August 04, 2008

Se habla Español

Brady: (In bed, last Sunday night, reading The Expectant Father). Necessitamos hablar in Espanol ahorita.
Natalie: (In bed, reading In Defense of Food, and surprised he is speaking to me in Spanish because we haven't done this in over a year -- something about teaching Spanish to squirrelly kids all day long and not wanting to speak Spanish at home too). Si? Porque?
Brady: Porque el bebe puede oirnos.
Natalie: Si, yo se. Mi libro me dijo tambien.
Brady: (switching back to English) Also, apparently there was a study where mothers who, while pregnant, watched a certain soap opera every day. And then, after the baby was born, when it was crying, if it heard the theme song to the soap opera, it stopped crying. The same thing happened with a study for a certain song played three times a day to a fetus the last six weeks of the pregnancy, and if a certain poem was read to it three times a day. Debemos escoger una cancion en Espanol.
Natalie: Bueno. Puedes escoger tres canciones, y voy a escoger uno de los para tocar cada dia al bebe.

And so starts our effort to make a bilingual baby (and take self-portraits with our digi camera; this is Brady speaking Spanish to troutface).




One week later (last night), we started speaking in Spanish at dinner. It went pretty well. Our resolution is to play Spanish music and speak in Spanish every night at dinner (unless we have guests over). This encourages us to eat at the table, too, which is a nice way to connect at least once during a busy day and is another nice habit to have when the baby comes.

I have also started listening to Latino radio at home and in the car. FM 93.1 "El Rey" is, apparently, the most popular radio station in Portland after only about 16 months on the air.

2 comments:

kate cockrill said...

What a great idea! A bilingual fetus. These pictures are priceless...but I wish you had a tighter shirt to reveal the "bumpness" ;)

Natalie said...

Yeah, the 'speaking Spanish at dinner' thing has lasted one night so far -- thwarted by the Olympics!