12:05 a.m. - 2012-03-24
friday night in the attic
I'm converting the attic into a bedroom for Marley and it is turning out to be really unbelieveably cute. When I started the attic didn't even have a floor, but now it does, and slanty finished walls with exposed beams, and narrow steep stairs that don't take up too much space in my upstairs hall.
Marley loves it up there, partly because she doesn't have to share a room with her brother anymore and partly because it's like a treehouse or an eagle's nest or the tower of a castle. Also, everything is just her size -- small -- because the narrowness and sloping walls don't allow for furniture that's tall or bulky.
The stairs come up about 1/3 of the way down the length of the room and on one side she has a purple tent with a mattress in it -- where she likes to color -- and her rocking chair, and on the other side there's a small dresser, book/toy shelves, and under the tiny window, her bed and bedside table and another small bookshelf.
Marley is the unfortunate or fortunate victim of a mother who always wanted a catalog-pretty bedroom and never had her own bedroom, period, until age 13, and then never one that was catalog-pretty. (This is because catalog-pretty bedrooms, or even furniture that matched, made my mother gag -- there was some sort of family loyalty that was violated by the idea.) So of course Marley's room was white and pink and pastel before she was born, and since she hasn't objected yet it's stayed that way. (Her brother's is just as obnoxious, only in primary colors. When they shared, the room was split down the middle, one half primary and the other half pastel...)
Although Marley still hasn't announced yet that she hates pastels and she wants her room black and neon green -- she is agreeable in most things -- she is giving me one hell of a time about speaking French at home. It occurred to me the other day that the reason my kids don't speak French at home is because I don't speak it. This is obvious, I know, but I had been looking at the problem as "why can't I get them to do it," as opposed to "why the hell am I still speaking English to them?" I should have started when they were babies, I know, but daddy doesn't speak a word of French, refuses to learn, and hated it if I directed "that frenchie crap" at our baby. But now he's gone, so I have no excuse, and no reason why we should still be an English-speaking household. My kids spend 95 percent of their time with me. If I spoke French exclusively, they would too.
Cashy is better, of course, because he's younger. Not surprisingly, his favorite word is "merde"! (For anyone reading this who doesn't know, that means "shit.") (Also I think I have heard him say "putain de merde" which literally translated means "whore of shit.")
0 comments
