Hola!

He's bilingual!









We have approximately seven thousand electronic noisy toys for Toby, all of which were gifts from the grandparents and various relatives. My mom knows I can be a little prissy about how annoying this kid stuff can be, but he really really likes them. He'll play for hours on his own, going from his singing bike to the "happy and you know it" car, to the newest, a car steering wheel console that announces all sorts of things in either English or Spanish.

The first thing a toddler does with this stuff is figure out exactly where every bell and whistle lives, and then they will choose a few favorites and press those. Repeatedly is not a strong enough word. We once had to give up a Spanish Frog doll up for adoption because she was so insanely horribly shrill. If you've seen the more recent Willy Wonka where the dolls are on fire, you know what I mean.

Toby always sets the steering wheel to Spanish, and after he's left it for about 30 seconds, it says "see you later" as though it were a possessed and clingy prop from a bad Outer Limits episode. But I can live with that, because as of tonight (drumroll please) my genius darling is speaking a foreign language. So far it's just "Waygo", as in hasta luego, but it's a start. Sometimes I speak Japanese to him when one of us is really bored- maybe I ought to ramp that up a bit. How cool if I could ask him embarrassing questions in our own secret language once he starts potty training, for instance. Of course, in Portland it's not like Japanese is a rarity.

Ahhhh, parents really do think every little thing a child produces is a glowing gem. I suppose it's inevitable, Senor Anderson.