Pat yourself on the back!

As I was thinking about what to write (so many unfinished and overlapping thoughts in my head these days!), I read a couple of the older posts I wrote about my kids and their bilingualism. And it came to me...

I used to be so worried (and still am to a certain extent) about how to make being American part of their daily lives, not just the language but also the culture. Over the past week, I've realized how much English and being American has become and IS an integral part of who my children are and of their daily experiences.

I mentioned that I am going into Suzanne's class to do some "American" lessons. Since one of her teachers already does English lessons with them, I decided not to teach English but to do lessons on American culture (also since that's the only guidance I got from the teacher). Last week during the lesson on Thanksgiving, some of the kids remembered my Thanksgiving lesson from a couple years earlier. And when I took out the cranberries for them to taste, one of them even said, "oh c'est pas bon ça!" because she remembered tasting them. Suzanne continues to be unfazed by speaking English in front of her entire class and even wants to get up in front of the class with me to help. I actually had to translate what she was saying to me so her class would understand. The other day, after taking my kids to the Hanukkah party organized by the Lille synagogue (for another post), she said to me with great pride, "I"m French, English and a little Jewish.". American, not English...she still has trouble with the whole English language versus English person thing. 

Then on Saturday, Max's school had their annual Christmas party which starts with the kids all singing Christmas songs (so NOT politcally correct) and ends with the parents taking home some useless object made by their kid in class (this year I got a tree made out of cotton balls and a paper tube and a framed picture of Max). As the songs went on, the principal introduced a song by saying"initiation aux langues étrangères" and the kids started singing "Jingle Bells". I lit up. Why? Because that song is my legacy! When Suzanne was in her first year of school, I came into her class everyday for 2 weeks to teach them that song so they could sing it at the Christmas party. And the song lives on even though I didn't teach it. As I continued on my American high, while helping sell the baked goods, a mother asked me what I'd made...because she wanted to eat my cakes because they are so damn good. My American baked good are a staple of the weekly bakesale.

When I got home from the school party, I realized that this whole bilingual and bicultural thing is normal for my kids and for everyone around us. Yes, people are sometimes insensitive or uneducated about bilinguals and/or Americans, but mostly, people see it in a positive light and accept that this is how our family functions.

So please, bilingual parent, take a second to pat yourself on the back. You are doing a great job!

Welcome terrible 3s.

We got out of it lucky...what we made up for in lack of terrible 2s, we are now suffering through wit hte terrible 3s. And they are terrible.
Since school started in September, Max has been a bit difficult. He is still a sweet, cute and very entertaining little person. But he is also a total pain in the ass....especially around 3 in the morning.

We tried talking to him but he still comes upstairs to our room because he can't find his pacifier/his stuffed animal/has a runny nose/wants me to take his CD player out of the room/ etc...and last night we had screaming and kicking because we refused to go downstairs to "help" him find his stuff.

Besides the sleeping though, everything's on target. Max is still speaking with an accent in both French and English. One of Jerome's friends actually put his finger on it : his cadence and annonciation in French are purely American (not German like we thought). And in English, he just has a slightly French twang.

But still, I never imagined that my kids would still be speaking 99% English to me at 6 1/2 and 3! And I never imagined that they'd still LIKE speaking English and want to learn more!

I no longer keep a language journal for either of them, which I sometimes regret because they come up with some amazing expressions, but they speak so much that I couldn't possibly record everything they say.

Suzanne is starting to read in French and trying to transpose her French reading into English. But we're not pushing the English reading. It will come. At the moment, I am constantly correcting sentences like, "what is it like pasta" which comes from the French "c'est quoi comme pâte". And yesterday, I heard her say "it's find" as in it's good or satisfactory so I found myself explaning the difference between when something is good and something is found. She insists on correcting me when I say "saw" like "Mommy, I sawed it".  She also takes pleasure (I can tell by the twinkle in hereye) at correcting my French and her especially her brother's English.

