January 23, 2009 by Barbara.

Reid has been speaking more French lately, though generally not to Ken and me. It seems that she spent September to December listening and learning and she is now putting what she learned to use. This morning, at our parent-teacher interview, her teacher said that Reid was in the midst of a “word explosion”. She also said that Reid’s accent is good. I suspected as much since Reid had been putting a lovely French accent on the English words that I asked her to translate for months.

I suspected this was happening. Last week, Reid corrected my French. We were reading before bed and at the end of a book that didn’t have “the end” written in it, Reid suggested we could say “the end” anyway and so we did. Then, she asked how to say it in French and I said, “Le fin”. Immediately Reid said, “La fin” in her snooty, perfectly-accented French. Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly snooty or even perfectly-accented but it was a good accent and Reid was correct. My days of speaking better French than Reid are numbered. Nous sommes à la fin de cette époque. But I still know more words than her. I just don’t always know if they’re masculine or feminine.

À la prochaine.

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January 23, 2009 by Barbara.

Reid will sometimes close her eyes and reach out, touch one of us, and say, “Is this Mama?” Or maybe she’ll be touching something and ask if it is a [something or other]. Ken and I seem to have come to unspoken agreement that we should respond “yes” to the questions, whether or not that is the truth, or supply a silly answer to the silly question. At one point I asked if she could tell the differences between Ken’s hands and mine. Reid told me that she could do so easily. “Mama’s hands are wrinkly,” she said with a smile that made me almost forget that “old” usually goes with “wrinkly”. Sadly, it’s true. Ken’s hands are freckly and hairy but wrinkle free. My hands, on the other hand, - sorry I couldn’t resist that - are as wrinkly as Grandma Joyce’s hands should be. Her hands are even wrinkly for her age, in my opinion. Reid will have to hope that she has inherited her dad’s hand genes or I’ll gloat at the first hand wrinkle.

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