Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Things We Say

With a baby, things often come out of my mouth that I never thought I'd hear myself say. Yesterday LE made a new friend at the neighborhood park while I chatted with his friend's grandmother. Because I'd only planned to be out for a half hour or so, and it's easier to chase after the boy unencumbered by his bag of equipment (sippy cup, snacks, diapers, wipes, toys, a blanket, butt cream, etc. etc. ... my school backpack has been recruited to a new role that suits it well), all I'd brought with me was the boy and my house keys.

Then LE ate sand. First he was nicely sprinkling the sand into my hand. Then he ate a pebble which I took. Then he ate a tiny dessicated snail which I also took. So he ate another pebble and when I took it he was so mad at me he threw a handful of sand in his mouth to show me what's what. Then he realized sand isn't yummy, and that Mommy can't remove it with one finger, especially not without water from the sippy cup. He looked troubled by all this.

So I picked him up and said to his friend's grandma in what I believe to be perfect Turkish, "LE ate sand. We're going home."

Oddly enough, I have no idea when or where I learned to say 'sand' in Turkish.

2 comments:

Yaramaz said...

I know 'sand' because it's used in the word for kitty litter... I guess LE got himself some bebek kumu :-)

Stranger said...

Hee hee. There are times I wish I could scatter some bebek kumu around the house, let nature take its course and skip the diapers...

I thought and thought about where I might have learned sand-- I think it was because the Bakırköy dolmuş to Taksim passed signs for Kumkapı and I looked it up, mostly because I was very curious what 'kum' meant in Turkish, considering its English meaning...