Nora’s English Lessons

Nora’s English lessons are ongoing, continual, every day, all day long, even into the dark of the night, forever… it seems.  Just today’s list of words that she learned …. either the meaning or the pronunciation:

1. “Shweediss” = Swedish…. as in Swedish pancakes, my grandmother’s delicacy.

2. “School Rock House” = School House Rock.  Come on! Those are classics!

3. Inspect … “isn’t that when you save piles of things like rocks?”  Um no.

4. “Ann of Grenoble.”   Oh.My.Stars!  Anne of Green Gables.  She did not live in Russia near Chernobyl!

5. “Dad didn’t ate any.”  We ain’t hillbillies no mo.

6. “Mom, what is a globin?”  I don’t know.  “It’s here in my book!”  Spell it.  “G O B L I N.” That spells goblin…. it’s a make believe little monster.  (Why the heck are there goblins in the phonics workbook anyway??!!)

7. Nora looking at a picture of a newspaper and logically trying to choose the descriptive word from: Pretend, Prison and Printed.  “It looks like it’s really a paper and but you could pretend it’s not. You could read that in prison. Someone had to print it, so it is printed. I don’t know this one, Mom.”  Circle any of them, Nora.  :o)

These are the days of our lives. 

The English Beast Raised its Head Today

For the Colombian princess, English has been her second language for almost three years now.  She has learned to read quite well now, but she SHINES in the creative spelling department. (ugh!) I have come to realize that in the Crosby household we must not speak very clearly.  You’d think I would have better pronunciation as I’m on my third time through the entire Downton Abbey series! Here is a little glimpse into our English lessons today.

Nora reads a sentence and then checks the YES box or the NO box.

1. Can a tiny baby sleep in a playpen? NO is checked.  I ask her to explain.  “A tiny baby can’t sleep in the sand out in the open at the park by the swings!” she explains, horrified that I might think that is acceptable! Ah, playpen = playground. Situation rectified.

2.  Can cattle fit in a cradle? YES is checked.  I ask her to explain. “If the cradle is big enough and you have a small cattle, it could fit,” she justifies! I ask her to define cattle. “It’s the cage the dogs sleep in.”  Ah, cattle = kennel.  Situation rectified.

3.  Are there animals in a stable? NO is checked.  I ask her to explain. Rolling her eyes she points out the obvious for her mother, “How could an animal fit in a stable?”  I ask her to define stable. “It’s when you hit that silver thing and stable the pages together.” Ah, so stable = staple.

4. Do you put a kettle on the stove? NO is checked.  I ask her to explain. “There are big holes in the side of the kettle.  Water wouldn’t stay in there and I think the plastic would melt,” she reasons.  I ask her to define kettle. “Its the cage the dogs sleep in.”  Wait, I thought that was cattle?  So, cattle = kennel = kettle.  This is making perfect sense.

And this was all within fifteen minutes!  But that is not all.

5. Can a needle vanish in the tall grass? NO is checked.  I ask her to explain. “If you hold onto the needle it won’t bannish!” (implied: DUH, Mom!) I underline the V in vanish and she corrects her pronunciation.  I ask her to define vanish. “It’s when you bisappear.”  Oh my stars.

Nora Brings Down the House!

Every day I need to write down the hilarious sayings from my little Colombian princess.  Here are a few from this week.

Me: (asking my dad) Do you know why the flags are at half mass?

Dad: No.

Nora: Maybe they’re broken.

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Nora: Mom, do you shrink when you are a grandma?

Me: Yes, you get a little bit shorter.

Nora: I’m going to be a mini grandma!

*******

We were all riding in the truck pacing for my son on his bicycle (who rides behind the truck to practice going faster with drafting.) We went down the same stretch of road twice and then Nora said, “We should let him go first this time!”

*******

Riding in the back seat of the truck with the windows down, Nora yells, “I can’t breathe. The air is in my face!”

*******

Nora: Mom, do you know how to dance like a princess?

Me: I don’t think so.

