Two weeks ago, on Easter weekend, my family accompanied me to Amsterdam, where I attended a conference. They spent the weekend with the family of another attendee, whose daughter is two years older than mine. They live in Germany, but her mother is English. The two girls had a great time, chatting away in German […]

My 4½-year-old daughter speaks German (minority language) with a French (majority language) accent, up to and including the famous “H”. I expect this will get better as her German grows stronger. Meanwhile, she doesn’t always seem to hear the difference, either. Which led to a funny situation the other day when I read her a […]

A few weeks ago, I don’t remember how exactly it started, my daughter and I began a spelling and writing game with nouns starting with SCH. (There are lots of those in German.) The idea was that I would spell the word, she would write it down, and then one of us would draw the […]

During school holidays, our 4½-year-old daughter attends the centre de loisir in her school building. On the last day of the week, there is usually a party, and kids can come in costumes. Last Friday when I picked up my little witch, I met her BFF S. about whom I’d already heard a lot. She […]

A few weeks ago, I said something about Daddy being an adult. Which prompted this exclamation from our 4½-year-old daughter: “C’est pas un adulte, papa!” (Daddy isn’t a grown-up!) We looked at each other. He shrugged. I grinned. And she added the punch line: “C’est un parent.” (He’s a parent.)

The other day, my daughter (currently 4½) and I were playing with her various plush animals. She handed me her dragon hand puppet, informing me that it was not a real dragon. Me: “It’s not?” Her: “No, look.” She dropped it. “See? It can’t fly.”

Our family is quite a bit international, or European at least: In addition to German (Mom) and French (Dad), there is D., the second husband of my widowed mother-in-law, who is from Turkey, and my divorced father’s partner A., who is from Lithuania. Yesterday, during a car ride, my daughter and I were playing a […]

Two nights ago, I read my 4-year-old daughter a new book from the Conni series (for the second time). Afterwards, she chose the same book for Daddy’s bedtime story. Whenever she chooses a German book for him, he tells the story by the images, which works well for this series. However, some details mentioned in […]

This afternoon, my daughter and I went to the playground with her friend E. and her mother. I had only found out recently that the mother is anglophone, and so of course I chatted her up on the subject. At some point, the girls came to see us. E. wanted something from her mother who […]

Last week, during the European Aquatics Championships in Berlin (BLN 2014), I tried to watch whatever race I could catch between coming home from work and bedtime. I don’t follow any swimmers in particular, so when a race came up where I didn’t know a single name, I said: “I don’t know anyone there, I’ll […]