Max, being 3, is still taking a lot of liberty with both English and French, saying a lot of "yaourt" as the French say when refering to lyrics of a song that you don't know all the words to so you make them up.  And Max is also effusive with his language which can be very sweet or not. It's extremely sweet when he says things like "I like you so much that I love you." And not so sweet when he furrows and brow and says "I'm very angry!" and throws himself on the ground.

But the most interesting part of their bilingualism is how different they are, which shouldn't surprise me but does. Suzanne continues to breeze in and out of each language, code switching without a problem but also inventing words and interposing structures (interlanguage) while Max code switches at the drop of a hat and never would think of creating his own vocabularly. If Suzanne doesn't know how to say something in English, she says it in French. If Max doesn't know how to say something in English, he just doesn't say it. I'm hoping that Max's stubborness is more linked to the terrible 3s than it is to his personality...but I'm not holding my breath.

Halloween the Franco-American way

Halloween is just normal for my kids. It's interesting and strange to see how they just accept it and think that EVERYONE is doing it when in fact the highest concentration of "real" Halloween was in my little neighborhood and consisted of me and a few friends. 

When we did Halloween in the US 2 years ago, I noticed Suzanne's relationship to her booty. The next day, she'd forgotten it despite the fact that she had at least a pound of candy. This year, after hitting only 7 houses, the kids came home and Suzanne instantly spread her candy out on the table. She organized, categorized, counted and tried to trade with her little brother. I stood there and laughed since that's exactly what we used to do. But instead of gorging herself with candy, she promprly forgot about it and her Halloween bag (a black cat we brought back from the US) is still sitting on the sideboard. Max on the other hand has been sneaking candy without telling us and his stash is slowly dwindling.

All of the people were neighbors I know or friends, except for one. When we rang his bell, he came to the door and it was a man I'd never seen. A youngish guy with a nice smile (don't get any ideas). After he gave the kids candy, I thanked him for answering my call for participants. He told me he was happy to participate and actually thanked me for taking the intitiative !

I guess that I have imparted the fun of Halloween on my children. But France has imparted its respect for food and its moderation...

And, as a parent, I've realized that all you need is 7 neighbors to give you candy and a whole bunch of loud friends to have a fun Halloween!

Lille Halloween 2012: the sequal

Following up on last year's very successful Halloween endeavor, I'm coming back for more...

Last year, I managed to organize trick-or-treating in my quiet neighborhood and the gaggle of kids (all 8 of them!) really felt like, well, Halloween! So this year, I've decided to expand to the next street! Yes, dear readers, Halloween will take over two Lille streets! (and then the world...).

As with last year, I will distribute flyers with basic information about Halloween like how it's celebrated in the US, what time and what to give and will ask my neighbors to stick the imagine of the pumpkin from the flyer on their window if they are a Halloween friendly house. I found that by inviting the neighbor's to participate, the kids avoided much disappointment and the neighbors avoided much annoyance.

But that's not all!

Halloween falls on a Wednesday this year which also happens to be the day the next bilingual storytime is planned! So the librarians at the Wazemmes library are busy planning a special Halloween storytime full of scary books and songs (does anyone know any?).

I also plan on organizing a pre-trick-or-treat party for the little kids followed of course by a post-trick-or-treat party for the big kids. I was surprised to find jack-o-lantern lights at the big Carrefour supermarket as well as spider webs and spider rings! But, I haven't been able to find costumes...

A couple of years ago, I took on the task of making a pumpkin costume for Suzanne. I followed Martha Stewart's instructions and made it out of an orange pillow case. That costume was used by both kids. Helas, the kids now want to be a cowgirl-vampire and Super Why. I've already started pulling together the pieces of the Super Why costume but not quite sure how to attack the cowgirl-vampire thing.

I am also planning the menu which will be full of skeleton cookies, ghoulish drinks and spider cupcakes. We plan on going to the local farm this weekend to pick apples and to pick up some pumpkins for carving.

