This afternoon I heard an unusual amount of chatter in the back bedrooms, and upon closer investigation I realized that the noise was coming from at least 4 children congregated in my bathroom. I poked my head into my bedroom and asked them what was going on. My 10 year old daughter, home from Ethiopia since last August, was the first to peek out of my bathroom.
“We’re just pounding ourselves, Mom,” she reassured me.
Which, after a moment of confusion during which I imagined blood and pain, I realized actually it meant they were weighing themselves.
I'm Mary, wife to John, and mom to 10 kids ages 3-20. Six of them were adopted, from Ethiopia and Korea. I spend my days applying Bandaids, reminding kids to use their inside voices, persuading kids fractions are useful, cooking spicy ethnic food, and snapping gig after gig of pictures. Very late at night, I write about it all.
I love the things they say! I am trying to develop a book like a baby book but for older adopted children. ( I couldn’t find one anywhere) One section I want to have is comparable to “first words” so I can record these sort of funny attempts at English.
Mary,
that is so funny. In my case my kids would be flooding our bathroom. (Which they already did more then once)
Lenka
Ah….there are only a few lovely years where “pounding” is still laughable!
Oh that is so funny. I get pounded every time I get on the scale too.
Oh, that is hysterical!!!!! I love it. I know I often end up translating for my sons, who I think are fairly fluent, but I guess I use a lot of context and can sort out their funny grammar. Sometimes I swear it is “put the sentence I want to say in a basket, shake it up hard, and throw it at you”. The adventures of learning English!!! LOL!
That got my giggles going, as did your vacuuming story. I love the way those words come out. When we had some exchange students there was many a laugh over language. Living with a kid who has speech issues can be much the same if you can remember to keep a sense of humor about it!
I love the many language differences there are between different cultures. I had a friend from England who used to tell me I was the “bees knees”…I always thought that was so funny.
That is so funny! I love it!!!
I love it, thanks for sharing the “lost in translation” moments
Thank you so much for sharing. That is so cute! One day she will look back on this and laugh too.