The other night we were all sitting at the table eating dinner. Violet got a bit too over-zealous with her tomato juice and dumped the entire cup in her lap. “Wet! Wet! Wet!” she immediately started crying. So we whipped her out of her chair and set her on the floor. She looked down at her cute camo pants, now completely covered in red, and said, “DAMN IT!!”

“Did she just…?”

“Yup.”

“How appropriate.”

We tried not to laugh too hysterically while we each denied being the one who taught her such language. I mean, I thought I cursed more creatively than that. But yesterday, while burning dinner, the words “damn it!” just flew out of my mouth. “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” said Violet. So, yes. I curse like an old man. And the scary thing is, I didn’t even notice I was saying it. Guess we’re really going to have to watch the potty mouth now. Because, although Violet seems to know when a situation merits a good curse, she probably doesn’t get that she shouldn’t use that language in mixed company. Until she can understand that a good satisfying string of expletives is best reserved for driving I-35, we’d better keep it clean.

Don’t be fooled, she knows more than she lets on.

Last night Rob and Violet were doing their nigh-night rocking/reading routine. Then, apparently, Rob got lazy because he just started leaving out words. No worries, though, because Violet promptly filled them in for him. This seems to work not just for rhymes, but basically any end of a phrase or sentence. She also can sing most of the songs on the Sara Hickman CD, even those in Hebrew. Let it be known the girl can pay attention.

As far as language learning, I’m starting to miss the baby talk she’s dropping. Anything ending in an “ny” was pronounced “nin”. So Granny was “Rannin” and Barney was “Barnin”. But now “Ranny” and “Barney” are making their appearance. Monkey is still “muh-nin”, but I think it’s the “k” sound that has her flummoxed. Initial consonants and blends are still also a mystery. The “h” sounds seems to be a convenient filler. So shirt is “hurt” and tree is “hree”. Also going is the dramatic pause between each word. “Mommy. Eat. Cereal.” She doesn’t seem to need to think before the next word pops out of her mouth.

Today:

Well, my blog and many other things were put on the back burner for a good solid month and a half. From Thanksgiving to Christmas it seemed that at least one of us in this household was sick. Rob had to take two separate rounds of antibiotics and Violet had a double ear infection that would not go away. Ahhh… holiday fun. I just felt… um, feel… tired. Then my computer died.

But now everyone is healthy, Violet is back in “school” two mornings a week and couldn’t be happier about it. I have a shiny new computer and a passel of editing work about to come in, so I should post while I can.

Since the above account of Violet’s wordiness, she has continued to amaze and entertain with her verbal skills. I still sometimes have to act as translator to the outside world, but words are getting more and more clear. She just kills us with “I love you, Mommy!” or “Good job, Daddy!” (usually after he plays her a song on the guitar). There is running commentary about the toys she’s playing with, the things she’s eating, the way she’s doing something, the things she did earlier that day, the things she imagines her friends are doing right that minute, the things she’d like to do in the near future (aka: right now), the condition of her diaper or various (imagined) owies. Oh, and she’s very proud that she can now reproduce the final “k” sound. Today she was playing with her pig and saying, “Oy… K! Oy… K!” When we explain something to her she nods sagely and replies, “ooohhh” with a rising and falling intonation. She’s also getting a handle on plural and possessive “s”.  And the singing continues. She sings herself to sleep… in the dark… for 45 minutes. Sings herself awake. Sings in the car, to her toys, to her food. She sings the alphabet song and gets about half the letters right. And she recognizes a few. Also, she counts to 11. A few more numbers and she’ll be smarter than mommy and daddy combined.

The language nerd in me is having a lot of fun noticing her learning process: dropping initial or final consonants, using creative ways to get around diphthongs & blends, chunking phrases into single words, etc. And it’s amazing how quickly these phases pass. I’m really having a hard time keeping up. She even seems to have a vague idea about the use of pronouns which, for some reason, makes me very happy.

