Z and I saw snails today on the way to school. I told him the French word for snail is "escargot." Then I told him the joke about the snail who wanted a car with an S painted on the side, so people would say, "look at that S-car go ( Read more... )

Camille has been with us for two weeks, and so far I would count the experiment a success. Of course, she's in classes every morning, and bring run around to tourist sites every afternoon, so we aren't seeing much of her during the week! But it's funny, her being here has forced us to live like a normal family, and eat dinner more or less ( Read more... )

Once upon a time, I was an exchange student. I lived for a few months with a family in the Champagne region of France. Being an exchange student is supposed to be all rewarding and warm and fuzzy, and you're supposed to stay in touch with your host family for ever, and visit back and forth, and make life long warm and fuzzy connections ( Read more... )

Z: [reciting alphabet in French, gets to "Y" and stops.]
Me: Très bien!
Z: I grêc!
Me: [signs the letter Y]
Z: Yellow!
Me: [wiggles the Y to make it the sign for YELLOW]
Z: Jaune!
Me: [Makes two wiggly Ys to sign PLAY]
Z: Play! Or jouer!

That's my boy!

Just asked Z what he wanted to eat. "Beaucoup de pommes!" Wow.

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My mom bought a set of books for Z that has one book for each letter of the alphabet. My A Book, My B Book, and so on. In each book a character named little $letter fills a box with things that start with his or her sound. Some of them are a little surreal. Little H, for example, puts a horse in her box. It's clearly a real horse, not a toy, ( Read more... )

Despite my misgivings with the French classes last session, I went ahead and signed Z up for another set, since they seem to be the only game in town right now. There are some differences this time, though: a different teacher, and a different age group. Last time, Z and I did the baby class, and I noticed that the other kids were all pre-verbal ( Read more... )

I just had a dream where I was speaking French and forgot to use the formal verb forms. Quel horreur!

Once upon a time, toddlers were a complete and utter mystery to me. A mystery I had no interest in exploring, especially as it was apt to be a sticky one, filled with dirty diapers and inexplicable tantrums. I had no idea how much *fun* toddlers could be. Oh, there's fair lot of the tantrums, diapers, and sticky, but fun? Man, why didn't ( Read more... )

A couple weeks ago, I got an email about a toddler program at the Alliance Francaise, and I thought, aha! A way to show Z that French is more than just this weird thing Mommy does. He's been resisting French a lot lately, insisting, "Eng-gish!" when I start, and it just breaks my poor little francophonic heart. So Saturday morning I packed him ( Read more... )