Nora: All you do is point your toes and make your arms go like this (slowly puts her arms out)…. but you also need a prince.

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A really loud motorcycle went by our car and Nora put her hand to her chest and lamented, “I think that broke my heart!”

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Nora helped me make a salad from a bag kit.  She mixed it all up and then asked me, “Do you want me to put on the drussian?”   (I think that might be Russian dressing???)

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Nora caught a whiff of her sweaty brothers after street hockey and said to her sister, “Boys stink!”  Larisa said, “Girls stink too.”  To which she flabbergastedly replied, “REALLY?  I did not know that!”

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Her bedtime prayers make me want to giggle.  She tells God that she hopes he has a good day.  She thanks him for the food and then explains to him that she knows it’s not time to eat but she is thankful we have food.  She often says, “Thank you God for me.”  I love it!

From Wonder Mama to Blunder Mama

With the arrival of our Colombian princess’s second GOTCHA DAY next Sunday, memories of that time in our lives have been frequent, heart warming and still alarming in some cases.

November 25, 2010 the day we received Nora, is alive and well in my memory banks.  The morning began with my first Spanglish lesson of ordering breakfast from the kitchen in the hotel where we had arrived just seven short hours previously.  Translated from my lame Spanish back to lame English for your enjoyment….my order: “Eggs.  Milk.  Five people.  Juice.  Cooked bread.(toast)  Coffee.”  The kind person on the phone kept asking me questions and I had NO idea what they were saying.  I repeated my eight word order several times.  Surprisingly, we did get everything we asked for, plus hot cocoa, arepas, jam, honey and some fruit!

On our drive home from ICBF (Colombian social services), we were all jolted beyond belief in the traffic, on the steep hills and due to the driving style of our guide.  Thankfully we only had a 20 minute ride or we would have all been losing our breakfast.

Being the prepared official mother of four children, when Nora started looking woozy, I grabbed a gallon zip lock bag from my purse and she used it well.  Just a teeny bit of mama pride surfaced as I had anticipated the problem and solved it in the nick of time.  We also learned at that moment that she had been fed chocolate cake for breakfast.  LOTS of chocolate cake.

My mama pride dissolved into nothingness that same evening when we tucked Nora in for the night.  We all kissed her, Larisa brushed out her nine tiny braids before she was wrapped in her cozy new jammies and ready for beddy-bye.  My sweet husband has done the tucking-in for all of the kids’ lives.  He is such a thoughtful dad and spends time talking with them and listening to how their day went.  The kids love their Daddy time as much as I love my freedom time.  Rick went to put her in her bed in the second bedroom of our “apartment”.  I could hear him singing and talking to his new little daughter whom he couldn’t understand… nor could he speak a lick of Spanish.

About six or seven minutes into this familiar TO US ritual, I realized for the first time Nora was alone with this strange man whom she was to call Daddy.  The information we had about her past was sketchy, but it dawned on me that she could be terrified of my sweet, kind-hearted husband…. just because he is male.

As quickly as my little fingers could type into Google translate, I wrote the sentences “Your Papi loves you.  He will never hurt you.  He will always protect you and take care of you.  He is a very nice man.  He has never hurt anyone.  You don’t have to ever be scared of him.  He loves you.”  I unplugged the computer and rushed into the room where, as I suspected, she was clinging to the far edge of her bed with wide fearful eyes.  My heart broke… once more.  How stupid of us!  I read the sentences of love and assurance to her in Spanish and I visibly saw her relax and sink into the pillow with relief.

I went from Wonder Mama with the barf bag to Blunder Mama with the scary husband…. all in 11 hours!  I had a lot to learn…. and the learning curve was quite steep two years back.  Thank God for Google translate!

English 101

Since the addition of the Colombian princess to our happy family, the English language has been under much scrutiny in my mind.  Our little girl, who only spoke Spanish when we met her, is now only speaking English.  I remember the adoption agency telling us that at four months she would be speaking English.  I hoped and dreamed that would be true for each of the 120 days leading up to the four-month mark. 