This kid is unbelievably fun. However… when I went to pick her up from school on Thursday, her teacher looked at me seriously, lowered her voice and said, “I need to have a talk with you and Violet.” We knelt down and Violet immediately started looking guilty; avoiding my eyes, trying to hide behind me. “Every day after lunch,” Ms. Karen began, “Violet waits for our backs to be turned then sneaks to the garbage can. She squeezes her arm through the child-gate, finds the bottle of chocolate milk that Jackson has thrown away, then drinks it.” Sure enough, she had a tell-tale chocolate dribble on her t-shirt. “And when we were playing with beans today at the table she would steal one, hide it in her hand and walk away when our backs were turned. We warned her several times. So then she just showed us that she was stealing the bean, said “bye-bye!” and walked away. We had to put her in time-out.” And this point Violet was hugging me and pleading “Home! Home!”. I had a really hard time not laughing as I tried to quickly “discuss” her behavior with her. She knew exactly what we were talking about. But all I could think was, “Haha!! She’s testing someone else! Welcome to my world. Woohoo!”

Indication of teenage years ahead? Yikes.

Well, I’m certainly not going to get all freaked out about it. Clearly this woman is somewhat ill informed… but she’s a pediatrician, not a linguist. Still, I have noticed that most kids Violet’s age do speak more than she does. Thing is, they all get their ideas across. And Violet was able to do this very well starting around 12 months. I think that has helped immensely, especially with Violet’s… um… temperament. Some of her most frustrating moments are when she can’t communicate. She seems so relieved when she learns how to sign about something. So, a tad late in talking seems quite worth it to me.

But in addition to her uncanny musical ability, she is learning to talk. And let me just say, a cuter thing cannot be fathomed. I love it when we pull into the driveway and she gleefully shouts “home!”; then she asks, “Dada home?” Except tonight she just started saying “Daddy”. I think I’m going to pass out from sheer joy when she says “Mommy”. So far her attempts are something like “Mowmy” and she resorts to “Mama” again. That’s fine. Mama is cool. But I have discovered I am a “Mommy” at heart. Go figure. Meanwhile, my mom is positively foaming at the mouth for Violet’s first attempt at “Granny”.

Violet likes to go for a “wah” (walk) and pick up “wra” (rocks) and stand against the “wa” (wall) while she asks “wehw waw?” (where’s the water?). Yes, they all sound the same to an un-mommy-trained ear. Which is another reason I think the signing is helpful. She often uses signs in conjunction with the spoken words she is working on, so it’s much clearer to us what she’s trying to say. Thus, less frustration, thus, less screaming and crying. Yay!

Other new-ish things she’s saying: “baaaaybeh” (baby, kind of sounds like a construction worker’s cat-call”), “ba” (bath), “weh” (wet), “dih down” (sit down), “ih up” (get up), “an up” (stand up), “hel” (help), and “Wajee” (Violet). We can’t quite figure out if this is just her preliminary attempt at her name or if she wants to be called Wajee.

Eh… whatever works.

And what I said about men being more of a challenge is seriously not sexist. So don’t be getting all Dr. Laura on me. Having said that, it’s totally anecdotal. I’ve just noticed, as have many ESL teachers I’ve worked with, that a larger percentage of men (especially older than, say, 22) seem to struggle more with language than the larger percentage of women. I have no idea why. I’m sure there’s a study out there that looks into that, but I haven’t read it. My other theory is that people who can play a musical instrument also do better with languages, especially in terms of pronunciation. I’m guessing it has something to do with being able to pick out the subtleties of sound. After all, if you can’t hear the differences, you can’t duplicate them.

Despite all my pontification on the subject, I still find it extremely difficult to teach pronunciation. Teaching conversation is fun, but sometimes it feels like an exercise in futility. I know students go out and make the same mistakes they’ve been making for years, regardless of how many times I “correct” them in class. Worse yet, students don’t go out and make mistakes at all. They just never use the second language in a natural environment. Lord knows that’ll never work. (Thus, my obsession with dual language school.) But, hey, I did the same thing when we lived in Korea. After struggling with communication all day, it’s nice to come home and relax into your first language.

Keunyang.

Oh, I also want to say that Uncle Joe has been an award-winning babysitter, making it possible for me to even teach this class. V-Chip loves him. Maybe we should actually pay him sometime…

What? There are NO dual language immersion schools in Austin? What the…? Clearly there must be some mistake.

