30 down, 10 to go!

It occurs to me that I haven't had a lot to say about my pregnancy on this blog this time around.  But other than awful "morning" sickness till 20 weeks, pronounced fatigue, and a scare at 22 weeks when I had regular contractions for 12+ hours and spent the night in the hospital,  everything has gone swimmingly.  No other aches and pains or problems to complain of--I feel much better in my third trimester of this pregnancy than I did in the first two trimesters or when Griffin was gestating!

My husband and I have met with my doula to discuss my birth plan (I'll be making a few changes this time around, like asking for an epidural!), and she gave us a lot of concrete suggestions of how to make the new baby's arrival easier on Griffin.

In the meantime, we're still trying to move huge amounts of books and papers and boxes from my home office to our recently-finished basement so that Unicorn can have her own room.  (At the rate we're going, though, she'll end up sleeping in a drawer for the first six months!)  (Not that she would even care!)

I'm looking forward to some visits from family and friends over the next two months (though I've warned them that rather than going into full-on hostess mode, I'll be defrosting lasagnas for dinner) and getting my substitute and a grad student intern trained at work so that they can take over the running of my Reading Buddies programs in June.  (I'll cut back on my hours but still plan on working up until the week I'm due.)  Griffin is enrolled for two full days per week at his preschool so that he can go on summer field trips with the other kids.

And I'm almost done with his first-year scrapbook, which I desperately want to finish before the next kid shows up!

"guest post" by Griffin: on the idea of a petite soeur

Lots of people have asked me how Griffin feels about becoming a big brother, so I thought I'd try to imagine what he's thinking based on his recent actions and comments....

My maman is enceinte, which means that there's a baby growing in her belly and it's going to get bigger and come out and be a little girl. I like to put Bear under my shirt and tell people that Bear is my baby and he lives in my belly button and he'll get bigger and come out. Bear grows faster than my petite soeur so he usually gets born a minute or two after I hide him under my shirt.

She sure is taking a long time to grow. Maybe that's why Maman is so tired and cranky all the time. She sure doesn't like it when I take a Very Long Time to do something like get dressed or eat my beans. But there are always so many other interesting things to do and say and watch and play with--beans and shoes just aren't very important to me. I wish my sister would stop making Maman cry. What's a hormone?

Sometimes I put Bear back under my shirt so he can drink my lolo like my baby cousin does with Tatie Elizabeth. I'm not sure where the lolo comes from but it's apparently quite important. One day Bear went under my shirt to drink l'eau instead of lolo and Maman and Daddy laughed when I told them that Bear was getting water from the water fountain. I mean, where else do you get water from?!

People keep congratulating me when we tell them that I'm going to have a little sister. I didn't think I had anything to do with it, but maybe so? Either way, I'm starting to feel proud. I'm a big boy who can go pipi in the pot and sleep in a lit du grand garçon and have a baby. Telling people about my petite soeur makes me laugh now. People laugh when I tell them that I want to be a mommy, so now I just say that I want to be a daddy.

But I guess I have to learn how to be a grand frère first. There sure are a lot of things we have to learn!

It really made Maman laugh when we told the mommies at my playgroup. They were all staring at us and saying "Well?"and she whispered a question in my in my ear to try to get me to announce it, "Tu vas avoir un petit frère ou une petite soeur?" and I was embarassed but I said "une petite soeur" and they all shouted hooray and I heard one of the mommies say to another one, "Does soeur mean 'sister'?" and the other mommy was wrong because she said "No, it means 'brother'" and a third mommy said "Oh, okay" and then the fourth mommy and my maman told them they were wrong and that a soeur is a sister which means the baby is a girl baby and then the mommies went crazy shouting hooray and told me "good job, Griffin!"

I think my maman's friends need to learn to speak French too. Then I will tell them "bon travail."

One day when my maman was frustrée she looked at all the books on my floor and told me that my room was a désastre. Well, what does she expect? That's what happens when you read to me all the time and teach me to love books and tell me to look at books when I take my nap. I have to keep getting out of my bed to find more books and of course I'm going to throw them on the floor because I'm a little boy and I like to throw things and if I leave them on the floor long enough then someone will put them all away for me.