And last but not least, I have yet to ask my kids' teachers if I can do something Halloween-y in class. I'm not sure how it will go over now that Suzanne's in "big school".  You can be in French school but still have some fun...right?

Brave

A single word I would use to describe my kids over the past 2 weeks: brave.

When I planned this 2 month long stay in the US, there are a couple things I didn't factor in. First, I didn't take into account how hard it would be for them to be without their dad for 3 weeks. I knew they'd miss him, but I thought they would be having so much fun that they wouldn't think about it too much. But, as Suzanne's daily evening meltdown turns into a Max daily meltdown, it proves that Papa is sorely missed. 

Second, the relationship with the language. This one is obvious yet I didn't think it would be an issue for some reason. Suzanne has slipped easily into English and back into French when speaking to Papa. But Max had trouble getting into all-English mode and now has trouble getting back into French. Third, I didn't realize how overwhelmed I'd be even with the time away from the kids. When they come home in the afternoon, they are in full force and need my full attention. By the time they're in bed, I'm exhausted and just want to curl up. This point makes it hard because there are things I want to do and people I want to see. But I'm so tired that I can't even make a phone call. 

Keeping all of the above points in mind, Suzanne started a second week of day camp yesterday. Last week, she was in a half day programme in town. But yesterday, she started a day camp at a nearby lake which entails taking the bus. As the bus pulled away yesterday, I had one of the worst parenting moments of my life - my daughter was waving goodbye while shaking her head no and crying. She was trying so hard to be brave and to pull it together. I knew she would have fun, there was no doubt in my mind, but it was hard for everyone. I didn't realize quite how brave my little girl was until I really started to think about how much change she's dealt with in the past 2 weeks. Even small things that I take for granted are different. For example, she keeps asking me why there are wires everywhere outside. She's talking about the wires hanging on the wooden telephone poles. She's never seen them before because we live in a large city and wires are attached to the houses or underground. Simple yet different enough to wonder why and to throw her off. And I'm not even talking about the stress of meeting new people! 

Max has thrown himself full force into day camp after a rocky start. The first day, the teachers weren't sure if he spoke English. But now he's part of the group. I'm not actually sure how much he's actually interacting with the other kids, but I'm sure he's getting a lot out of the experience even as a lone wolf at the daycamp.

So brave. My kids are brave. And I'm so damn proud of them.

June storytime

June storytime is around the corner...tomorrow, Saturday June 9th at 10:30 am at the Wazemmes library. While I'm reading books, my daughter will be having her tooth drilled so this will be a happy distraction.

A second storytime will be held on June 20th at 3:30pm.

I had a comment on my blog a few weeks ago from germanintheafternoon, an American who started a German bilingual storytime in Pennsylvania. She left a comment about her son's reaction to her reading stories to other kids. I have to say that it struck home. I've found myself in terribly awkward situations while reading to groups of kids. How do you handle it when your almost 3 year is climbing on your lap and your 6 year old is climbing on your back while you read to a group of kids? Reading has always been an intimate moment for me and the kids, since the moment they were born. It has been my way of insuring that  they have some English in their French filled day. Reading means mommy time. Add to that the fact that many of the books I read are theirs! So, it's quite understandable that their animal instincts take over. But it takes everything I have to not yell at them...

At the storytime in May, at the book fair, the director of the main library came to introduce herself to me. And then I received an email from the branch's director with someone else in copy - who I assume to be one of the head honchos - asking me officially if I would continue doing the bilingual storytime and if we could do a special Halloween edition for Lille Fantastic 3000, the Lille festival that begins in the fall.

Woohoo! Now I just need to figure out how to get paid for this...

May story time and Max speaks franglais

I'm extremely excited to announce the dates for he May storytime for a couple of reasons. First because storytime is cool. Second because storytime is super cool this month because we'll be doing a special edition and third because Multilingual Living published an article I wrote about storytime.

