Today i spent the afternoon watching a friends 3 year old little girl Olivia (Livy). This girl is stinkin cute and tons of fun. I'm not sure who has more fun when she comes over though, her or husband. She likes to make him chase her in circles around the house growling the whole time till he catches her or until she can get to me and roll up in my lap to hide when she inevitable gets caught and tickled.
Today we decided to take her to the park that is a few blocks from our house. I've been wanting an excuse to check out this park, but since we don't have any kids of our own it would seem kind of weird to go there without a reason. But it turned out to be a great park. There was a regular size playground, and then a smaller scale playground for the under 5 age group that's shorter and you're not in fear of the kids falling off the sides or between the railings, and the slides are smaller so their not picking up so much momentum and flying out at the other end. There were a lot of other kids at the regular playground, but not really any at the smaller one for a while. We had fun sliding down all the slides, her telling husband to follow her up and down from one slide to the next. But eventually a little boy showed up to play with us too. I would say he was about 4, and at first he played on his own, but pretty soon he was inviting Livy to play with him. He was trying to show her how to ride the little horse on a spring thing when i realized i didn't understand anything he was saying. He was speaking a different language, but because we live in America i assumed he would be bilingual and know English as well, so i told him thank you for sharing and asked him if he would show us how to go through the tunnels too. That's when he looked at me a little funny and said:
"Usted está hablando Inglés".
Translation: "You're speaking English".
He said something else after that, and then went to play some more. That's when husband stepped in and started speaking in Spanish to him for me (one of those skills he learned on his mission he served in Chili). I'm not sure what was all said still, but husband told him he speaks Spanish, translated what i said and asked him what his name was. We never got an answer to that, but i think that's forgivable because aren't you not supposed to tell strangers what your name is when you're that age? We'll just overlook the parts where he was playing with and talking to strangers in this case though. He continued to play with us for a while though until some other boys showed up for him to play with. We had our fun and one of the new additions to the playground decided him and i were best friends and was constantly looking for excuses to play by me while smiling and blushing when i smiled back at him. I've always had that effect on boys though, no matter what age ;)
We wore Livy out enough that when we were ready to go home, she didn't put up a fight about it other then she was done with husband completely and didn't want him to hold her hand while we walked back. I ended up having to carry her the whole way back. My arms still feel like they're about to fall off, but it gave me that hope that i'll get that benefit of great arm muscles when i have kids of my own one day.
On the walk home husband filled me in on what the little boy at the park had said though. He said it was "Spanglish", but way more Spanish then anything and was laughing about it, but i felt kind of silly about it for a little while. Now i'm seeing the humor of it though. Sadly i never had to take a different language in school, so i don't know whats being said to me in any other language. When husband is teasing me and tells me things in Spanish i just say "Si", or "No", or "ok mi amor", and occasionally i'll throw in "taco" just to throw him off a little. He says he'll teach me one day, but i've yet to learn anything from him on that one.
I'm not going to go off on that tangent about how "this is America, and if someone wants to live here they should speak English" because if you ask me, that seems a bit ignorant to say something like that. Besides, i'm sure his parents speak English just not very much while at home. But yes, I'm speaking English, because that's what i know :) It was a fun day at the park though, in English and in Spanish.
Today we decided to take her to the park that is a few blocks from our house. I've been wanting an excuse to check out this park, but since we don't have any kids of our own it would seem kind of weird to go there without a reason. But it turned out to be a great park. There was a regular size playground, and then a smaller scale playground for the under 5 age group that's shorter and you're not in fear of the kids falling off the sides or between the railings, and the slides are smaller so their not picking up so much momentum and flying out at the other end. There were a lot of other kids at the regular playground, but not really any at the smaller one for a while. We had fun sliding down all the slides, her telling husband to follow her up and down from one slide to the next. But eventually a little boy showed up to play with us too. I would say he was about 4, and at first he played on his own, but pretty soon he was inviting Livy to play with him. He was trying to show her how to ride the little horse on a spring thing when i realized i didn't understand anything he was saying. He was speaking a different language, but because we live in America i assumed he would be bilingual and know English as well, so i told him thank you for sharing and asked him if he would show us how to go through the tunnels too. That's when he looked at me a little funny and said:
"Usted está hablando Inglés".
Translation: "You're speaking English".
He said something else after that, and then went to play some more. That's when husband stepped in and started speaking in Spanish to him for me (one of those skills he learned on his mission he served in Chili). I'm not sure what was all said still, but husband told him he speaks Spanish, translated what i said and asked him what his name was. We never got an answer to that, but i think that's forgivable because aren't you not supposed to tell strangers what your name is when you're that age? We'll just overlook the parts where he was playing with and talking to strangers in this case though. He continued to play with us for a while though until some other boys showed up for him to play with. We had our fun and one of the new additions to the playground decided him and i were best friends and was constantly looking for excuses to play by me while smiling and blushing when i smiled back at him. I've always had that effect on boys though, no matter what age ;)
We wore Livy out enough that when we were ready to go home, she didn't put up a fight about it other then she was done with husband completely and didn't want him to hold her hand while we walked back. I ended up having to carry her the whole way back. My arms still feel like they're about to fall off, but it gave me that hope that i'll get that benefit of great arm muscles when i have kids of my own one day.
On the walk home husband filled me in on what the little boy at the park had said though. He said it was "Spanglish", but way more Spanish then anything and was laughing about it, but i felt kind of silly about it for a little while. Now i'm seeing the humor of it though. Sadly i never had to take a different language in school, so i don't know whats being said to me in any other language. When husband is teasing me and tells me things in Spanish i just say "Si", or "No", or "ok mi amor", and occasionally i'll throw in "taco" just to throw him off a little. He says he'll teach me one day, but i've yet to learn anything from him on that one.
I'm not going to go off on that tangent about how "this is America, and if someone wants to live here they should speak English" because if you ask me, that seems a bit ignorant to say something like that. Besides, i'm sure his parents speak English just not very much while at home. But yes, I'm speaking English, because that's what i know :) It was a fun day at the park though, in English and in Spanish.
p.s. Happy April Fools. husband and i didn't do any pranks, but its all fun at our house anyway.
3 comments:
ha ha that is funny.
sounds like fun, I agree about the spanish thing. Dan talks to me in spanish sometimes too. I do the same things, except instead of taco I say yo quiero taco bell :)
Aw. You are so sweet! Good thing there's so many darn spanish speaking missionaries around. ;)
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