So Maman said that we had Too Many Books and that my petite soeur doesn't have any and shouldn't we pick out some books for her room too? Well of course she needs to have lots of books too so that she can learn to throw them on the floor and train Maman to pick them up for her.

So we looked at all my books together. Whenever we saw a book that just had one picture and one word on a page, Maman asked me if it was a baby book that we could give to the petite soeur and I said "Oui" and we made a big pile of books that are too babyish for a grand garçon like me. Except some of the baby books I wanted to keep anyway and she said that was okay too.

And then I saw Bear and decided that we could give Bear to the petite soeur so that she wouldn't have to be alone in her bed, but that made Maman cry too and she said that Bear was my best friend and he would be sad if he didn't get to sleep with me. So I put Bear under my shirt to drink my lolo and told Maman that we could give Daddy's rhinocéros to the baby instead.

She didn't know what I meant so I reminded her that Daddy bought a purple animal with a horn like a rhinocéros for the baby at the store with all the pillows and then Maman laughed and taught me the word licorne which means unicorn.

It turns out that they are calling the baby "Unicorn" right now, which sounds kind of silly to me, but my parents are Very Silly People. But I have a better name in mind. When they asked me what we should name the baby, I said "Zoo" because that is a very good place.

It will be a Very Good Name for a Very Good Baby and I will be a Very Good Grand Frère.

c'est une fille!

This just in....we saw girl parts on Unicorn's ultrasound yesterday!

(My husband is prescient--he had already bought a fuzzy lavender stuffed unicorn for the baby the night before.)

She appears to be perfectly healthy despite my "advanced maternal age," so we're quite happy. We were also suprised and relieved to see her stick her tongue out at us, which means that she almost certainly isn't tongue-tied (a condition called ankyloglossia) like Griffin was. Whew!

on second languages and second babies

Dear readers, I'm pregnant! Fourteen weeks in.

And admidst my worries about taking care of an infant while parenting a three-year-old, I remind myself of this: the one thing that I know I won't struggle with is immersing this new baby in French. Unlike during my pregnancy with Griffin, I speak French every day while "Unicorn" grows in my belly. Unicorn hears the cadences of both languages in utero.

When Unicorn arrives, I won't have to scramble to learn a new lexicon that encompasses diaper blow-outs, onesies, pack-n-plays, bassinets, and bouncy chairs.

I won't have to force myself to carry on yet another unnatural-feeling monologue in French wherein I narrate everything I do for an uncomprehending baby who only cries in response, because I'll be holding meaningful conversations in French with a preschooler about what's going on around us, a preschooler who understands most of what I tell him (even if he chooses to ignore some of the directions).

I won't be trolling the Internet during middle-of-the-night nursing sessions--okay, so I probably will, but this time it won't be to buy French books and toys and CDs and DVDs on eBay, because we've got a substantial collection already. Unicorn will have several shelves of French books awaiting his/her arrival in his/her room. (Assuming, of course, I can manage to transfer all the stuff from my home office into the basement and transform the office into a nursery by July, that is.)

On Monday mornings, I'll take Unicorn and Griffin to French playgroup, and every other Friday we'll attend French storytime, so they'll both grow up knowing other kids ages 0-5 who speak French.

Griffin and I know and love dozens and dozens of songs and comptines that we will sing to Unicorn--I won't have to worry about expanding my repertoire because I get bored with the same ten songs, like I did with baby Griffin and baby Carl (my nephew).

I haven't been to France since 2005, when I supervised a group of US students taking classes in Grenoble for a month, or to a Francophone country since 2007, when my husband and I spent a few days on the small Caribbean island of St. Martin (on the French side, though almost everyone we met spoke English). We haven't had the time or the energy or a compelling reason to take a trip to a French-speaking country with Griffin. However, I'm really jonesing to be surrounded by French speakers and a different culture, so it's conceivable that Unicorn will have accompanied us to some Francophone place somewhere by the time he/she is Griffin's age!

