Going Out With Two

People have a tendancy to look at us when we are out. Who can blame them. Frankly, we are a good looking family and the kids are, well....gorgeous (boggery noses and all). They're also funny and, now that there are two of them, things get a little louder than they did before.

This morning I took the kiddies grocery shopping at Superstore. Daddy stayed home to get ready for our company that's coming tomorrow (His sister and her family are coming. Yeah. Love them). Anyway, I digress. Picture this: Two little kids sitting side-by-side in the front of the grocery cart wearing the same kind of ski coat (just different colours). They have on rubber boots. Each of them has one pink rubber boot and one red rubber boot. Why? Because before they left the house they had a big fight about who would wear the red ones (the favorite pair) and who would wear the pink ones (the less favored pair). Now, while Eva's coat is in fact red and the boots would in fact look much better with her coat.....Babba is not having his son shopping in Superstore wearing pink boots. So, the kiddies came up with a compromise solution-yep, one colour each. Was Babba thrilled? Not so much. Yet since it was the kids who had decided and he was about to get a whole hour + to himself while we got groceries so he let the matter drop....

Now, imagine those two, little, lovely, well behaved, matching clothes and funny boot wearing kids who don't look much like their mother, pointing at and exclaiming loudly over everything they see.

-'Oh, boots Mama', says Eva.

-'Boo, boo, bootas Mama', exclaims Jie-Jie.

-'Mama, Mama look at dat. Cinderella. Look atit, look atit' (from Eva). 'Look atit, look atit', actually means, 'get your butt over there Mama so I can touch whatever it is'.

-(From Jie-Jie) 'Xia-Xia (thank-you), Mama. Mei-Mei dit (says) Xia-Xia Mama' (if I bought her a certain sweater that he is now grabbing at and about to pull off the hanger).

We then leave the clothing department and move into the food section. I pick up a package of cheese. Of course Jie-Jie NEEDS to hold it. If Jie-Jie is holding cheese....well....(they both agree) then Mei-Mei NEEDS to hold some cheese too. She waits patiently while Mama moves down the aisle and finds another type of cheese to buy. As we move through the store Jie-Jie begins to 'eat' the cheese he is holding. This involves chewing a hole in the plastic wrapping. Hmm...yum. Shopping now involves constant reminders to Jie-Jie not to eat the cheese just yet. Why constant reminders rather than just taking the cheese away from him? Hmmm....Is Mei-Mei not still holding cheese? Yes. Refer to the NEEDS section of the paragraph.

We finally meander our way all the way through and out of the grocery store, get our groceries into the car and are on our way back home when I start to laugh. Why? Because I think about a bizarre little conversation we all had as I was loading the groceries into the trunk. It was the type of conversation we're used to having these days, but at that moment, sitting in the car I really asked myself what the hell we were doing. You see, I had bought a container of strawberries and they were sitting at the top of the basket that we use to transport groceries home (yes, very environmentally friendly). Anyway, Jie-Jie sees them and

he says, 'Cao-Mei, Mama.'

I say, 'Yes that's right, cao-mei, Jie-Jie.'

Eva pipes in with, 'Strawberries Mom?'

and I say, 'Yes, baby, those are strawberries. Papa dit, 'les fraises'.

The two kids make a kind of 'hmm' sound, I load up the groceries, put my babies in their carseats and away we go. I'm not sure if we know what we're doing to these kids, but there is one thing I do know for sure, we're slowly developing a family language all our own.