What they hear, almost bilingual, Calling Mama Kim

In another “It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear” segment, one of our friends who works at the church we attend discovered she had misplaced her keys. We live very close to the church so she called us on her way to work there and asked if she could borrow our key so she could get in the building. She told us later that she was explaining to her daughter (eight years old) that she would make a copy of the key so she would not have to keep ours any longer than necessary. This proved confusing to her daughter and she asked her mother, “How is that going to work? A copy is only going to be paper?”
We took JC, Jake and the young girl mentioned above to the pool today; an activity that is nearly as much fun for the kids as it is for Mama Kim, who, by the way, is getting a pretty good tan. The boys and I jumped right in but the girls were a little longer getting up the courage to brave the not-so-warm water. Eventually everybody got wet and started having a good time.
I always finish first – about an hour does me; not so for everyone else that was there, Mama is good for the better part of the day, but she limits the kids to about two hours to keep them from the possibility of burning. Though the water was not exactly warm the temperature was about 95F and the sun was very bright, so it is a good plan.
It is fun to see and hear the silly interactions of three that young, silly games, silly stunts and silly competitions. I usually only half listen to the kids but Jake was especially inventive today and one of the competitions ended up being doing flips underwater. I think he maxed out at eight though there was a suggestion that he could do ten if he could hold his breath long enough. But for some reason he began running along the edge of the pool yelling, “Ola Espanola!” pronounced correctly even though I can’t spell it properly on the keyboard. I probably noticed it more because there was a Spanish speaking family swimming with us today.
On the downside, I tried counting the number of times Mama Kim was called by name in the final minutes we were there. When we announced that it was time to leave the activity level kicked up a couple notches and understandably Mama Kim had to witness every flip, splash, dive and trick being done. I stopped counting at sixty. I suppose that is not too overwhelming when you consider that it is only twenty times per child. That is took place in only fifteen minutes staggers my mind.
She loves it. So do I.