So the dates: the normal Wednesday storytime will take place on May 23rd at 3:30pm at the Wazemmes library. Then, we'll have a special storytime at Gare  Saint Sauveur on May 26th at 2:00pm. There is a book fair and lots of special events going on so we're part of the festivities. It's really exciting because Stéphane Servant, the author of Le Machin/The Thing, will be there for sign books. So he'll hopefully get to see what we've done with his dual language book.

I promise it will be so very cool.

Since story time has really taken off, I contacted Multilingual Living, a really amazing webzine on all aspects of multi-lingual life. And the result is this article that I hope will be helpful to anyone else looking for ideas on how to increase the multi-lingual presence in your life. So here it is: Bilingual Storytime.

On another note, Max is increasingly proficient in franglais. I've previously said that Max doesn't mix his languages...and he didn't until the past couple weeks. I'm not sure what happened, maybe it's just the age where he's trying to say more things and doesn't have the words or grammar to do so in a single language. or maybe he's finally decided that not everything is black and white and can't be compartmentalized. In the past week I've heard Max use English grammar in French sentences a few times and use a couple of words in the wrong language. For example, he said "je veux les" to his grandparents which is a perfect translation of "I want them" (and he really did want those chips!). He also said "C'est pas droit" to his grandmother when she put on his boot. She thought it was funny because it wasn't right as in the direction (ie left and right) but what he meant was literally "it's not on right" ie the sock was scrunched up in his boot and it didn't feel right.

Another thing to note is that the kids spent all weekend with their grandparents speaking French. When I spoke to Suzanne on the phone yesterday, her English sounded French. It was very strange and interesting to see how quickly her language adapted.

Oh, tower of babble...

Storytime : spring has sprung!

Storytime at the Wazemmes Library has really taken off. The February dates were successful. The Saturday reading took place on the Saturday that school vacation started. Since my mother was our “guest reader”, I recruited some friends to make sure there’d be at least some kids. And to my surprise, the room was overflowing with both kids and their parents! There were at least 20 people crammed into the little room at the back of the Médiatheque Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier!

We didn’t have a French librarian with us that day, so I took over the French part (at one point reading the English instead! Old habits die hard). My mother and I read a couple of books in bilingual format to get the kids acquainted and then I let my mother do her librarian thing. She told the story of Joseph’s little overcoat, using paper and scissors to tell the story. She then read a couple of simple books in English, finishing with an English translation of a French book called Press Here (or Un Livre) by Hervé Tullet which is a book that screams for crowd participation. But the kids wouldn’t participate. By the time my mother was done, all of the kids were grabbing and pressing and shaking the book (this is normal behavior for this book which asks the reader to do all those things to move the spots around on the pages).

My mother observed how reticent the kids were. Where American kids would have been geting up and repeating the words or pressing the book, the French kids sat still and listened. This harkens back to my participation theory of the French which I’ve already observed in professional settings. But I digress...

March story time dates are Wednesday, March 21st at 3:30PM and Saturday, March 31st at 10:30AM .

Here is a list of books we have read so far and which seem to work well in the bilingual setting and format. There are both books in French and English, and there are some bilingual in the text.

