Our little Kez seems to be settling down perfectly fine. When I picked her up from the daycare last Friday, one of her teachers told me that she is starting to be much more confident around the other kids and teachers, and her character is finally coming out... The teacher also told me was that she is a makakka, which, according to dear old Mr Google Translator, it's a Maltese words which means that she is astute and "able to assess people and situations accurately". I wonder if I should be proud or absolutely terrified... Apparently there is a teacher who's got a soft spot for our little makakka and Kez goes to her every time she feels like a special treat, a biscuit, a popular toy... and most of the times she gets what she wants!
After just a few days in an English-speaking daycare Kez has already started saying a few words in English. Her favourite is "byeseeyou", all together and really fast, accompanied by her world-famous Queen-of-England hand wave. She is able to count from 1 to 10 in Spanish but most of the times she skips number 1 and starts at 2 ("doooos, treeees, cuaaatroooooo", always dragging the vowel sounds). The funniest thing is that now she has also started counting in English, and she also starts at two!! "One" is such an insignificant number that it does not seem to deserve her attention.
So far Kez seems to be coping very well with the multilingual environment she's being raised in, although the other day she made it clear to us that two languages is already enough for her! A friend of mine from the university of Leuven (hi Stephanie!) came for a diving holiday to The Rock (a.k.a Malta), and while we were having dinner she told Kez that water is called "water" in English. Kez looked at Stephanie with a very angry look in her face and she told her: "Nooooooooooooo! Ilma!!!" ("water" in Maltese). Stephanie tried to convince her to say water but Kez refused. Ilma it is, then. Or agua. But definitely not water.
Love your posts!
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