So, while the idea of bringing another baby into this world makes me very anxious for a lot of reasons, I'm not nervous about being a non-native speaker bringing up baby bilingual: it worked for Griffin and me when I was starting from scratch, so it'll work for Unicorn, Griffin, and me.

Right? Right??? Please tell me j'ai raison!

a new bilingual baby on the way!

No, no, not me--my sister-in-law! Congratulations to Elizabeth, Steve, and Carl, who will welcome a new little person to their family in November. I can't wait to hear Griffin speak French to the little pooper, which will--I hope--motivate Carl to speak more French too.

Dare me to send this letter to the editor?

Disclaimer: This post has nothing at all to do with bilingualism. I may or may not actually mail this letter to the newspaper. But it sure feels good to put it in writing.

To the five ignorant, juvenile, and rude men sitting at the table next to me at lunch when I had hoped to eat a rare meal in peace all by myself today:

As the nursing mother of a 23-month-old child, I would like to express my sympathy for your wives, your girlfriends, and your children, based on the comments you made about breastfeeding in voices loud enough to carry throughout the restaurant. You were probably just trying to make each other laugh--you have probably already forgotten about the lady sitting alone with her Oprah magazine who sent you dirty looks and finally asked the waiter if she could move to a different, faraway table--but your comments were were so appalling--and offensive--and inaccurate--that I feel compelled to address them here.

First, let me summarize your discussion for our readers: according to your group, breastfeeding can be appropriate for a while, until the child is 9 months old or so, or until the mother has had a second child, which should occur around that same time. (I believe several of you use the word "breeding" here and another makes analogies to "horses." I'm suprised that you're not comparing penis size and sperm count right here over your chicken curry and saag paneer.) While you concede that mothers' milk brings with it some positive effects, like strengthening the baby's immune system and increasing the child's intelligence, this "peaks when the kid is nine months old." Some mothers stop nursing when their babies' teeth grow in; the thought of babies biting breasts is apparently very amusing! If the child is old enough to convey to his mother that he would like to nurse, he is clearly too old to be allowed to do so. On the other hand, the majority of you would like to be able to turn to your wives or girlfriends in the grocery store and ask to suck on their breasts. Most of you find this hilarious, until a colleague points out that you wouldn't want to do this to your own mothers. Another insightful man emphatically states that Anna Nicole Smith's extended nursing of her son (according to you, until he was six years old) caused the death of both of them. Imagine that!

Please permit me to address your thoughtless comments? First of all, the American Academy of Pediatrics prefers that babies be exclusively breast-fed until the age of six months. They recommend that mothers continue nursing until the child is at least one year old; the World Health Organization recommends that children nurse until age two.

Neither the AAP nor the WHO cites any examples of breastfeeding causing death for mother and child.

As for the humor of being bitten while nursing: please imagine pointy little baby teeth jabbing themselves with enough force to draw blood. Jabbing into your scrotum or penis or other particularly tender area. Repeat several times a day for several weeks. Still funny?

Nursing a child is not about giving women the opportunity to titillate you by exposing their breasts at home, at parties, on airplanes, or in public. Not even Anna Nicole Smith's breasts.

Nor, often, is nursing a child easy. It is a complex biomechanical process that rarely comes naturally to babies and new mothers, but one which brings with it so many benefits that we're willing to struggle through the pain, the frustrations, the awkward positioning, the infections, the clogged milk ducts, the twice-nightly feedings, the dehumanizing breast pump, the trickiness of expressing breast milk at work and at conferences and while traveling without privacy, the continued months of attention to what we eat and drink, the months of not taking medication because it will appear in the breast milk, and more.

My son now only nurses briefly right before bedtime. He no longer drags the Boppy into the hallway when he hears me come home from work. He hardly ever asks for "lolo" any more--and that was one of his first words! In almost two years, my son has rarely been sick. He seems exceptionally bright--his pediatrician said his language development at age 18 months was "amazing"--and he is very loving. My husband and I can't help but think that his being breastfed enhanced all this.