No. Austin, the oasis of blue weird in a sea of conservative red, does not have this kind of program. Apparently the schoolboard mindset here leans back 60 years to a time when people thought trying to cram two languages into one brain was a hinderance to education rather than a boon. So now the policy is subtractive bilingualism; trying to “cure” students of their first language so they can succeed academically. And yet, so many studies have shown, and anyone bilingual knows, that functioning in two languages actually improves cognition.

And isn’t it insane that American society doesn’t encourage multilingualism? Especially in this increasingly global world? Doesn’t language open up doors and cultures and career paths? Don’t we want our kids to have that opportunity? This doesn’t seem like an issue we should have to fight for. But that’s what I find myself doing.

Recently I went to a Foreign Language Education conference. I got into a conversation with a professor there, who worked at a dual immersion school in California. She was also amazed at the absence of such a program here, especially because she’d like to enroll her bilingual son in one. I said I knew a load of parents (from www.AustinMamas.com and others) who are really interested in something like this. So she started a listserv to mobilize and gather like-minded Austinites. (Please sign up if you’re interested!)

So far we’ve got one good lead. A number of schools in central Austin are about to close. There are many reasons for that possible decision, but a lot of locals want to keep them open. One way we could save them is to install a dual language immersion class. If enough parents are interested in transfering their kids to such a school, we could kill two birds with one stone.

I’ve got a few years until Violet goes to school. Hopefully we’ll get something accomplished before then. Until then, maybe I should sign up for a Spanish class…

First of all, I’ve been a journal-writer since I was eight. I’ve got boxes of them in the attic. (Even as a kid I realized that adults don’t truly understand how the mind of a child works. So I wrote with an eye towards my adult self, someday looking for clues about how my own kid feels. Yes, I’m a documenting fool like that.) But, since “the incident” I haven’t had the heart to put pen to paper. “The incident” as some may know, occurred on our road trip from NY to Austin. We stopped at a cheap Louisiana motel recommended in our guidebook. It didn’t take long to realize that this place had degenerated into some kind of crack-den/whore-house establishment. So we decided to splurge and go to a B&B. The next day, somewhere in the middle of East Texas, I realized that my journal was nowhere to be found. And then it hit me; it had fallen out of the car door-well while we were in the crack-motel parking lot. The thought of those hookers and junkies paging through my personal thoughts puts me in a cold sweat to this day. The journal had been almost full. It included our last months in Korea, the difficulty of reverse-culture shock, being in NY on 9/11, our road-trip… so many important moments… all gone. Now, with this medium, it’s almost impossible to lose. Granted, any crack-whore or psycho can read it if they can get to a computer. I know my audience is no longer only my future self, so can’t be as completely uncensored as I once was. But at least this will help me exorcise those writing demons.

And speaking of demons, the need to document everything is a demon that has reappeared full force since Violet was born… actually, since she was conceived. I bought a great “1st year” calendar that was easy enough to use in my new-baby-fog-head state. But now that we’ve reached that birthday, I can’t seem to find anything similar for the second year.

Okay, so the second year isn’t as full of dramatic physical developments like rolling, crawling, walking, the first tooth, the first time the baby falls head-first onto a pile of sharp lumber in front of the entire extended family, etc. But the second year has something my English-teaching heart can’t wait for: WORDS! And now that we’ve delved into the realm of sign language (in an attempt to curb the ear-splitting-scream-producing frustration of the inability to communicate) words are coming at us fast and furious. Oh yes, my wee language experiment is up and running. So here we will record the raw data.

And yet another reason to start a blog has to do with communication. Now that email is ubiquitous, I’m in touch with more people than ever. But do I write to them all the time? Nooooo… Most of that has to do with the fact that the baby is running all over the house trying to pull the cat’s tail off, or climbing the bookshelves. But also I can get burned out writing slightly different versions of the same life updates in each email. I can’t be the only one who feels like that, right? So, is writing a blog to keep people in the loop lazy? Yes. Will I continue? Yes.

But don’t we already have a family blog? Well, sure, Rob set up http://www.greasyelbow.com/blog/ long ago, awesome nerdy techy that he is. But I’ve discovered, to my amazement, he doesn’t always devote his pontifications to his lovely wife, or even his cute genius daughter. So, maybe the most important reason I’ve started this blog is that it’s about ME. Me me me me. Oh, and Violet.