard me call him "Honey". And her most frequently used English phrase is "Hold you" which she says when she wants to be held- which is often. Her second most often used English expression is, "What's that?" She is like a little sponge soaking in everything that we tell her. Lately she has been really excited about seeing the sun, moon, and the stars. I took her outside the other night and showed her the moon and the stars for the first time, and she was really into it. She is learning "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" which she calls "Tinkle, Tinkle", but her favorite song right now admittedly is French. It is called "Ainsi Font, Font, Font" and is a song about marionnettes that has hand motions. So we have a bicultural baby, I guess. She never seems to experience "cultural stress" as I do and she has assimilated into the French culture with no problem. SA thinks it is normal to kiss everyone on both cheeks when you greet them and when you leave- it's called the "bisou" in French and I am still working on getting it right. Most of the time I feel like a social disaster in French contexts because I am worried if I kissed the right people and if I kissed them the right number of times. "Ce n'est pas evident." Translation: it is not always evident- (the ways of the French).