neither here nor there, ici ou là, acquí o allí

Sometimes carving the time out to read and write about raising my children bilingually is easy, familiar, fun, like slipping a spoon into soft-serve ice cream, each new idea and discovery and resource and online kindred spirit a colorful sprinkle that I devour.

(My husband is continually astonished by the number of websites I can have open simultaneously--but I can't close a page until I'm done thinking about it!)

Other times, carving out time to blog is the equivalent of scraping sheets of frozen ice off my car in a Colorado winter, a millimeter at a time, until I decide it's not worth it and just walk wherever I was headed (or more likely, decide the errand wasn't that urgent and go inside and make a new cup of tea).

my favorite gift to give this year--I love this book as much as my kids do!

You'd think that I'd know by now that for me, the month before Christmas (and several weeks afterwards) tends to be the latter.  Decorating, buying and wrapping and shipping presents for everyone, designing and sending cards, coaching the children through their handmade gifts, making my own handmade gifts, figuring out and following through on tips for those who have earned them and end-of-year charity donations, digging all the special once-a-year recipes and awkward appliances out of storage, plus all the shopping, holiday-party-and-church-service-attending, entertaining, traveling, hosting, and the packing and/or extra cleaning that traveling and hosting entails, not to mention working my paid and volunteer jobs, of course, plus the feeding, bathing, dressing-in-clean-clothes, cajoling-to-do-homework-and-practice-music, breaking-up-fights-between-siblings, scrubbing-sharpie-stains-off-the-dining-table, lulling-to-sleep that has happen, every single day, with small children….

small, beautiful children, to be sure

…all of which, fortunately, brings with it lovely quiet moments with family in front of a glowing tree decorated with memories, boisterous joy from happy kids on vacation, connecting with friends and relatives far away (I always leave their holiday cards up till spring break), cathartic sob sessions about friends and family who are gone, and a very good excuse to eat mountains of cookies and rivers of melted cheese.

Christmas Eve tradition inspired by my year in the Alps: raclette (melty cheese grilled tableside and poured over potatoes and ham)

Thus, blogging doesn't happen very often for me in December!

And it probably won't in January, not just yet, because I've fallen so far behind at work, and I still have a pile of Christmas New Year's cards to write and mail, plus thank-you notes, plus a massive pile of decorations and ornaments and wrapping supplies in the basement to organize and hide for the next eleven months, but right now, this very afternoon, I have carved out 1.5 hours to check in and tell you what blogworthy stuff is on my mind.

Like the successful completion of Carol's and my first French class for kids at Grandrabbit's, followed by our being hired for a new class this semester, accompanied by the worry that the manager isn't doing enough to publicize it.

Bricolage (arts and crafts) in French class!  

And trying to rework my weekly lesson with a five-year-old private tutoring client, whose dad is French, whom I want to challenge more while still keeping our time together fun for her.

Or how about the new games I've discovered or developed to enhance Griffin's and Gwyneth's French at home, the fantastic books we've been reading together, but also my reluctance to push Griffin to read and write more in French at home (he gets cranky about it after 7.5 hours in school every day).

And, oh my goodness, speaking of school, how freaking awesome it is that my kids are learning Spanish--really understanding it, even three-year-old Gwyneth with 11 hours of preschool a week.  Griffin is even writing one- and two-page narratives in the past tense, sprinkled with transition words, dialogue, and clear explanations of why the event he's describing was ¡fantastico!

And how freaking scared I am that the Spanish they and their friends are immersed every weekday in will supplant their French.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
Fruit and cookies for Santa on the potty chair.

"I can tell that you've been working with Griffin on his Spanish at home!"

That's what la maestra says to us at Griffin's first parent-teacher conference last week.  

Ed and I glance at each other, surprised, a little guilty.

She goes on to explain that she and her aide have both noticed that Griffin is picking up a lot of vocabulary that they aren't explicitly teaching in their Spanish immersion classroom--song lyrics, words on posters, things the adults say in passing.  She also professes amazement that Griffin doesn't seem to be experiencing the "silent period" in language acquisition, where learners listen and absorb before they start producing the language spontaneously.  (Think, for example, of how much babies and toddlers have to hear before they can speak.)