My eldest daughter and I had some grasp of mangled Spanish when we headed to Colombia, and with the addition of Google Translate (that speaks aloud for you!) we did communicate fairly effectively, I thought.  A year after the fact, I now believe that there was a lot of smiling and nodding going on without much comprehension.  But we survived those early days!  Whew!  What made me sad was that Nora’s daddy couldn’t talk to her at all.  My sweet husband simply spoke louder…. as if that would help the translation somehow.  My mother also was a bit uncomfortable being left with the care of a little girl and a big language barrier.  The sooner the four-month switch occurred, the better!

At three months, three weeks and three days, I was getting exasperated with the translation between our little Colombiana and the rest of the family.  It didn’t seem to me like she was understanding English.  She wasn’t using that many words in her new language.  What I didn’t realize was that her little brain was storing English words.  In little filing cabinets… that could be referred to later.  After four months.

Then four months ended.  And POOF!  She spoke English.  Spanish was gone.  English had arrived… the switch in her brain took place ON CUE at four months and she has not looked back.  I don’t think she even realized what happened.  It was as if the Spanish filing cabinets were closed and locked.  The English filing cabinets were opened and readily available for use.  Unbelievable how God made young brains to absorb language.  Unbelievable!

As she continues to experiment with the English language, I have had to think through a lot of her sentences, words and syntax…. to try to discover WHY we say things like we do.  It is confusing.  Tonight she told me, “You don’t have to fed the dogs.  I did.”  ‘Fed’ is past tense.  ‘I did’ is past tense. I can see how it seems right… sort of. 

One time I asked Nora to close the back door.  She stood still, eyes roving the room as her little brain tried to grasp…. something….  Finally she held onto her shirt and said, “I think this is clothes. How do you clothes a door?”  Made perfect sense to me.

And the -ed ending to words is so confusing.  Go…. goed.   I saw the bird…. I sawed the bird yesterday.  Eat… eated.  Run…. runned.  Sat… satted.  Drive… drived.  “Well, -ed is usually how you add past tense….. but not this time, Honey.”  Witnessing the transition has been a blessing and an awe-inspiring adventure!  Adoption stretches you in ways you never expected.  Ever.  And I love it!

It’s ALMOST Comical

Yes, I’m talking about one more glitch in the adoption process.  Yes, we have adopted the Colombian Princess.  Yes, it is final in Colombia and recognized in the USA.  She is ours. We are hers.  Done…. with papers to prove it.  She is an American citizen and we have a pretty paper to prove that too. BUT, we are in the process of re-adopting in our state so we will have an US adoption decree, an US birth certificate and the final name change decree, which the courts in Colombia wouldn’t allow. (Even though she asked for her name to be shortened, they wouldn’t change it because she was over 5 years old.)  We all know how important it is to prove that you are a natural-born citizen OR have hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover up that you aren’t…. but I digress.

I assumed re-adoption in Arizona would be easier than an international adoption.  It is slightly. Of course we had to get our fingerprints done for the ninth time.  Since our eldest daughter turned 18 in the process, she also got to join in fingerprinting fun.  More financial statements.  More home visits.  More paperwork.  You may recall a blog about the need to prove that our dog had the rabies vaccine too.  (Do they really think the type of people who go trough this whole rigmarole to adopt a child would not get their dog protected against rabies?) Seriously.

We are so close to getting our final court date here in AZ, but come to find out, we didn’t have an English translation of the Sentencia, the final Colombian Adoption Decree.  Ironically, I could not get a straight answer out of anyone at the County Attorney’s Office as to whether this translation had to be certified and/or notarized.  Our social worker was eventually able to pull some strings and get some answers for us.  We sent the Spanish version off to our friend in Colombia for translation, and we received an email back that said there is a mistake on the original, official, final, Colombian Sentencia.  This is almost comical.  Thankfully, our friend could go to the court and get it changed, so we don’t have challenges later.  OF COURSE this includes more time, more money, more paperwork.  Really?