And I can't help but think about the women who are unable to nurse their children--like those who go back to work or school after the baby is born and whose bosses refuse to make accomodations for pumping. Those without the resources or time or money to find doctors, midwives, doulas, lactation consultants, or breastfeeding support groups who could help them figure out how to make it work. Those who have chosen to adopt children and who simply can't make milk flow despite how much they wish they could. Those living with physical diseases, mental illnesses, and other situations that make nursing inadvisable or impossible. And those like my dear friend Kelly, who had a double mastectomy several days after being diagnosed with breast cancer and whose baby screamed wretchedly when presented with formula. For weeks.

So to you, you five smug men without children who see women and their ta-tas as your property, I say you need to fall on your knees in gratitude to your mothers who welcomed your hungry little mouths and your pointy little teeth to their aching breasts when it would have been a lot easier to pour some formula in a bottle and go take a nap. Go say "thank you" to your mamas. And if your wives and girlfriends ever have children, just shut up. Support these new mothers no matter what. Whether they breastfeed or not. And try to feel a little ashamed about the days when you bachelors joked about how you were studly enough to get a woman pregnant whenever you felt like it; and about the days when you got hard-ons ogling women who nursed in public as discreetly as possible; and about the days when you made uninformed pronouncements about how long babies should nurse. Go on, try it now.

I make milk. What's your superpower?

PS: No, I'm not on the rag this week.

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.)

Good-bye, "Goodnight Moon"

As Ed and I put the finishing touches on Croissant's room, waiting for the kitchen timer to go off so we can take him out of the oven (he's supposed to be done baking today, but at Colorado's high altitude, you never know), I'm realizing what I may be giving up by giving him the gift of a second language from birth: the intimacy of sharing my native language with my child.

I was lining his books up on the shelf--old and new favorites--and couldn't help rereading the classic Goodnight Moon, one that my mother loved to read to me. It's so charming with its rhymes, its depiction of a quiet nursery as baby goes to sleep, its whimsy in saying "good night" to inanimate objects. Unfortunately, the French version of this beloved tome is leaden. It relies on word-for-word translation, losing the rhythm and the rhyme. It's simply not a classic in French, would never be a favorite in French.

Now, at nearly two years old, Carl doesn't seem to mind; he'll even ask for Bonsoir Lune by name over Goodnight Moon sometimes. Maybe this is a bigger deal to me than it ever will be to my son.

But I ache at the thought of never reading Goodnight Moon in English to my children. Will I really be able to handle speaking only French with them?

No bébé yet!

Now that the holidays are (almost) over, I can return to regular blog posts! My recent absence from the web doesn't mean that Croissant showed up early--it has all to do with the fact that Christmas shopping, cooking, card-sending, and quality time with family and friends has taken precedence over spending time on the computer. Oh, and since I'm 37 weeks pregnant, keep in mind that the OB appointments, various baby prep classes, visits to prospective day care providers, and tasks to get Croissant's room ready seem never-ending! Add in a nasty cold that has left me snotty and lethargic, that good old pregnancy insomnia, my job at the library, and the fact that my hubby Ed and I just organized and cleaned the house for our annual open house/board game party to which 40+ people were invited, and, well, you all understand why I haven't posted lately.

Remind me not to be this pregnant during the holidays ever again!

But I can say that now the pregnancy and the incipient Croissant feel very, very real. He kicks vigorously every night--less so during the day, or maybe I stay busy enough not to notice--and my tummy continues to expand. Now that Ed has painted the nursery and we have a lot of the gear we'll need (thanks to showers and the fact that many of our generous friends have finished procreating and given us their kids' hand-me-downs), we're physically ready for him (if not quite mentally). We've also read lots of books and interrogated friends and family about what we can probably expect; we took every class that the hospital offers except "How to Prepare Your Pet for Your Baby" (and frankly, if we had even a goldfish, we probably would have signed up for that one!).

My parents have purchased their plane tickets to come visit and help out in February. (They live in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which is a 20-hour drive from us here near Boulder, Colorado, so we won't be able to get together regularly.) My younger brother is also planning a visit in March to come meet his new nephew. And since Ed's family lives so near us, we know they'll give us a lot of support! My parents-in-law have even offered to take care of the baby one day a week, which means he won't have to spend much time in day care when I go back to work part-time at the library. So things are falling into place for us!