• Le Machin/ the Thing by Stéphane Servant and Cécile Bonbon
• Bark George/ Aboie George by Jules Feiffer
• What a Radish! / Quel radis dis donc!  by Praline Gay-Para and Andrée Prigent  
• Little Blue, little Yellow / Petit Bleu, Petit Jaune by Leo Lionni
• A Color of His Own  / Une histoire de cameleon  by Leo Lionni
• The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog/ Le Pigeon Trouve un Hotdog by Mo Willems
• What Faust Saw/ La Nuit de Faust by Matt Ottley
• Yummy / Je te croquerai byLucy Cousins
• Elephant and Piggie : there’s a bird on your head / Un Oiseu sur la tête by Mo Willems
• I like Books/J’aime les livres by Anthony Brown
• Willy the Dreamer / Marcel le reveur  by Anthony Brown
• My Dad / Mon Papa by Anthony Brown
• My Mum / Ma Maman by Anthony Brown
• I Want My Dinner/ Je Veux Manger by Tony Ross
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear / Ours Brun, Ours Brun by Eric Carle
• We’re Going on a Bear Hunt /  La Chasse à l'ours by Helen Oxenbury
• Tralalire : Ours Bleu et Tigre Rouge - a bilingual text from issue 116 from july 2010)
• La maitresse dit hello by Kris di Giacomo
• Tout le Dit Hello by Kris di Giacomo
• Farmer Duck / Le canard fermier by Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury
• Press Here / Un Livre - Hervé Tullet
• Come Out and Play Little Mouse  /Viens jouer avec moi, petite souris! x by Robert Kraus, Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey

Other books in English that work well for a non-English speaking group:

• Cat the Cat by Mo Willems
• Orange, Pear, Apple Bear by Emily Gravett
• Press Here by Hervé Tullet
• Monday Spaghetti by Eric Carle
• Jazzy in the Jungle by Lucy Cousins
• ABCs by Bruno Munari
• Red Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton

The fairy-mouse : a bicultural story

There is a note in the scrapbook that (I believe) is (still) in my old room at my parents' house in New Jersey. It says something like:  Dear Becca, Thank you for the lovely tooth. A little baby will love it. From, the Tooth Fairy.
It's a note my Mom wrote and saved when I lost my first tooth. I found the note along with a quarter (which was a lot in 1981!) in the heart shaped tooth pillow that was attached to my bedpost.

About 6 weeks ago at the breakfast table, Suzanne told me her tooth hurt. I touched it and it moved...and so did it's neighbor! J and I were both verklempt (see Dana Carvey in SNL). We haven't talked much about it, but the little we did talk about it went something like this : tooth fairy or petite souris. We decided to mix them up. It's not completely farfetched - If Peppa Pig's tooth fairy could be a pig, then why couldn't Suzanne's souris be a fairy and vice versa?

We both hold our cultural symbols and childhood symbols close to our hearts. Losing teeth and finding a coin under your pillow is a childhood rite of passage. The tooth fairy/souris is a minor and easily resolved issue which touches us both. But there will be other issues which are harder to resolve and which don't have a happy middle, where you can't just combine the two cultural symbols and come up with a reasonably acceptable hybrid.

But for the moment, Suzanne's teeth are literally hanging by a thread. They are just hanging out in her mouth, waiting to fall off into the sink or her glass of water or the toilet...

Suzanne fiercly believes that the fairy mouse will come and give her at least two coins for her tooth (maybe not such a bad idea to give her a French and an American coin so she can start saving for this summer's trip to the US?).  So, when the fairy mouse leaves a letter to a bilingual kid, what language is it in : French or English?

Max's terrible twos and counting.

You asked so I'll tell. Well, YOU didn't ask (since I'm not really sure anyone even reads this blog anymore!), but some people around me have been asking so I'll tell...

Max is 2 years and 3 months old and he's a firecracker, to say it nicely. Or as I often say to him, "it's lucky you're so damn cute." My son is a boy. Hard core boy. He throws, he hits, he tantrums (is that a verb) and boy does he eat! I don't think there is anything the child won't eat. Max is also a chatterbox.

This morning, one of my coworkers asked me if Max spoke English. Yes indeed I said proudly. Max's English level is actually better than his French because his English is more mature and doesn't include baby language.

When Max first began speaking, I remembering commenting on how precise he was.  Unlike his sister who would try to talk even if it wasn't perfect, Max won't say anything unless it is precise. when he speaks, in both French and English, you can tell he has taken time to formulate and think about what will come out of his mouth. And then, you can actually hear it in his breathing as he pushes the words out of his mouth (when he's not yelling at his sister that is).

So Max, at almost 2 and a half years old is not far behind his sister in verbal communication in both French and English. I have my mother's visit last summer to thank for the English push.