If you are adopting from Colombia, make sure you get a translated copy of the Sentencia BEFORE you leave Bogota!!!

One translating step forward and two adoption process steps backwards.  Some day we will be done.  Some day.

Gotcha Day is Fast Approaching!

Hard to believe!  November 25th we will have had our sweet Nora for a YEAR!  Twelve whole months!  I can’t believe how fast it has flown by…. on the other hand, it seems like she’s been here much longer than that.  She has fit into her forever family better than I could have ever hoped for.  All those scary “preparation” stories from our training never materialized at all.  God picked us to be her family from the beginning!  I have no doubts now.  She is doing so well… with everything!  I have to remind myself that she has only been speaking English for six months!  Amazing how God made youngsters’ brains to absorb languages so quickly.

Here we were sitting in ICBF only a half hour before Nora had a forever family.  So many emotions that day!

So, we know we are ordering Domino’s Pizza, because that’s where we ate in Cali, Colombia the very first night we had the Colombian princess.  Other than that….. I’m looking for ideas and suggestions.  What did you, fellow adoptive parents, do on your first Gotcha Day?  What do you keep doing every year?  Is it a BIG Colombian fiesta with salsa dancing until the wee hours? Or something a little more calm?  Please let me know…. I have a month to plan!

4 out of 4… I’m Golden

As it happened, I have completed the task every homeschool mother wonders if she will be capable, able and successful at finishing: teaching your children to read.  My first daughter was subjected to a charter school for kindergarten and grade one (that’s how we say it in Canada… not first grade) and I did not have the joy of teaching her to decipher the alphabet code.  But I figured, HEY!  How hard could it be???  Well, son number one, who followed daughter number one, had a brain that was wired quite the opposite of my first child reader.  She read with ease at five years old.  When my son turned five he was quite proficient at spitting, throwing rocks, yelling and doing everything at the same rate as Speedy Gonzales.  Reading was not on his list of interests….. until he was almost NINE!  Made me wonder if the kid would ever read.  Sheesh!  What good is a teaching certificate if you can’t even teach a kid to sound out three letter words?  Or simply remember the letter F?  Eventually some synapses connected in his overactive brain and he could read.  It happened while we were on a three month sick-leave trip touring national parks on the west side of the United States.  It had nothing to do with me.

Son number two actually read before son number one.  Assuming that this would provoke determination in son number one was completely incorrect on my part.  Son number one read after he had successfully toured Zion, Yosemite, Walnut Canyon, Fort Bowie and 14 other parks, caves and forts.  Had I known the national park tour was a prerequisite to his reading ability, we would have taken the trip three years earlier.  See?  Nothing to do with me.

Last week, I had the joy and privilege of teaching the Colombian princess to read.  She has been diligently learning her English phonograms and we have completed the first 26 of 72.  She asked me in frustration, “When am I ever going to be able to read WORDS?!?”  It was then that I realized she probably could with her vast knowledge of phonograms.  I put three phonogram cards together… c…….a……..t.  She sounded them out three or four times before her eyes popped open and she pronounced in her amazing reading ability, “CAT!”  Then we went through run, ran, hat, dot, hop, up, pop, cup, mop, tip, sip, and, hit, and even jump!  She was so excited she could not stop giggling!  I called for her sister and brothers to come and listen to her READ!  Her dimples were showing the rest of the day! It truly is a joy to see her succeeding by leaps and bounds and she hasn’t even been speaking English for 6 months yet.  It is also a true joy to be able to teach her. 

Back in the day when I taught kindergarten to several classes of German speaking kids, they did learn to read and I was proud of them for learning English and reading…. but nothing compares to it being your own kid who has broken the scribble code and can make sense of the English written language.

Four out of four.  I’m golden!

Bulletproof George

Yes, I’ve assigned good read to my American History students titled The Bulletproof George Washington by David Barton.  It is an account of George’s early years as a surveyor, English ambassador to the French and a Colonel in the French and Indian War. 