(Stay tuned for a post about helping Ed's parents learn enough French to be able to speak both languages with Croissant!)

I'm due January 23, if I haven't mentioned that before here. As Ed and I hear stories about other women due around then who have started having contractions, already gone into labor, or had emergency C-sections, we realize that Croissant could show up any day now. We've both started leaving work with the knowledge in the back of our minds that we might not be there the following day, so we're getting good at tying up loose ends. (Of course, he might take his sweet time and not want to come out until after my parents have arrived!)

Curious about what we will name him? So are we! After months of agonizing, we've reduced the potential first names down to four: Arthur, Griffin, Milo, and Roland. My grandmother is extremely concerned about this and asks me several times a week if we've "solved our little problem." But we figure we'll know when we see him. (My mother-in-law had a good suggestion: Go to the back door and holler his potential full names into the yard and see what sounds most natural, i.e. "Roland Brooks X, you get back in here right now!")

Here are the criteria we used to narrow the field: No name that I immediately associate with a former student (good-bye, Nathaniel) or boyfriend (good-bye, Steve); no name with unpleasant connotations for either of us, for that matter (good-bye, Pierre, one of Ed's former bosses) (and the "Cedric" I liked so much was out because one of my mom's former students named Cedric turned out to be a murderer); no name that has been among the top 100 boys' names in the past few years (so long, Daniel); no one-syllable first name that would sound too brief with his one-syllable last name (good-bye, George); nothing that has obvious make-fun-of-me-on-the-playground possibilities (good-bye, Lysander); no names that already belong to someone famous or infamous; his name has to have a standard spelling (we're thinking "Milo," not "Mylau") and not be too esoteric (Leander) or ethnic (arrividerci, Mateo); his name should be reasonably pronounceable à la française when I speak French to him (au revoir, Finnigan) but not be too French for northern Colorado (not a chance, Gauthier) (although Griffin and Milo don't really have French equivalents, a lot of our other choices did, like Oliver-Olivier and Peter-Pierre); and none of my family's punny suggestions.

Whew! What an important decision!

(If he were a girl, it would be easy: we decided on "Anne-Claire" months ago.)

Happy holidays from the three of us. May the New Year bring you joy and many marvelous adventures!

owls, bon-bons, and puns for Halloween

This is a guest post by Elizabeth, Carl's mom, which concludes with a delightful example of how Carl uses French when you least expect it:

So in the end, Carl wanted to go in the neighbor's yard to look at their Halloween decorations. We said he had to put on his owl costume to go in the neighbor's yard. He was suddenly very willing to wear it.

We went to four neighbors. Carl rang the doorbells, though when they opened the door he tried to go inside. He said "trick or treat" twice after prompting, and "thank you" every time after prompting. Then we drove to Tatie and Tonton's neighborhood where a neighbor was having a small party that included several small children. The girls were fighting over the balls. Carl went for the kitchen utensils, though he played with the balls a little later too.

Eventually I convinced Carl it was time to leave and we rejoined Steve who was manning the door at home. Carl was beginning to get this whole "trick or treat" thing just as it was ending. He called the candy "blue trick or treat" (crunch bars) and "brown trick or treat" (twix bars) and wanted me to open the door so he could give it to someone. Poor Carl, there was no one at the door to give it to. I saw a woman walking her dog whom I called over and who kindly indulged me when I asked her to tell Carl "trick or treat" so he could give someone the candy.

I convinced Carl to get ready for bed by telling him he could hold onto the "blue trick or treat" while we did diaper and jammies and things. He started picking at the edges and found he could tear open the paper. "Bon-bon! Trick or treat has bon-bon," he declared. "Carl eat," he then said, and took a big bite.

Back to Sarah: I also dressed up for Halloween, capitalizing on my increasingly round belly: I wore my regular maternity clothes, but used safety pins to attach cards words like "couldn't," "we'll," she's," "I'm," and so forth. So that made me a pregnant woman…wait for it...

having contractions!

nesting and excavating

I'm realizing that since I'm no longer tutoring French to the two little girls (I passed them on to another tutor when I quit my teaching job in Fort Collins, not being willing to spend two hours on the road twice a week at dinnertime for a 1.5 hour French lesson), and since my nephew is too little to really make "lesson plans" and linguistic games for our interactions that I can then blog about, and the tutoring I do in remedial reading (English) doesn't often lend itself to being described on this blog, I have a whole lot less to say lately!

