New things

This morning, Elena woke up briefly, singing the ABC song. She got through about a third of it and fell back to sleep. When she woke up again a couple of hours later, she was singing the rest of it. At least when she's awake, she can get through the whole song by herself--and she's finally nailing the fifth at the beginning.

Elena is very helpful. She is pretty good about putting stuff away after she uses it and cleaning up after herself. For example, yesterday, she spilled some fish food on the floor. When I found her struggling to pick it all up piece by piece, I gave her my mom's floor sweeper and she did the whole sweeping up job herself.

She is also learning to peel garlic. Now that we're cooking with my parents, we go through a LOT of garlic. If there is garlic in a meal here (and there usually is!), it's always at least a full head. So that's a lot of peeling.

She's been getting interested in Spanish lately. She's learning it in a very second-language way, which is not at all my preference, but it's better than nothing, I suppose. She's picking up that everything in English has a "name" in Spanish, so she's been asking what it is. Ajo (garlic) and manzana (apple) are favourites. She's also been digging the colours--it's a total crackup to hear her say "ah-SOOOOL!!" (azul = blue).

As much as I can converse reasonably well in Spanish with an adult, I have a really hard time speaking Spanish with Elena. The sorts of things one says to a child are different, and often in command tense. I learn a LOT from listening to native Spanish speakers talking to children.

Next week, Erich and my mom take over the bulk of daytime childcare as I start work, so hopefully they'll be blogging as well.