English Lessons

With Aiden's new vocabulary, comes daily English lessons. He speaks in 2-3 word sentences and leaves out a lot of the important words. For example, "make mom?"means "hey mom, what are you making?"and "doing mom?" means "what are you doing mom?"(ok, that was an easy one.) Yeah, they really aren't that hard to figure out most of the time, but still. It's not proper.


The other day we were wandering around the park looking for the people who would be giving us some fruit for the aid station our ward was doing for the marathon. After 14.74 seconds of walking around the park, Aiden got winded and needed a ride. He got in front of me, and with his best begging face said "carry you, carry you?" Which translated, means "please pick me up and carry me". I started in on an English lesson, teaching Aiden that if he wanted to be carried, he should say "carry ME please". After some practice and lots more walking, I set him down because he is HEAVY. He immediately got in front of me and started in "carry you ME please, carry you ME?" Well, that's improvement. We moved on.


The very next day (the day of the marathon) I was driving with Aiden to take some keys out to Kenny. He was out with the young men, dutifully handing out water at the marathon aid station when one of the young men "borrowed"the keys and then locked them in the car. They were at least an hour from home. So we were on our way to rescue them, but we found out it was a nightmare getting across town with half the roads closed off for the marathon runners who were running right down the road. We found ourselves lost in the middle of a neighborhood trying to negotiate a detour to our advantage. From the backseat Aiden asked "are we, mom?" Which means "Where on earth are we, mom?" I told him where we were, to the best of my knowledge, and then started in on another English lesson. I told him when we ask a question, we have to include vital information like who, what, where, when or why? We say "where are we, mom?" And then we went on our way. Later, when we were lost AGAIN in a completely different part of town, Aiden took his opportunity. "Are we, mom? Where?" I just told him where we were. He'll get it someday right?