Que hace la langosta?

July 28-Aug. 3, 2008
Isaac has been begging to get roller skates for the past couple of weeks and I told him that we could look at the thrift stores. We went to Salvation Army without any luck and then today at Aldi’s (that German discount grocery store) we found a pair of roller skates in the random section in the middle of the store. It was crazy because there was just one pair of skates there and they happened to be Isaac’s size. He was overjoyed. He wanted to put them on the second we got home and he’s not exactly graceful yet, but he can actually shuffle down the hall with them and kind of sort of stop. He fell down quite a few times but I helped him back up and then he insisted on trying again by himself. I’m impressed with his determination.
After the boys wanted to watch a Little People dvd in Spanish, I spoke all in Spanish to them the rest of the evening and we had a lot of fun with it. Isaac would say “quiero hablar ingles” but then he would keep speaking Spanish and asking me how to say things in Spanish. We read one fun book from the library called “Como iremos a la playa” and he wanted to hear it 3 times. We read a Curious George Goes the Aquarium book in Spanish and Isaac asked me, “Mom, how do you say “do” in Spanish?” and ofcourse I said, “Do what?” Because the translation of “do” depends. He looked at me thoughtfully and said “its ‘hacer’ mom.” And then “que hace la langosta?” He’s my little linguist. Levi is getting the Spanish vocab down too, but his Spanish is more receptive than productive right now. You can ask him “donde esta el caballo?” and he’ll tell you, but he’ll still prefer to say horse.
On Monday night we let the boys put their swimsuits on and wade around the huge water fountain at Logan Circle. That fountain is awesome. It looks like something that should be in Europe. Isaac and Levi had a blast running up to the turtles and frogs spraying huge flumes of water from their mouths.
I met a Nicaraguan lady at the library who spoke Spanish and I was so excited to find her. There aren’t very many Latinos in Center City. She nannies for two kids that speak Spanish so I got her phone number and we’ll have to have a Spanish storytime soon.
We met the coolest Chilean family on Sunday! James met Jorge in line at the bookstore and when he found out that they had two kids the same ages as our kids, he invited them over to hang out on Saturday. Then we found out that they live in an apartment with an indoor swimming pool—and they invited us over to go swimming. Isaac and Levi were beside themselves with glee. They both love swimming and it was so fun for them to have other kids to speak Spanish with.
We found a really cool book at the library called “Como iremos a la playa” and its now Isaac’s favorite. Levi’s current favorites are the Little People school book and Everyone Poops (a classic).
On Thursday night Levi asked me for the first time to “tell the story”—just like Isaac always does. He said “Levi throws the rock in the waterfall—tell the story!” Very cute.
We went furniture shopping on Saturday and finally found a cool living room set that we both like. On the way back though, we stopped at Office Depot which happens to be right next to Toysrus. I made the mistake of going in toyland to distract the kids while James was looking for a scientific calculator. Isaac saw a Diego slide toy that he wanted and he pitched a major fit when we left the store without it. We told him that if he was good, Santa Claus would bring it too him for Christmas. So his new obsession is to gaze at a picture of the toy he wants on the computer and then ask about when Christmas is and how he can call Santa Claus on the phone to speed things up.
Painting rainbows! Isaac can now officially paint a rainbow and he’s been a rainbow painting machine all week.