Showing posts with label multilingual children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label multilingual children. Show all posts

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Stream of Consciousness Sunday: Fuzzie Moments


I had a moment when I was standing with my boys at the cake table last night at Chatterbox's birthday party. We were waiting for Mr. Rant to finish rounding people up and sending them over so we could sing "Parabens" (Happy Birthday) in full Brazilian style.

I stood there looking at all the faces and cameras. I thought of all the good madness of the couple hours before. I then looked at the row of excited kid faces at the front of the cake table. Both my boys were standing there sweaty, exhausted, covered in sugar of all kind, and happier than hell. 

This is exactly the type of childhood I wanted for my children and I didn't even know it. I felt so lucky to surrounded by awesome people all there to celebrate my son's life, as well as eat some of the DAMN GOOD food we were serving. 

So when the singing started and the smiles broadened, I was on cloud nine. That's when more warm fuzzies hit. Once the Portuguese singing stopped a goof friend's super cool husband (who earned total brownie points) starting singing Happy Birthday in English! And since it is pretty much the most uninspired and simple song in the history of the universe, everyone there knew it too. The entire group, foreigners and a hell of a lot of Brazilians sang Happy Birthday to my little man in his other language. 

I suppose my little man can have it all after all! 
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#SOCsunday

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Monday, September 12, 2011

Say What?!


I had a "Say What?!" moment this weekend.

On Sunday we all headed down to a charity Feijoada with the family. I was hanging with the kiddos making sure they only got into innocent trouble when some dude came up to chat with them. Of course he somehow knew that Chatterbox is half American. Random news travels fast when served over rice, beans, and sausage.

The funny part was his reaction. When he talked to Chatterbox, he spoke in Portuguese. Obviously Chatterbox, being surrounded by Brazilian children as well, responded in Portuguese. Then man's reaction:

"WOW! You speak Portuguese really well!"

Say what? The man knows my kid's entire Brazilian extended family.We live in Brazil. His Father is Brazilian. Of course he speaks Portuguese!

And I know maybe for some reason or other, he thought that I would completely ignore the language of my son's home country, the language of his father, and the language of his family. I get that.

But the guy continued with his amazement and then it came out that he was not surprised at all that Chatterbox speaks English. Portuguese, for the half Brazilian kid living in Brazil surrounded by a Brazilian family, was the surprise.

It's moments like these when I wish we were teaching him some random 3rd language and I could say "Sorry, he only speaks Mandarin." 
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