There are a couple points in Max's speech that I should comment on like his use of "mine" all the time. He confuses "mine" for the possessive adjective "my". He also has very gutteral speech and a way of rolling his "r" which makes him sound slightly German when he says things like "no Suzanne! Mine water"! He also has a slight lisp that I hope will go away with time. But so far it hasn't impeded him from making himself understood.

I love my kids dearly and am so proud of them. But, sometimes I wish they'd shut up.

How to recrute a babysitter : la suite

Over 3 years ago, I posted about harassing English speaking students in the park during my run. I was trying to recruit a babysitter for Suzanne who was nearly 1 at the time. The problem was that I wasn't quite ready for a babysitter yet.

Two years ago, when Max was one, J and I were on vacation and I was desperately craving a return to aikido at the rentrée. But...I couldn't allow myself. It took a very long discussion for me to come to a very simple conclusion : I couldn't leave my kids for an evening at aikido because every minute away from them meant that much less English. The solution was simple : hire an English speaker to take care of them once a week so I could go and know people to the ground once again (nb: aikido is a non-violent martial art that is extremely popular in France).

So, I turned to my blogging contacts and Elizabeth, a Lillloise living in the US, put me in touch with the local university. I told them I was looking for a sitter, they sent out an announcement to the exchange students and just like that we had a babysitter. This is the second year in a row we've hired an American to watch the kids once a week.

And I have to say that I wish we'd done it sooner. There are so many advantages that it makes me realize why au pairs are so popular. Obviously, I enjoy having time to myself, especially when there is minimal mommy guilt involved. But the advantage of having another native English speaker in my kids life is immeasurable. Because the babysitters don't speak French as well as someone who's been living here for a while, they don't speak French in front of my kids and so my kids don't even realize the sitter speaks any French at all. This is essential for bilingual kids, I've found.

Like many bilinguals I've read about, my kids are easily able to suss out who speaks what language. And if a person speaks the "wrong" language to them they either don't respond or respond in the "correct" language. So having another person around who speaks no French with them - since they obviously know I speak french - has been a real gift to them, especially since Max was only 1 when we hired our first babysitter.

So to any Americans in Lille, there is a huge number of American and Canadian students out there who are looking to make money. You can either get directly in touch with the university's foreign student coordination (I got in touch with the Catho). You can also go to the forum for assistants in France. Many language assistants are also looking for extra income.

The one thing you need to be careful of is to be extremely clear with the sitter that you want him/her to speak only English with your kids. We interviewed one girl who spoke French to our kids just after I explained just that; we didn't hire her.

Good luck!

Thanksgiving : a long way from home

Pumpkin pie. They say you either love it or hate it. When I was a kid, I remember distinctly not liking it. But as I’ve gotten old, and the US has grown further away as I implant myself more and more in France, I look forward to my annual pumpkin pie. Weird.  

So as Thanksgiving approaches, and I began planning my now annual Thanksgiving extravaganza where 30+ Franco-Americans embark on my still unfinished house, I felt like an old pro. I knew where to get the turkeys and once again called the Ferme Avicole Bauduin in Rosult, I was able to get fresh cranberries via a German collegue, dried cranberries at Carrefour and cornmeal at the organic store (thanks to all the gluten free baking I’ve been doing recently). And, I even delegated more than usual. I am trying NOT to bake a pie, but I’m not sure I can hold out…

Yesterday I baked 4 dozen mini pumpkin-cornmeal muffins (a mash up of the Joy of Cooking's pumpkin bread and Brooke Dojny's Shaker Corn Pumpkin bread) to bring to school and the crèche so my kids have some sense that it’s a special day.

