On Da Bridge is Falling Down

Adults and children often mangle song lyrics and map them to something else they are familiar with. The results with children can be funny. Currently Sven is singing "On Da Bridge is Falling Down" which ends with "my favorite Lady." He also adjusted the lyrics to Baby Beluga by singing "Heaven a bug ..." instead of "Heaven above..."

After visiting Avignon last Spring, we taught him "Sur le pont d'Avignon." However, he doesn't understand any of the lyrics, so he made up a nonsense ending to match what he believes is a song of nonsense lyrics. So the ending has changed from "tout en rond" to "bada romp". Then he laughs out loud at his silly self.

Actually, I didn't realize

While we were visiting my sister's family for the holidays, we were eating breakfast in the hotel one morning. Sven said to Ojiisan "I want more milk in my cereal." Ojiisan told him he still had milk in his cereal, so Sven looked and said "I didn't realize there was still milk in my cereal." We were all amused by his correct use of the word "realize". This morning he used "realize" again when he tried to tell Erik I didn't realize you were asleep, when he turned on our bedroom light and found Daddy still snoozing. But the sentence got a little mangled along the way.

This incident reminds me of when Sven started using the word "actually." The funniest time was last summer when we stopped in Portland on the way back from Ashland. We were eating dinner in Le Bistro Montage and the waitress tried to take Sven's plate of Rice and Beans away before he was finished. Sven told the waitress "actually, I'm not done yet." She quickly put the plate back down, looked embaressed, and apologized. My sister Michi said her kids also used the word "actually" when they were quite young. Its hilarious to hear the young children voices echo back the adult words they hear.

Mommy Eats Vegetarian Mice

Raising a vegetarian child is interesting. For a long time, Sven didn't show any interest, or didn't appear to know that his diet was different. However, in the past few months, he started mentioning being vegetarian -- we suspect that he is getting that at his day care, as he gets the vegetarian alternative when Chicken is served for lunch.

However, after watching the movie Madagascar he started saying "I want meat!" But the question is, does he really understand what that means? The other day, on Santa Lucia day, he asked for "meat" for breakfast. Soon after that Erik came downstairs with Santa Lucia goodies, and Sven picked up a chocolate and said "can I eat my meat?"

He also knows that we eat "veggie"meat substitutes. For example, he knows that we eat veggie burgers. One day he was pretending to be a cat and he said "Are you the Mommy cat? Mommy eat vegetarian mice?"

Thunder Nilsson

About 9 months ago, after a thunder storm, Sven started saying "I'm Thunder." So, we would respond "Hi Thunder" or "Hi Thunder Nilsson."

At Sven's 4 year checkup, the doctor asked Sven if he knew his name. Sven said "I'm Darfa." Sven has never answered the name question with his own name, so I wasn't surprised by the answer. For a long time he used to tell people he was "Thomas" as in Thomas the Tank Engine.

Finally, after a little proding from me and the doctor, he said "I'm Sven." Then she asked Sven if he knew his whole name and Sven said "I'm Sven Michiya Namioka Thunder Nilsson." Her response was "Wow - that's a lot of middle names!"

That's Chinese!

A few weeks ago, Sven and I were watching the credits on a Miyazake film go scrolling by, and Sven pointed at the Kanji and said "that's Chinese!" Since Sven can't read English yet, I was surprised at his observation.

A couple of days later, we were at my parents house (my Mother is Chinese and my Father is Japanese), and while Sven was playing in the next room, I told my parents about Sven's observations about Kanji. Taking it one step further, my Father then wondered if Sven could tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese, i.e. the difference between the Japanese kana writing, vs. the Chinese based Kanji characters. My Mother argued that the differences were too subtle for Sven. So, my Father called Sven over, held up a package of green tea that had Katakana across the top and said "Sven, what is this?" Sven correctly said "that's Japanese!" and skipped back out of the room.