Bragging

Sigh. Well, I'm sorry to brag, but I just have to share. If you don't want to read about it, just stop now!

First, Adin was pushing buttons on my heart rate monitoring watch. He said, "Why does this say 'off'?" I asked to see it. In my normal use of the watch it doesn't display the word off. Sure enough, it said 'off'. I asked how he knew it said off and he read me the letters, although he did read them right to left (F-F-O) instead of left to right (O-F-F). So at naptime we read a book and looked for the word 'off' in it. Adin's not so keen on napping these days, so it can be a bit of a struggle getting him to stay in bed. I was kneeling next to his bed, reaching to get something and he said, "Ah-cuse [excuse]me, I would like to get out of bed." Even for the ultra polite two year old, no you cannot get out of bed!

I've been reading books about race, books that report ethnic minorities talk with their children about race more than white parents do. And that often liberal white parents expose their children to other children of different backgrounds but don't talk about race. When that happens, the white kids notice that the kids all have different colored skin, but also notice that their parents and teachers don't talk about it. And the kids try to think of their own reasons why this is, and they may be coming up with different ideas from what the parents assume (we're all the same, we're all equal).

Which is a very long way to introduce that I've been trying to have age appropriate discussions with Erik about race, even though it's very uncomfortable for me. So on Monday, I mentioned briefly to him that he didn't have school that day, and that it was a holiday. I told him MLK's name and explained very briefly that it used to be that white kids and black kids went to different schools and MLK worked to change that. And that's all I said, and we didn't talk about it again. When I picked Erik up from preschool later in the week, his teacher told me quietly that he was the only one in the class who knew who MLK was! I didn't get a chance to get the whole story from her, and Erik won't tell me about school, so that's all I know. I'm quite proud, though, that he remembered and that he somehow seems to have been able to talk about it in school.

Small world!

Adin and I attend a parent and child class one morning a week. After snack time, we go over and sit on the carpet and read books together. Adin chose a counting book that had the text in English and Spanish. He is learning to count in Spanish at daycare, so I asked him if he wanted me to read the book to him in English or Spanish. He chose Spanish, which was fine when the words were short and easy. After a couple pages they got to be very long. It was a little embarrassing because two of the other parents in the class are native Spanish speakers, and two of the teachers speak a little Spanish, as well. I was quite relieved when Adin switched over to counting in Norwegian. It was easier for me to name the items, but then the nanny of one of the other children asked me, in Swedish, if I was from Norway! It turns out she is a nanny from Sweden, and I just had never heard her talk enough to even pick up that she had an accent.

You gotta sing!

On the drive home from the YMCA today, we listened to a couple CDs. The first was just the song "You gotta sing". The lyrics are "You gotta sing when the spirit says sing" repeat several times. Verse 2 "You gotta pray when the spirit says pray". Then we listened to a CD of a variety of Christian children's songs. When we got home Adin was very sad and wanted to hear the "Deer" song again. It took me several listens to even understand 'deer' and I had no idea which song that was. I listed off all the ones we'd listened to and he said no to all of them. So we came into the house and played and forgot all about it. After his nap, I was changing his diaper and noticed he was singing, "You gotta sing when the deer says sing"! Mystery solved.