Thursday 27 March 2008

Suzanne and "the boy"

While Suzanne's active vocabulary has become too much to list, her little self is becoming funny to describe.

At this point in her little bilingual life, my little girl (since she's no longer a baby!), is quite the chatterbox. I was woken up the other morning with "Mommy, morning!". There is at least one new comprehensible word a day and at least two incomprehensible ones, not to mention recent franglais inventions like "assit" (assis+sit).

Recently Suzanne has taken to singing, some songs we don't recognize (like when she seems to be singing "no not the birds"), but some of them, like the annoying Signing Time songs, we recognize all too well. I have to admit that it's very cute when she busts out in song singing, "I'm a girl I'm a boy I'm a girl I'm a boy." But there's something about that boy...

She still refers to "the boy" who hurt her nose at the park when my mom was here. And then yesterday, we went to the library. We got there too early so we had to go to the playground. Suzanne cried "book book!" until I managed to make her understand that the books had to wait a couple minutes. While we walked to the playground, a little boy road by on his bike. Suzanne clutched her water cup close as she eyed the boy and then said, "the boy. s'ma. deleau". Translation: the boy. It's mine (C'est à moi). de l'eau (water). And then for the rest of the day, she kept looking over her shoulder for the boy who was coming to take her water. Add this to the fact that she's been repeating, "non non c'est pas bien" (no no, that's not good) over and over for the past week, and it makes me wonder if the little boys at the nanny's aren't a bit grabby and naughty. Or maybe she's just learning early on that men in general can't be trusted. I don't know. You tell me.

Some of my favorite Suzanne-isms of the moment are: slide, push, run, pineapple, apricot, chocolat (in French), puddle, "open sesame" when I open the garage door and "hi Marcel" when passing by our car, named Marcel, to get into the building. I'm still so surprised at how much English is coming out of her mouth, but I'm sure it will change at some point. Maybe "the boy" will scare the English out of her but I hope not.

6 comments:

wcs said...

The glasses are crazy cool!

I think I'll start using "assit." It just sounds good.

Reb said...

I can send them to you when she outgrows them. You are more than welcome to use "assit" as long as you pay me royalties if it ever becomes common lingo.

Sarah @ Baby Bilingual said...

Sounds like she's really picking up the English! I'm glad to hear that it's working out despite the influence of "the boy."

Reb said...

there's definitely a lot more French going on than I'm aware of - I am convinced she's beginning to understand that I don't speak like the others.

The Late Bloomer said...

What wonderful progress! I love reading about Suzanne and how much she is changing... But I'm so sorry about that boy! Man, I hope she doesn't run into that again.

And the English -- oh, it gives me hope... My fear is that I've gotten so used to speaking French so much that I won't speak English ENOUGH with my child -- isn't that crazy?! I plan on making a solid effort to ONLY speak English, but then again, I know how I tend to revert to French so often already with my boyfriend, who finds that I don't speak enough English with him. Very frustrating...

Reb said...

Before Suzanne was born, we spoke almsost exculsively French at home; It was tough to change but now we each speak our own language without any thought.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...