Posted in German with the Kinder

Alexander and Christopher are doing well with German!  I realized a week or so ago that again I was slipping into, "If I can't say it in German I won't say anything at all" which is VERY bad for their language development!  Instead my attitude needs to be, "I may not know how to say what I would have said in English just now, but I can still say something relevant in German, so I will and then I will look up the other later!"  I realized that they had plateaued again with their English, and so I have to keep myself talking.

Their passive understanding has increased, Alexander especially.  Alexander loves to take away anything that is keeping me warm, such as blankets I might be using, my slippers, my socks...So one day he had taken my blanket and my slippers and carried them off.  A few minutes later I asked him, "Wo ist meine Decke? Es ist mir kalt!"  (Where's my blanket?  I'm cold!)  He stopped what he was doing, looked at me, then went into the toy room and came back a minute later with my blanket.  Alexander knew the word "Decke" because he likes to sleep with a blanket, and I always say, "Hier ist deine Decke" when I put him to bed.  But what impressed me about that was that it wasn't right away that I asked him where my blanket was.  He had to think and figure out what I was talking about and then go get my blanket for me.

They still love the word "Hose" (pants) and every time I dress them, we chant "Hose! Hose! Hose!" and I have started saying what color they are too.  Alexander always seemed more in tune with the German, but today Christopher twice showed his understanding.  This morning he climbed up onto my lap, and I asked, "Willst du stillen?" (Do you want to nurse?) and he said, "Ja."  They also like to say "Bye!" when they are walking away from you, and so I started saying, "Tschues!" just a couple of days ago.  When I was putting on their sleepers last night, I was saying, "Tschues, Fuss!" (Bye, foot! it rhymes) as I put  their feet into the sleepers.  Today, Christopher was playing and walked away from me and I said, "Tschues!" and he said, "Bye!" so he obviously knows what it means.

Alexander showed that he understood "Socken" (socks, but pronounced with a "z" sound at the beginning so it doesn't sound the same) by pointing to the bin I keep their socks in when I said "Socken."

A list of words I am pretty sure they know:

Ball, Decke, Hausschuhe (slippers), Socken, Tschues, Kuss (kiss), ja, nein, Hose, stillen, possibly springen (jump)

And I did actually manage to read 2 books to them today auf Deutsch.

I'm debating about how much German to speak with the new baby...