Planes, trains and MORE CAR!

Our little spud is finally venturing into the world of language. While other toddlers his age are conming out with fairly complete, if basic, sentences such as 'I fell out', 'He bit me' (or, in the case of our friend Einstein 'We went to the park to feed the ducks and then we ate our tea') my little pumpkin is still at the stage where he repeats random words and once in a while latches on to their meaning. Thus, everything with wheels is a 'car' including airplanes, trains, buses, motorbikes, suitcases and the wheelie thing we put all the towels into to go to the beach.

We like to think (and are backed up by all sorts of well-meaning folks) that because we are a bilingual household, this is slowing down his speech. Why, only yesterday we stopped in the street to talk to a nice French couple and their dog who informed me, after realising that he was speaking his own, personal language to their pooch, that children with two languages were 'un peux en retard'. Just what I needed to hear merci VERY much...!

This morning he was demonstrating the word 'other' and everything was 'other car'. 'Car, other car, other car, other car, other car, other car, other car, other car' ' Enough to make me go a little Other myself. At least it makes a change from 'More', a word which, once he realised it would get him 'More', the spud has worn so very thin that there is practically no more of anything left in the house whatsoever... my wizard wheeze for fixing the word in his head was that whenever he said 'More' I would say it back to him 'Would you like More?' and then give him more of whatever it was ('More Car' for example...) which led him to think that it was a magic word which would get him anything he wants under its well-known alternate meaning: 'Please feed me'.

Resultantly he is More Potato than ever, as can clearly be seen below.

We're learning 'No More', now.

We've been on the beach nearly every day this week and his love affair with it appears to growing. Today we had surfing. Or rather, we had standing in front of the surf class mimicing them and making them fall off their boards laughing. We also had this:

and this:

Please note the very, very cute little swimming trunks and lack of nappy which makes him look very sweet and grown up but doesn't unfortunately stop him peeing in them.

Ah yes, it was all joy and happiness today except for the moments when he would see a woman sunbathing topless as they do here and he would smile and, despite the fact he has not been breasfed for a year, he would point and say 'More?'.

That, unfortunately, is something which appears to translate into both languages quite successfully.