Bi-lingual

Holy moley, has it been that long?

I didn't post at all in September?

My excuse: I've been working at WGBH trying to hold down the fort in Maria's office while she's on maternity leave. The fruits of my labors are here: The Great Fever, Gold Rush, Test Tube Babies.

But funny things still go on, unreported.

Austin is now very bilingual, and has it sorted out enough that he can use either language with anybody. That is, instead of being upset when Julie asks him to speak Chinese, he's happy to teach her new words or correct her pronounciation. Similarly, instead of insisting that we (he and I) only speak Chinese when I pick him up from daycare, we sometimes have conversations in Chinese at home.

At Jenny's (the Chinese daycare), he's got two new friends his age so he's been a lot happier. I think they've been watching videos or at the least hearing stories of Supermonkey. That's what we used to have a book about when I was a kid. More properly, it's Journey to the West, aka Monkey, the folk tale about how a monk went to India in search of Buddhist scriptures. His companions include a mischievous monkey with magical powers and a man-pig, and they fight demons and ghosts along the way.

The three kids play this game all the time and Austin is always Monkey, Ray ray is the pigman and Isabel is a ghost. In fact, Jenny tells me that when Austin is at his other school, the other kids ask where "Ho ge" (monkey olderbrother) is.

That's the setup!

A few weeks ago (possibly in September), Julie was getting ready for work and Austin was standing beside her so she took her brush and made a pass through his hair. And he shouted, "Don't brush my ho mao (monkey fur)!"