Reading in French

Saturday, December 13, 2008 at 9:42pm

The other night Jayden asked me to read one of the kids' little books in French. I tried to explain that Mommy doesn't really know much French, but he didn't believe me since I can pick up pretty much any of their books and "read" it in Spanish. (I picked up a postcard from the USPS about priority mail and "read" Vaelyn a really sweet Christmas story in Spanish a couple of nights ago). Anyway, I was stuck reading French, so. . . I took the book, smiled sweetly and began in my sweet reading-for-preschool-children voice to count in French, turning a page after saying each number. I got through about three pages before I was corrected: "No, Mommy, READ it!" He started to take the book away. I pulled it back and began again the same way, and we started laughing. Then we got to the last page with Lady and Tramp and the puppies, and I said, "Oh, wait. Mommy can do this page. Le mere, Le pere, les bebes," while pointing at the drawing for each. (I'm not sure the les bebes is right. Now I think it's something like les enfantes, but hey. It worked!) ;) It was almost as good as my great idea when I needed the kids out of the kitchen a couple of weeks ago. I told them to go count how many times the Christmas tree blinked. Would have worked great, except about 60 seconds later, Vaelyn laughed and said, "Mommy trees don't blink. People blink. You're silly." I forgot that our blinker bulb burned out, so our lights are solid. I tried to compensate by telling them to count how long it stayed lit, but that, apparently, just didn't sound as fun. :'(

I'm telling you: it's never boring around here!