This, of course, is a huge surprise to us, because Griffin usually answers questions about what he did at school that day with "je ne sais pas"(I don't know) and "je ne m'en souviens pas"(I don't remember).  (Isn't that supposed to be more of an older kid's attitude?  Oh well, he's a precocious little boy.)  What new words did you learn today?  None.  Which kids did you play with on the playground?  I don't know their names.  What did you have for snack?  Yogurt--no, graham crackers--no, I don't remember.  Can you sing us a song from school today?  What song?  Any song! Any song?  Yes!  No.

Anyway, we are beyond thrilled to hear his teacher tell us that Griffin is a language whiz, but we do have to confess that no, actually, we haven't done anything at home to enrich his Spanish--Ed doesn't speak it and I refuse to give up any of our precious French time!

Griffin doesn't tell us much about his arts and crafts projects, either--in any language!

a new capitulo in Griffin's life

Griffin outside his new classroom

My four-year-old (mostly) bilingual son is now officially learning Spanish!

Griffin has just started preschool at Escuela Bilingue Pioneer, a public bilingual immersion elementary school which also offers preschool classes.  (Some of you may recall that we spent a year on Pioneer's waiting list before finding out that they'd have room for him starting this fall.  Now that's he's a preschool student there, he's guaranteed a spot in one of their kindergarten classes, all the way through fifth grade.  And, quite fortuitously, this school is only three blocks from our house, while our assigned "neighborhood" school is clear across town!)

At the preschool and kindergarten levels, the teachers use only Spanish with the children, who are a mix of native English speakers and native Spanish speakers.  Griffin has been remarkably, surprisingly nonplussed about the immersion experience.  Take, for example, this exchange after his first day:

Griffin: Maman, I didn't understand what the teachers were saying because they were speaking Spanish all the time.
Maman: Ah bon?  ça va? [Oh really?  Was that okay?]
Griffin: Oui, ça va. [Yes, it's fine.]
Maman: Tu voudrais y retourner demain? [Would you like to go back tomorrow?]
Griffin: Oui! 

It helps, of course, that the classroom is full of centers with activities that Griffin loves--books, manipulatives, and so forth--and a few new things, like Coco, the pet mouse.  This led to Griffin's very first trilingual sentence:

"Maman, the ratoncita was scared of all the people so she stayed in her petite maison!"

Oh, I am a madre orgullosa of my hijo, muy orgullosa!  This is going to be quite an aventura.

Griffin: "pioneering" a third language in our family

Our son is going to be trilingual!!!

In Boulder County, parents can enter their children in a lottery to attend any public school in the area.  Kids are guaranteed a spot in their neighborhood school, but if another school feels like a better fit, they can try for open enrollment elsewhere.

My husband and I decided several years ago that we wanted Griffin to attend Escuela Bilingue Pioneer, the county's Spanish-English immersion elementary school (which is, fortuitously, right here in Lafayette three blocks from our house--while our assigned "neighborhood" school is on the other side of town).  But we knew that even if we tried to open enroll him for kindergarten at Pioneer, there was no guarantee that his name would get picked out of the hat, especially since the school keeps the percentage of native speakers of English and native speakers of Spanish even--surely more than ~25 anglophone kids in the entire county would be hoping to enroll in kindergarten at the same time as Griffin!

Then we heard that there is a bilingual preschool program at the school and that students who attend are guaranteed admission to the elementary school, so we applied last year.  And Griffin spent 2011 on the waiting list to no avail.  When we reapplied early this year, he didn't make it in the first round of placements, but then we got a call last week saying that other admitted preschoolers had declined, enough that there would be room for Griffin after all.

I'm thrilled--beyond thrilled--especially since we know now that it's a sure thing.  I was anticipating having to wait until August to find out if he'd move up high enough on the list, and then having to scramble to figure out how to arrange daycare around it (as my Reading Buddies sessions take place after school lets out in the afternoon, we still need to have someone take care of the kids regardless of Griffin's time in preschool).

I was also delighted to learn that the four-day-a-week preschool runs Tuesdays through Fridays, which means that Griffin can continue to attend French playgroup on Monday mornings!

We don't know what this will mean for Griffin's French--we hope that Spanish will complement it rather than replace it--but for now I'll keep immersing him in French at home and in the car.  (And maybe we can look into hiring a francophone nanny to take care of both children instead of sending them to daycare!)