February 2012

Our family was at one of our favorite restaurants with our visitor from Uruguay, Julio. Sophie leans over and whispers to me, "Mommy, I have a secret and you can't tell anyone. Julio speaks Spanish really good."

Five minutes prior, Dominic had yelled out, "Booyah Mommy!" loud enough in the restaurant for everyone to hear. I responded, "Booyah, Domino!" with a little less volume and enthusiasm.

Seeing a new expression from a one year old is amazing.

For someone who studies languages and language acquisition, seeing this child use Spanglish is fascinating.

Domino can't open bottles, fridges, boxes on his own, so he often asks help from me or Nadine.

In English, it is simply "Open it!" and in Spanish "¡Ábrelo!". He prefers to combine the two.

He will look up at us and simply say, "Open lo!"

After picking Sophie up from daycare, I asked her, "Did you play with Adelle (one of her friends) today?"

Sophie replied, "Yes, she said she stayed up all night last night."

I responded, "She probably slept a little bit."

Then she responded with all seriousness, "No, she said she's nocturnal."

Kids transform the mundane into memorable.

Recently, I was woken up by Sophie.

She felt it would be funny to wake me up by pulling the covers off my feet and expose them to the cold.

Unexpectedly, she then licked the bottom one of my feet and in a joyous morning voice proclaimed, "Daddy, wake up! It's time to join the day!"

I couldn't have agreed with her more, it was time to join the day.

And then wipe the spit off the bottom of my right foot.