I am bilingual.

My children are not.

I decided that I needed to work on this, especially since it is a well-known fact that young children can pick up a foreign language with the greatest of ease.

English is actually my second language. I spoke Polish until I started Kindergarten, and I was a bit shocked when I arrived at school and all the kids were talking (what I thought) was gibberish. However, because my brain was a big old sponge at the tender age of 6, I was speaking English pretty fluently within a few weeks.

I still speak Polish all the time now to my mother, my father, my grandparents - pretty much my entire immediate family. I guess I could speak in English, but this is my way of keeping up with my native language by practicing it every chance I get. I do have to say that English is a much easier language to speak, read, and write than Polish, which is part of the reason I never consistently spoke Polish to my children.

This past week I have been trying to speak more often to my children, especially Brad, in Polish. I have also been teaching him simple words and phrases any chance I get. Well, he has picked up an amazing amount in the past week, to the point that he makes an effort to speak Polish everyday by saying “hello”, “goodbye”, and “goodnight” to me without any prompting. He’s even trying to teach his dad everything new he has learned, by coming up to him and saying things like, “Dada, this is how you say tree in Polish… drzewo!” And he won’t stop until my husband repeats the word perfectly. He definitely takes after me in this regard.

My dear son also showed me last night how much he truly understands about people speaking foreign languages, following a conversation with my mom (he calls her Booboo):

Brad: “Mama, I talked Polish to Booboo on the phone.”

Me: “That’s great!”

Brad: “You know that Booboo speaks Polish, Mama.”

Me: “Yes, she sure does and so does your Mama.”

Brad: “Yes, and Dory speaks whale.”

Me: *spitting water out of my nose*

Exactly a week ago we had gone through the Thanksgiving plague, and in the wee hours of the Friday morning after Thanksgiving, I was awaken from my sleep and had to run into Eddie’s room as he proceeded to paint his pajamas and bedding with the remnants of his dinner. I then interrupted DadaWise’s snorefest to give him the task of the 3am bath while I gathered up the dirty bedding and clothes. I took everything downstairs to get washed so that we could have another set of fresh sheets in case this incident happened again.

Eddie took a while to settle back to bed, but the laundry was going so I knew I had to stay up anyway. So, even after he fell asleep I stayed up happily, yet sleepy, and watched an episode of my favorite soap on the DVR. Don’t judge - this is a very well thought-out and poignant drama which keeps me entranced and causes me to cry at the drop of a hat. Yes, it’s that good.

After wiping the tears from my eyes, I went downstairs and took out the wet sheets and put them in the dryer - set it for 80 minutes on high and decided I would try to go to sleep for a while.

Awakening the next morning, I immediately went downstairs to take out the sheets. Only they weren’t dry. They were cold and still wet. Now I am thinking that in my sleepy state I must have forgotten to turn on the damn dryer. Ok, I turn it on and I notice that there’s no heat. A heatless dryer is just not going to cut it. I call DadaWise and tell him that he’s going to have to fix the dryer when he gets home from work. He lovingly tells me “you suck” and as soon as he hangs up the phone I call my mother to bitch about my dryer dilemma.

Because it was Black Friday my mother suggests I look around for a new washer and dryer for my Christmas present.

After picking my jaw up off the floor, I was a woman on a mission. I called every store within a 25 mile radius, asking what they can do for me so that I could have a new high-efficiency washer and dryer (at a ridiculously low price). After about an hour and some real smooth talking I ended up getting a (free) delivery that Sunday.

So, I present to you my newest high efficiency toy:

After doing 18 loads of laundry in a 24 hour period, I can officially say that I am in heaven! The Whirlpool Duet Sport front load pair is amazing! Before this, I had never had a load of laundry done (washed and dried) in about an hour. I can barely keep up with how fast this thing is! I have stripped all the beds and pulled out all of my blankets that I had in storage, just so I can have the pleasure of washing them. I think I stood in front of the damn things for hours, just watching them work. Oh, and we decided to stack the pair which added square footage to our laundry room. Perfect!

As always, there has to be a bit of humor in my life with anything that happens to me. On Sunday, right after the delivery my husband called me at work and said “I think the old dryer works.” To which I reply, “Oh good, you fixed it! Now we can try to sell it.” My husband then quickly replies “It was never broken.” He then proceeds to bashfully explain to me that he didn’t realize that he had turned the gas off to the dryer the night before when he was working on taking out the fireplace (we’re remodeling downstairs). I panicked. Here it looked like we had swindled my dearest mamusia into getting us a new washer and dryer as a Christmas present.

What was I supposed to do? I had to tell the truth, so I called my mom, who laughed so hard I think she peed herself.

** Hey mamusia, I cannot thank you enough for this amazing gift! **

When you give us our Christmas card this year, just make sure to write this on the bottom:

“Enjoy your washer and dryer! Just remember that the washer is a present for you my darling daughter, and the GAS dryer is a special present for you my sneaky son-in-law!”

Stop! You may be thinking that you’re seeing things, but you really aren’t.

My kids do have names: Brad (formerly referred to as T3) and Eddie (who was previously known as GG). Doing some house cleaning around here and thought it wasn’t really fair to refer to my boys by random letters.

Ok, that is all for now. Carry on.