Our little chimp has mastered the distinction between Russian (a.k.a. mama-language) and English (a.k.a. papa-language). He no longer baffles his daycare teachers with weird made-up words that they automatically assume to be Russian, nor does he address them in Russian (which they believe to be largely made up). He mostly speaks English, such as it is, to his dad, and Russian, with minor linguistic twists, to me. I beam and pat myself on the head, lauding my undeniably brilliant language-teaching skills. I choose to ignore the fact that one of our son's first sentences, many months ago, was "Eat ptitsa!"
That is: "Eat a bird!" This, while watching an innocent robin fly by our kitchen window.
One question that immediately came to mind was whether the weirdness of content trumped the language combination.
That something foul was already afoot there becomes obvious from a series of recent high-chair quips. A small piece of ham is being examined, identified as "KITTEN!" and voraciously devoured. I shrug: clearly, this ostensibly horrifying piece of information, formulated in English, is directed at my husband. The next slice of ham is then held up between a thumb and a forefinger, and analyzed thusly: "Sobaka!" (a dog). And also eaten. This one, clearly, reserved for me. And then, pointing to the third piece, something that we will both surely understand: "Goofy!" Chewed and swallowed.
Perhaps the most disturbing piece of this narrative includes the admission that a toy cat, a toy dog, and a miniature version of Disney's Goofy all accompany our child to the crib: they are his sleep companions. Which he recognizes in the ham, and eats. Not to belabor this point.
And yet, we say not a word. Our son is a picky eater, so if he wants to pretend that ham is made from his darling toy pets, that is just fine in our screwed-up parental book.
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Full disclaimer: I don't know if it was a robin that flew past our window. Maybe it was pigeon. Or a seagull. I don't know birds.
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Also, I don't know if it was an innocent bird. Maybe it was one of those Alfred Hitchcock-affiliated birds, with blood dripping from its beak. A guilty, experienced bird. Maybe it just pecked an opossum to death. Maybe it was carrying the said opossum in its giant beak to devour it in the bushes, and my son's remark was directed at the bird's impending feast. Who can tell?