And I haven't been doing much research that I can report back about (or even contacting people to ask them to let me profile them here) because the "nesting" instinct you hear about in pregnant women is manifesting itself now! When I'm not working or taking care of things around the house or cooking or spending time with my hubby (or with friends), here's what you might find me doing: reading about pregnancy, labor, and child development; making inroads into the massive "to-do" pile that's been accumulating for years; excavating my home office (which involves finding a home for other massive piles of paper that have accumulated over the years, including nine years' worth of teaching materials, handouts from conferences, professional journals and newsletters, magazine and newspaper clippings, photos, cards and letters, etc.); catching up on old issues of magazines that I never got around to reading when they were delivered, in hopes of getting them out of those ubiquitous piles and out of the house; sending letters and emails to friends that I want to remain in contact with beyond just the annual Christmas card exchange; working on my French to keep from getting rusty so that I can be as accurate and communicative as possible with Croissant; napping, because I feel tired about half of the time when I'm awake; and, well, you get the picture. I just haven't been reading about second language acquisition and bilingualism in children, even though I have so much left to learn!

I'm neglecting the blog, even though I wanted to be able to post regularly three times a week once I stopped teaching! But my new job at the library is going swimmingly and I'm happy, happier than I was teaching, so it's all good. My seven-year-old reading tutee even ran up to me in the grocery store a few days ago, crying "Sarah! I read a chapter book! I read a chapter book all by myself!" and hugged me.

I promise that I'll blog when I have something to say or something I want to share. In the meantime, I'd like to invite my newer readers to peruse the archives and the links in the right-hand margin. Wish me luck in my archaeological adventure in my office, and let me know if there's anything you'd like to hear about on this blog in the meantime.

C'est un garçon!

Look at those cute little feet (les pieds)! Croissant squirmed and danced his way through the ultrasound (l'échographie).

He's got the Duex family pointy chin (le menton) (like me) and his father's great smile (le sourire).

Here he's crooking the index finger (le doigt) of his left hand (la main) towards us, beckoning us to come closer.

And here's the proof that he's a he! (le you-know-what)

new job!

In addition to the pregnancy, I have another change to announce: a new job! In between the two-hour commute (round-trip), the cost of gas, the insecurity of being an adjunct instructor (part-time temporary, never knowing from one semester to another if I'll have enough classes to have benefits, or even any classes to teach at all), and the fact that the salary is so low that it would barely cover day care costs, it made sense to resign from teaching at Colorado State. It was time to find something closer to home that I'd be able to keep doing even after Croissant arrives.

And amazingly, I did! You might recall that earlier this summer I did some contract work with the Lafayette Public Library helping out with the Reading Buddies, a reading enrichment program. They've now hired me to coordinate the year-round program! Here's how it works: a first, second, or third grader (the Little Buddy) is paired with a middle or high school student volunteer (the Big Buddy). The Buddies meet at the same time once a week to explore books together--reading, discussing, playing simple literacy games like Boggle Jr. At the beginning of each session, I'll meet with all the Big Buddies to present activities they can do with their Little Buddies and have them share issues that have arisen during their meetings. I'll observe and troubleshoot and be a resource person during the Buddy meetings. And then for the last 20 minutes of the session, all the Buddies will come together for a group activity--a library scavenger hunt, a presentation on a children's author, a creative writing activity, and so forth. By the end of the semester (or the summer), these group activities will turn into a project that the students can present for their parents, like a poetry reading or a readers' theatre presentation of a simple script.

Different groups of Buddies will meet four times a week, twice at the public library and twice at two elementary school libraries (as part of their after-school programs) in hopes of reaching not just the stellar readers who'd be coming to the public library regardless but also the kids reading below grade level who will really benefit from one-on-one attention from an older kid who is enthusiastic about books.

