Happy mother's day!

Things are going very well in the Mesdames' household!

Jolly is totally getting this two languages thing shockingly well. There are some words he doesn't know in both languages (example: up, down), but more and more, he has both the English and German words for a concept and then he uses them in the appropriate context. I get requests for "Nuesse" and "Affe" and "Eimer" and get told that things are "Gross!" while Ephiny gets requests for "nuts" and "monkey" and "bucket" and gets told about things being "big!". It's pretty amazing, really, that he's totally worked out that there are two languages when he's still working on the idea of verbs and sentences. (He has managed a lot of two-word sentences, like "Hallo, katze!" (hello, cat!) and "Fix buckle!"... and the ever important "eat _____" or "_____ essen!", depending on who he's talking to.) I had been told to expect more of a period of everything being mixed willy-nilly together, but we seem to be skipping that. Nice!

I totally credit Ephiny with this. A couple of months ago Jolly started substituting English words for German ones and looked like he had decided that English was the majority language that he was going to learn. At that point, Ephiny totally dug her heels in and started using German with Jolly whenever she was able to do so. I think that realizing that other people spoke German besides his mummy really is the difference that pushed Jolly into actually using German and becoming actively bilingual, rather than just understanding German and speaking English in return. Not to mention, it's super-awesome that Ephiny has put up with a whole lot of not-her-native-language conversation, including some directed at her, without feeling left out or being anything other than excited. Her German has really improved, too - the other day she spontaneously translated a story into German for bedtime, and did so very correctly without messing up the pace of the story!

So, big congratulations to Ephiny on making Operation Bilingualize Jolly a success! There's no one else I'd rather be coparenting with, and it's a joy to watch her be a mom to our child.

On that note, I'd like to wish a very happy mother's day to all the current moms, as well as to those who have suffered pregnancy or child losses, for whom this is a much more bittersweet day. I am also thinking of those who are still trying to get to the state of being mothers, for whom I know this can be a really tough day to get through: I hope your day to celebrate mother's day will come soon.