Monthly Archives: March 2010

I really thought my daughter was too young to watch this Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel movie, and she probably really is.  However, we received a screening copy of the movie to review exactly on a day I was getting tired of the princess movies she favors these days. So, I convinced her she wanted to watch singing ardillas and help me do my blogging homework.  Of course, she was trapped by the chipmunks, the squeaking, the silly pranks,Read More ...

When my husband and I met our daughter’s preschool teachers during orientation last year, we made sure we let both of them know we were raising her bilingual using the mL@H method. We explained that although, at first, it would seem as if Vanessa was not very verbal, the truth was that her vocabulary was much more extensive in Spanish than in English, since we only speak to her in the former. We just wanted to make sure that theyRead More ...

Spanish in Japan! I never thought that I would be using Spanish while working in Japan, but Spanish was more common than I ever imagined it to be. My first job out of college was teaching at a Japanese high school. Having worked so hard to learn Spanish, I was determined to keep my language skills while teaching English and studying Japanese. I had feared that while in Japan my fluency in Spanish would diminish, but every now and then,Read More ...

A curious thing happened this weekend as I was paying for a sandwich at a local eatery. The cashiers had been cooing at my baby son, marveling at his big, expressive brown eyes when all of a sudden one of them asked me: “What nationality is he?” I was so taken by surprise that it took me a while to respond.”American,” I said, but her puzzled look made me feel it was necessary to explain further. So I added, “HisRead More ...

Parents’ names: Kathy and Zane City: Chicago Age: 3 years Languages spoken at home: Spanish & English He is able to communicate with a wider community of people and has already begun making connections between words in English and Spanish that will help his reading comprehension as a whole. ———— Send us a picture of Your SpanglishBaby and we´ll feature him/her right here. We’ll feature one SpanglishBaby per week. Email your good quality picture to madre@SpanglishBaby.com with the following info:Read More ...

When I reflect upon “dialect” in English, I think of regional accents. Although vocabulary also shifts as one travels from Alabama to Wisconsin to London, England, this is not as apparent to me as the contrast of dialects in my second language: Spanish. My journey con hablando español has been mottled. In middle and high school, I learned grammatically correct Spanish, with a heavy emphasis on the particularities of el idioma de México y de España. As tends to beRead More ...

“Swiper the Explorer” clip from NickPress on Vimeo. These days my daughter has grown a sweet spot for Swiper, the sneaky fox Dora and Boots are always watching out for.  She was jumping up and down when I put in a preview copy we got of the new primetime special “Swiper the Explorer”, because, this time, Swiper is the star.  Dora and Boots are on a mission to find a baby fox´s mom and Swiper, showing his soft spot, enlistedRead More ...

I forgot how much we enjoy it… It’s totally true what they say about second children being a bit neglected. I’m guilty. I remember I started reading to my daughter, Vanessa, a few days after we brought her home from the hospital. Unfortunately, such has not been the case with my son. I could go on to list the myriad of reasons why, but I guess the most important thing is to just change it. I do have to sayRead More ...