Lately, the Little Guy has been surprising us by randomly coming out with new words and phrases... in English! He is not yet learning English in school as his maitresse is teaching the class the fundamentals of German (I guess at this age, the kids learn whatever their own teacher knows best), but sometimes I will tell him a word or two here and there, informally. I also bought him a childrens' French-English dictionary with pictures and a book of phonics exercises with stickers, but I let him initiate working with those. There's no sense pushing him to learn a new language if he's not ready, yet it's nice when sometimes he chooses to take out one of those books or repeats some words with me. He also hears some additional English next door, as our neighbor is half Canadian and sometimes speaks English to her two little boys so that they start learning the language as well.
So him just blurting out words on his own is kind of a new thing around here. Early on, he learned "Hello" and he got the "h" pronounced perfectly right away; now he almost always says "Hello!" instead of "Bonjour!" when he bursts through the door after school. But then a few weeks ago, Georges and I were taking him somewhere and all of a sudden the Little Guy said, "Let's go!" instead on "On y va!" It took me a second or two to register that he'd actually said it in English and not French, and then we both praised his initiative and how well he'd said it (you know, positive reinforcement and all that).
Since then, it's a new word here and a new word there. But our favorite by far had to be what he said last weekend, out of the blue on our way to see the animals at the Jardin des Plantes...
"Happy, happy, happy!"
... while simultaneously jumping up and down with a big smile. His attitude expressed far more than just the words. Happy, happy, happy became sort of the theme for the weekend, an inside joke with us all repeating it to each other every so often as we went here and there together.
And as happy as we were to hear this sweet boy pronounce some new words, we were happier still to see how joyful he was, how bien dans sa peau. Just the way you want to see a young child going through his life.
Happy, happy, happy indeed.