So I'll be in charge of recruiting the students, interviewing potential Big Buddies, training them, coordinating with the schools, and planning the sessions. And as the program is grant-funded (the library doesn't have the money to support it), I'll also be writing the grant applications that insure that Reading Buddies continues. (The grants will pay my salary, thus I'll be very motivated to make them as strong as possible!) In fact, we actually have to wait to hear if the most recent grant has been funded before the library can officially offer me the job. But the librarians assure me that we'll win the grant and that I'll be hired in September.

This is a part-time job that will require probably half the number of hours a week as my part-time university teaching did (when you factor in lesson planning, grading, meetings, and everything else that teachers end up doing) but still pay about the same. And hooray, the library is just three houses away! No more commute! No reason for me to be on the highway eight months pregnant in a snowstorm just to get to campus and have half the students email me to say that they don't feel like leaving their dorms to walk to the classroom!

Since it's part-time, I'll be able to keep up with all my other projects (like this blog, tutoring, volunteering at the library's Homework Center, my summer gardening misadventures, serving on the board of directors for CCFLT, and taking care of my nephew Carl once a week--and wait till you hear what he can say in French now!). I'll let the tutoring taper off as January approaches and then start it back up again if/when I'm ready. As for the Reading Buddies job, I may even bring Croissant with me--he/she can sleep in the office while I work (babies do sleep, right? Please tell me Croissant will nap!) and kids can read to him/her during Buddy sessions sometimes.

Most importantly, I love the idea that even though I'm no longer in the classroom, I'll still be involved with helping students learn!

PS: The worst part about taking the Reading Buddies job is it means that the creative and talented current coordinator, my good friend Estela, is leaving. Her husband is going to be a lawyer in the Air Force, so they have to move away. I'm really going to miss her and her family! She's raising her one-year-old, Dani, bilingually (English/Spanish), and Dani is just now starting to say more than "Mama," "Dada" (everybody other than mom, including me, is "Dada"), and "eee ya!" (like a little kung fu fighter). But Estela has promised to keep me updated on Dani's linguistic progress. Bonne chance et bon voyage!

a croissant in the oven

You know the American expression "to have a bun in the oven"? It means "to be pregnant." Well, I'm a French teacher, so I can announce with delight that I have a croissant in the oven! Yes, my husband Ed and I are expecting our first child around January 23, 2008. We'll be raising our own bilingual baby--and my nephew Carl will have another kid in the neighborhood to speak French with!

more jobs for me!

The bad news: My school's summer study abroad program in Grenoble, France, which I was supposed to be the faculty director of this year, has been cancelled due to low enrollment (we were two short of the minimum we needed). I'm really disappointed--and if I am, imagine how the students feel! I was looking forward to showing my students around the city, seeing my friends who live there, buying books and CDs and cheese and chocolate to bring home with me--and to think that school would actually pay for my flight and hotel for such fun! Oh well.

The good news: Educational Testing Service has hired me to grade AP French exams in June. This entails seven solid days of reading essays 9-5! It'll be good for me (and my CV)--and it pays well.

The other good news: This week I started another tutoring job. This one grew out of the volunteer work I do at the Lafayette Public Library; I'll be working twice a week with a six-year-old who's having a lot of trouble with the phonics approach to reading. So while this tutoring isn't related to French, I figure it'll be worth blogging about because some of y'all are raising kids with English and another language; no doubt many of the techniques and games I try with her will be applicable to other kids.

The other other good news: The results of the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers are in: I've been elected to the Board of Directors. This means I'll serve on committees and help plan conferences and generally try to make the state a better place for foreign language teachers (and their students).

And speaking of work, the unsubstantiated gossip finally put to rest: I'm not pregnant, despite the fact that colleagues have been approaching me for a week to congratulate me on having a croissant in the oven. Turns out, one of the Spanish teachers was speaking French to a French teacher, who said something along the lines of, "I'm afraid we're going to lose Sarah sometime because she wants to start a family." What the Spanish speaker heard was, "I'm afraid we're going to lose Sarah because she is starting a family," and she then promptly told everyone else that I'm expecting. Grrrrr. No wonder people have been staring at my stomach in the copy room.