fais de beaux rêves, take two

For the past year, I've experienced stranger-than-normal dreams. And I've had some doozies in my life, even dreaming about punctuation in grad school. (Yes, I'm a nerd.) But I'm blaming the more recent weirdos on nine months of pregnancy and four months of sleep deprivation and postpartum hormonal craziness. Don't even ask me about my second trimester erotic dream about Homer Simpson. That one still gives me nightmares! Others have been disturbing, but in a whimsical way, like when I dreamed that Ed stuck a carrot in the soft spot on top of Griffin's head and said, "Now he's a unicorn."

But last night I had a detailed but fairly pedestrian dream, in content, at least: I was traveling through France with Griffin in his stroller, with two of my new friends from the "Survival for New Moms" class I attend at the hospital.

Oooh! Opportunity for another gratuitous Griffin photo! Here he is with his best friends, their daughters.

Anyway, the moms and I were doing normal touristy activities like shopping and flirting with cute guys and trying to figure out how to work foreign telephones. Griffin was being a baby and just hanging out watching.

It was only after I woke up that I realized that throughout the dream, I spoke to my friends in English but to Griffin in French, with the narration in my head in French as well. I even remember having a conversation all in French with myself about one of the cute guys I met--Pierre--pondering the irony of chatting up a man whose name Ed and I had considered for our baby before settling on Griffin.

This is the first time that I can recall a bilingual dream that involved my baby. It fascinates me that my linguistic interactions in my sleep mirrored those in my day-to-day life!

What language(s) do you dream in? Do the languages appear with the same frequency, the same interlocutors, and the same contexts as in your waking hours? What language(s) do your family members speak in your dreams?

fais de beaux rêves

While walking home from Carl's house one evening this week, pushing Griffin in his stroller, singing to him, and watching daytime turn to nighttime, I started improvising. Taking the tune from the song "Goodnight, Ladies," I sang "bonne nuit" to the things we passed. Then I decided to try to make the verses rhyme, and by the time we arrived home, I had a berceuse (lullaby--from the verb bercer, to rock). I'm so pleased with it--especially since I haven't found one in French that I like enough to want to make it part of Griffin's bedtime routine--that I'd like to share it with you all here! (Click on "comments" for an English translation.)

Au revoir, soleil
Au revoir, soleil
Au revoir, soleil
Soleil très chaud.

Bonsoir la lune
Bonsoir la lune
Bonsoir la lune
La lune là-haut.

Bonsoir voitures
Bonsoir voitures
Bonsoir voitures
Voitures qui passent.

Bonsoir le chat
Bonsoir le chat
Bonsoir le chat
Le chat qui chasse.

Bonsoir les chiens
Bonsoir les chiens
Bonsoir les chiens
Chiens qui aboient.

Bonsoir bébé
Bonsoir bébé
Bonsoir bébé
Mon bébé, toi.

Bonne nuit, bébé
Bonne nuit, bébé
Bonne nuit, bébé
Je t'aime très fort.

Fais de beaux rêves
Fais de beaux rêves
Fais de beaux rêves
Bébé qui dort.

What do you sing to your children at bedtime? Can anyone recommend French lullabies (other than "Fais do-do, 'Colas mon petit frère," which is pleasant but doesn't "work" for us since Griffin's name is, well, Griffin, not Nicolas, and he doesn't have any siblings)?

What language(s) did you speak to your baby in utero?

Jeanne, who is teaching her children several different languages and expecting a baby later this year, asked a question on the previous post--she wanted to know if I spoke to Griffin in French or English before he was born. (That was back when he was "Croissant"!) This strikes me as a great question to pose to the readers of this blog: What language(s) did you speak to your children in utero? And why? Or why not?

Here, I'll go first. I rarely spoke directly to the Croissant while he was baking, in English or in French. Not out loud, at least--I'd "think" to him, addressing certain thoughts to him, figuring that he'd hear my voice plenty regardless. I'd rub and pat my belly, especially in response to his movements. My husband did talk directly to him (in English) through my navel, though, hoping to familiarize him with the sound of his voice.

Since I had stopped teaching at that point and wasn't speaking French regularly as part of my daily routine, I realized eventually that he wasn't hearing much of his soon-to-be-second language (except when I was taking care of Carl). But, unconvinced that speaking French aloud to my unborn child would better prepare him for linguistic gymnastics, and loathe to add yet another item to my pregnancy to-do list*, I opted not to force myself to do something that felt unnatural and thus turn my passion for the French language into yet another chore.

What about y'all? And can anyone cite research that addresses the effects of speaking to babies in utero?

*Speaking of all the things that incipient mothers are guilted into doing, have you ever read What to Expect When You're Expecting? Well, don't. Especially not the "Best-Odds Diet" chapter. As if a pregnant woman has the time or energy or inclination to fix meals with three different colors of vegetables each time, organ meats, and homemade bread, all copiously sprinkled with wheat germ and tofu flakes! (Plus Ed would have moved out if I had confronted him with bean curd--he's tofuphobic.)