Translation Please

''Look mama, flit!''

Had I not known what my 2 year old was saying, I would not have been able to attempt to stop him from catapulting himself forward off our lazy boy chair.

What he was in fact trying to say was, “Look mama, flip!”

And I am saying “attempt” because I never quite made it in time to stop the tiny circus act.

I guess that's what I get for putting his older brother in gymnastics:-)

Anyway, the point is, being a parent often means being able to crack codes.

Examples:

• As you've already read, my two year old now puts t’s at the end of each word. So, “encore” is “encote” and       “ouvrir” has become “ouvrite” (sorry for all you non-French speaking folk...I'll try to have better examples next   time:-))

•  For the longest time, my son would say no when he meant yes and yes when he meant no...and we still somehow managed to keep him alive.

• I was sitting with my 4 year old the other day watching the Auburn vs Oregon game and he asked me, “Is it the papas who are playing or the kid big people?”

Did anyone get that????.......he meant, is it the NFL or college football...clever right?

I instantly knew what he was talking about...maybe I should be a spy:-)

But on the flip side of things, kids can be very articulate.

For example, my 5 year old daughter just asked me, “Is it going to be like this all day....you on the computer?”

Maybe too articulate.

Anyway.

I guess language barriers can manifest themselves in different ways.

For instance, when I first moved here to Lafayette, Louisiana from Canada, I asked my husband, then my boyfriend, (who, by the way, was not the ice cream connoisseur I am) to get me a “heavenly hash ice cream in a sugar cone” at our local ice cream parlor. He came back, empty handed, with this baffled, confused look on his face....a look you don't have coming out of an ice cream parlor!

It turns out what I really wanted was “rocky road ice cream in a waffle cone”. Who knew! Apparently heavenly hash ice cream and sugar cones don't exist here.

My husband lets me order my own ice cream now:-)

So I guess whether it's small children or two people from different cultures trying to communicate, they will not always be understood completely. The important thing is that they are communicating:-)

…...Oh and remember all you Canadians! In Lafayette, Louisiana there is no “pop”....there is only “soda”!