Posted in German with the Kinder

Probably nobody but me is interested in the tiny little details of what German the twins produce, but it encourages me to keep up with this, so I am doing it anyway.  It is my blog after all!

Alexander said "Ritter" to me, which means knight.  He was holding one of Ryan's toy knights at the time.  Then the next day, Christopher said "Butter" to me.  Their favorite breakfast is peanut butter on bread, so I say, "Erdnußbutter" to them many times a day. (Butter is pronounced differently in German and English although spelled the same.) The past few days I have been focusing on saying "Nase" (nose) to them and touching their noses.  Alexander likes to grab my nose which is I think what started this.  So this morning he was sitting on my lap and I said, "Gib mir einen Kuß, bitte!" (give me a kiss, please), which he has reliably done for quite some time.  Then I changed it to, "Gib der Nase einen Kuß!" and he leaned forward and kissed me on the nose!

I think that they have been producing more words because of 2 things.  One, I have been focusing on speaking a lot to them.  Two, I decided a week or so ago that in addition to speaking to them, I would emphasize certain words by repeating them separately.  For example, saying, "Hier ist deine Tasse" (here is your cup) and then repeating, "Tasse."  Or, "Willst du Milch?" (do you want milk?) and then saying, "Milch."

School is almost over and I can't wait to spend more time with them!  Oh, and today I learned how to say "to let go of something or somebody."  I had to look it up because Alexander was pulling Christopher's shirt from behind and nearly choking him!  Don't worry, I dealt with that first and then looked it up! It's "loslassen" if you are interested - Lass sein Hemd los!

I have also been practicing how to say, "I miss you," "I will miss you," and "I missed you!"  It's funny in German because it's backwards - you say, "You are missing to me" in effect - du fehlst mir.  It takes some practice to be able to say it naturally!

Another little tidbit - I was reading that Fingerspiele book today, marking ones I want to learn, and discovered a German version of the "Where is Thumbkin?" fingerplay I did as a child.  You have both hands behind your back and sing, "Where is Thumbkin? Where is Thumbkin?" and then bring one hand out, thumb up, and sing "Here I am!"  Then the other hand, thumb up and sing "Here I am!" again.  Then they talk to each other, yadda yadda yadda.  Remember that one?  So the book tells me that this is sung to the tune of "Bruder Jakob" - otherwise known as Frere Jacques.  So then I had to sit there and compare the two and I realized that it is that tune!  Now you all know how musically inclined I am!  The words are more important to me than the music in any song.  I remember watching a documentary about ABBA once and Benny and Björn saying that they wrote the music first and then words to fit the music and I really couldn't comprehend how one would do that!!

Of course, I am the same person who never would have noticed that the "ABC song" and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star have the same tune as well!