If you don’t know the details of the Battle of Monongahela, let me help you with a brief synopsis.  Both the French and English believed they had claimed the land on the west side of the Allegheny Mountains, known as the vast Ohio Valley.  The French set up forts…. the English started settling the land.  The disagreement finally came to a head in 1755 when the English marched in like good redcoats to take over a French fort, but were surprisingly ambushed by French and Indians (hence the name of the war) hiding in the thicket, behind trees and boulders.  It was a horrible blow to the British with 714 of the 1300 being killed or wounded.  The French only lost 33 men.

The miraculous part of the story, and hence the name of the book, is that George Washington was shot at numerous times and was not even scratched.  There was a hole through his hat that should have been a bullet in his head.  There were four bullet holes in his coat that should have penetrated skin and bones.  Two horses were shot out from under him and he was the only officer to survive the battle. 

These are not undocumented tales.  George wrote several letters after the battle that still exist stating “by the miraculous care of Providence I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation.” There is a journal of a colonial woman, Mary Draper Ingels, who was captured by Indians and later returned to her home.  She heard the Shawnee Indians tell of a great leader of the white men who was protected from bullets.   One of the Indian chiefs in the attack gave testimony several times saying, “Washington was never born to be killed by a bullet!  …An Invisible Hand had indeed turned aside the bullets.”  These details were included in history textbooks right up until 1934.  Then the details of the providential care of our first president got foggy.

This is why we prefer to choose our own curriculum.  So we learn the truth about our great country that was founded by Christians… men and women who followed after God and the truth in the Bible.  There, you can count this as your history for today.

I’m a Poser

I figured it out.  I’m a poser.  I’m not a real homeschool mom.  It all came crashing down today as I sat at my fellow-homeschool-mom’s kitchen table.  Books, planners, test guides, lists and schedules were strewn from one end of the kitchen to the other.  She was busily slipping pink sticky-notes into each literature book before they were stored in the red plastic box that nobody is allowed to touch except her.  The queen mother of homeschooling.  I mean, good grief, the lady’s got six kids.  And no twins.  Each hot pink note said something different:   “Read Aloud”  “Jimmy”  “Easy Reader”   “Lisa”   I’ve never seen anything like it.  Mounds of books.

To my credit, I’ve done more planning this August than all of my past ten Augusts added up.  I’m branching out this year.  I’m not using the tried and true curriculum that has served me well for ten years.  I’ve always taught all of my kids together on the same topic.  It’s so much easier to teach that way!  But this year?  No.  Well, yes and no.  We are studying American History with a vengeance, but not like any unit ever tackled in this house of school.  My two high schoolers are in my US History class, so they are on the same page, albeit at drastically different levels. My junior higher is in for the shock of his life.  I just finished writing his assignment for the YEAR…. literature, history, vocabulary and math. (He’s taking a science class from the homeschool mom mentioned previously… with the booky kitchen table.)  I have NEVER written down a year’s worth of assignments for anyone, including myself.  I’ve always flown by the seat of my pants…. planning a week or two… or miraculously a month in advance.  Not this year.  This is a ton of work.

My level of comfort was surpassed when it dawned on me…. early June… that I am teaching English as a Second Language to a youngster… for the very first time in my life.  Our girl can sound out words in Spanish… she can write a handful of words in Spanish… but we are swiping the slate clean and starting at square one in English.  It’s been a while since I looked at phonics… a, ay, ah.  The more I learn the 27 phonograms, the less sense the English language makes.  Spanish is so much easier with every letter making ONLY one sound.  Brilliant.

The plan is set in stone… .like never before.  Even if I get carried off by gypsies the kids will know what to work on until late May.  They may not even notice I’m gone!  Even their dad could hold down the homeschooling fort!  All this planning does make sense to me…. but what it we have a hiccup?  What if we fall behind?  What if I need fieldtrips… LOTS of fieldtrips???  What if? 

So, fellow homeschool moms.  I’m with you this year.  My planning is done.  I’m not posing this year as a mom-educator with children at home who has it all together.  I do actually have it all together.  First time in TEN years!