This morning, I accompanied my 5 year old to school where I explained Thanksgiving to her class in a way that avoided religion and colonial power and God (there’s a Jehovah’s Witness in the class who has been innocently indoctrinating the other kids about God watching them from his perch in the sky). I told them that a long time ago, before planes, the English came to America and met the Native Americans. The English found new food they didn’t know about and celebrated with the Native Americans. So today in the US, it’s a holiday where people eat pumpkin, cranberries and turkey. The kids devoured the muffins and dried cranberries; and the brave few even ate some raw cranberries. There were some interesting questions like: did the English sleep on the boat? Did they eat fish? Why didn’t they take a plane? And then, P (who happens to be very sweet but is the class menace) said “it must take you a long time to get to school from your house since it’s so far away.” And it made me realize that home really is where the heart is...

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

 

My son thinks that the father in Knuffle Bunny is a mother. And it's all my fault...

The other night when Max handed me Knuffle Bunny to read before bedtime, I told him that I couldn't read it because it was in French, "papa's language". I showed Max the English copy and said "this is Mommy's". We read Knuffle Bunny, Knuffle Bunny Too and Knuffle Bunny Free all the while Max was pointing to the father in the story saying, "Mommy".

When Suzanne was his age, we would refer not to French and English but to Papa and Mommy's language often saying things like "how does papa say it?" when she used the other parent's langauge with the wrong parent. Suzanne seemed to take the information, file it away and be on to something new. But Max is different. Max is less analytical than his sister and more in the moment. So whatever we tell him, he puts into action immediately. So it's quite understandable that since there are two copy's of Knuffle Bunny in the room, and I told him one was Papa's language but they look exactly the same, so you could reason that the other book is Mommy's and therefore the papa in that book is also a mommy.

I often wonder how my children process their languages. It's an interesting phemonenon to see at the bilingual storytimes I do. You can see that the bilingual kids are happy to hear both languages because for them, their brains are already doing what the librarian and I are doing outloud.

And then there are the questions of why we speak English sometimes and why I don't speak French. A couple weeks ago, Suzanne asked me if we could speak English sometimes so we wouldn't go to prison. She seems convinced now taht we won't go to prison and that speaking English is pretty cool. But then yesterday, she asked me why I speak English better than I speak French. I explained to her that I didn't learn French until I was at school so I always spoke English at home with my family. I like her interest in other people's language capacities and find it rather reassuring that she is wondering about her own language skills. Because it's all so very normal for her to speak two languages so why isn't it for everyone else?

Kids are amazing...

Halloween 2012 : the secrets to success

Six houses.

Halloween was built up in our house for weeks. We decorated the windows with cut out pumpkins. We talked about costumes. We even practiced dressing up in them. And then the day came.

My friend A had her traditional Halloween party. This year there were special treats brought from the US army base in Lille (yes there is one!) replete with real cupcakes with real frosting. Thekids enjoyed  bobbing for apples and doing a candy hunt in the back yard - a weak replacement for trick or treating, but you do what you can.

As night began to fall (just past 4pm!), we started to get geered up for Halloween. When I took a walk down my street earlier in the day, I'd seen one of my pumpkin simples on a neighbor's house so I knew we had at least 3 houses to hit : mine, my friend's and a neighbor's. But at 6pm, when we walked down the street to meet up for trick or treating, I was filled with glee. There were 6 pumpkins ! So our gaggle of kids - there were 7 in all - went up and down the street, screaming, running and laughing.

The neighbors - even the crotchedy old man - gave out candy to our kids. I realized that they had actually done it for us. For me and my kids. Why? Because I'd asked nicely, taken the inititiative, and shown them that it was a nice and fun time for the kids. And you know what? Even the crotchedy old man smiled! 

We ended at the pharmacy, where the kids ran in and all the pharmacy stff gathered around and they dipped their grubby and sticky hands into the big bowl of lollypops. At the end of the night - which lasted only 30 minutes but seemed like hours - I had all the kids saying "trick or treat". And you know what? It was just enough. And it was a huge success! 

Later in the evening as Max dipped his hand into his candy bag, he said "I got a rock" (a little tribute to the Great Pumpkin himself).