Sweet words

I know I have mentioned it before, but the way Jacinda picked up English continues to amaze me. She is probably really close to being conversationally fluent. She understands jokes, exaggerations and many of the mommy-code words I try to use when I don't really want her to know what I am discussing. This in particular makes her very proud. She will exclaim "I know what you're talking about." and 9 out of 10 times she is right!


As the progression continues and before so many of the adorable things she says disappears forever I want to remember a few of my favorites like:

Sear- ree- yellow for cereal


My tooth is loosed = a losse tooth


Pincess (emphasis on the PIN) = princess



But there is another sweet language in our house and that centers around her retention of Amharic. While I tried to keep as much as I could in our every day life, Jacinda Bizunesh wanted no part of it. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. I pushed and I prodded. Mistakenly I made this about me, thinking that if my Ehtiopian child loses her language entirely that somehow I had failed. Yet again my daughter reminded me it wasn't about me. How? It happened the day when I was prodding her to use some Amharic phrases when she looked at me and asked "Are you mad that I don't know Amharic anymore?"

It was a punch in the gut!

And it hit me that she had really convinced herself that she does not understand a single word or phrase. So I did what I could and let it go until about a month ago when I picked up the Children's Amharic phrase book I bought months before she came home. I started reading the alphabet from it and Jacinda looked at me with wide-eyed wonder and asked "How do you know that?" I explained to her it was important to me to know her language and she seemed impressed.

In that moment the door opened and the Amharic phrases and words began to re-enter her conversation and are frequent in our home. Even more important the little girl who seemed so quick to disown Ethiopia and all her treasures has now redicovered pride in her country!