Thursday, June 21, 2007

Sweet Mammaries

Yesterday Emmy woke up a little prematurely, but too close to wake up time for us to try to get her back to sleep. So we let her into our bed for a few minutes and then she lay on the bathroom rug wrapped in her blanket while Colleen showered.

When Colleen finished and opened the shower curtain, Emmy just stared at her bug eyed. She had never seen Colleen naked before. She pointed at Colleen's breasts and asked "What is that?" While Colleen was stalling for time thinking of an answer, Emmy pipes in "Baby crying. Yummy."

A few minutes later, I was in my closet in my underwear looking for pants. Emmy walks in, latches on to my package with both hands, and pinches with all her strength. "Daddy. What is that? What is that?" I saw every star in the galaxy, sucked in my breath, and quickly reached down to pull her wrists away. Emmy asks in her sweet little angelic voice "Hurt Daddy? Bleeding? Band Aid?"

Monday, June 18, 2007

Speak and Spell

The girls are getting good enough at English, and they are so ridiculously attentive, that Colleen and I found we can no longer speak freely and assume we will not be understood. So we resort to spelling key words or parts of key words when we want to discuss something without the girls understanding.

Fast forward to this morning at the breakfast table. Colleen asked Marin what she wants for breakfast. Marin responds with "peanut butter, toast, mqrxy".

I look at Colleen like 'what is she saying?'. And Colleen explains to me that is Marin's new gig. She just spits out letters to pretend she is spelling because she hears us do that and Marin does not want Emmy to know what she is saying.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Policeman Potty

You know those portable toilets you see at constructions sites or big festivals? Well there's a ton of construction in Maine this spring and these potties are everywhere. The girls are curious about everything, so they asked about these. Not knowing how to get into all the details given their limited vocabulary, Colleen and I shorthanded it by explaining they are policemans pottys.

Fast forward to last weekend. We are driving home from a graduation party in Bangor (about 140 miles north of here) and Meron decides she has to go to the bathroom. Those of you familiar with that stretch of road know there's a restroom about every 30 minutes. Luckily we were just coming up on an exit ramp, so I took it, thinking I would find a wooded place to take Meron off road.

At the top of the exit ramp, Meron suddenly exclaims "Policemans Potty!!". and insisted she must use it. I'm thinking this is a real blessing, until I opened the car door and caught a whiff. It was just rank. But the seat was clean and it had paper, so it was go time.

Meron was so proud of herself using a Policemans Potty. She got back into the car and started bragging about it to Emmy. So, of course, Emmy had to go potty. Egad. Pass me some oxygen.

So Emmy gets to the potty, opens the door, catches a whiff, screams 'Yucky!!", and decides she does not have to go potty after all. Amen.

Meal time prayer

Readers of this blog know that one of our favorite rituals is Marin saying the pre meal blessing in her native Amharic.

She suddenly switched to English on us.

Last week Marin sat down, asked us to all hold hands, and then started naming people. Us, her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and her teachers at day care. Then Emmy will usually jump in with a few names Marin forgot.

Colleen is all excited that the girls are thinking about people and naming them. I am too, but I am also bummed that one more vestige of their Ahmaric is disappearing.