Disgusting

When I came home yesterday evening, I was greeted by Muffin, who gleefuly declared "I'm DISGUSTING", while she danced around, smiling and clearly proud of herself. She seemed to think this was hysterical, and was having a blast being "disgusting". We asked her where she got the word, she said it was from Max & Ruby (a cartoon she watches sometimes). Clearly there was nothing disgusting about her (just adorable as usual). But she had a blast pretending to be disgusting. Go figure!

By the way - the spanglished word of the day is MILKA = which is her version of Milk in Spanish, she just added an 'a' to translate it. Yes, she knows the correct word is 'Leche' and clearly thought she was very clever calling it something else. She did tell me earlier today that she can sometimes speak in Spanish. I'll take what I can get!

Carrota

Muffin and I have a little tradition at bedtime when we read our nighttime stories. Every night she will go to her "library" and pick out one book to read as "hola" and one to read as "hello" (i.e. one in Spanish and one in English). If the "hola" book is originally written in English I just translate it on the spot for her. Last night she picked a picture book as the "hola" book and I thought it would be a good opportunity for Muffin to practice her Spanish. So I asked her to tell me what the different food names were in Spanish, and if she hesistated I'd help her along... Then she decided to be sly and funny… and started inventing her own translations by spanglishizing English words - for example for Carrots, she called them "Carrota". She very obviously thought she was clever because she was giggling through the whole thing. Sigh… she's too smart for me already and she's only THREE !!!

Picnic in February?

Sunday morning Muffin woke up asking for a picnic. My response was, honey, its too cold to have a picnic! But that didn’t deter her, she just suggested we do it at the mall. And being true to herself, it was just not any picnic, she asked for tablecloth & flowers & an an umbrella. I was able to dissuade her from the umbrella and we used placemats instead of a tablecloth. It turned out great! I packed up simple sandwiches for everyone, brought some water & some chips, and we had a wonderful little picnic in the middle of Woodbridge mall.

Later that day while we were chatting, she suddenly asks me about talking in Spanish and she says, mami, I'd like to learn Spanish. I almost hit the floor! So now I'm trying to talk even more Spanish with her, which is hard b/c she speaks English so well its automatic to respond back in English. When I catch myself, I'll repeat my response in Spanish, repeating in both languages whatever word or phrase might be new to her. Hey, she just might still turn out bilingual!