Regan has been begging me to teach him “real” Spanish. “You know Mom. Like Bushka talks.” He is forever asking me how to say words and phrases in Spanish and the look of disappointment on his face when I don’t know….. salt in the wound. He doesn’t understand how his Papa and Babushka can both Speak English and Spanish and not me, their daughter, his Mom.

I guess my days of weird Spanglish are over. I really did need a good motivator to knuckle down and learn real conversational Spanish. And honestly it’s just super shameful that I don’t. I hang my head in shame anytime I have to confess that I don’t speak Spanish when people find out that my Mom is from El Salvador. Hanging head now….

Also apparently my three foster children bring out the fact that I’m not as white as I normally look. Whenever I’m out and about with them I have random people start speaking to me in Spanish. Awkward. It’s a new a strange phenomenon in my life. I know feel my sisters pain. They’ve complained about this forever.

I mean I grew up in a bilingual household! Telanovelas were where it was at! Rice and beans, Spanish work books, Spanish flash cards…… My Mom tried. She REALLY REALLY tired. We broke her. Stubborn bratty kids that we were. “You and Dad are the ONLY people who speak Spanish.”  That we knew. “We live in the States.”  “We’ll never need to use it.” Oh, to go back in time and kick my self in the butt.

I feel like I have a decent base. She got that far before we broke her. And I did take three years in high school. So conjugating  and stuff isn’t terrifying. Although I only passed my Spanish classes because I had not one but TWO personal tutors at home…. Hanging head again….

Tonight I bought 16 English/Spanish edition easy readers. I am SO SO SO excited. We can read and have the translation right next to the sentences and actually LEARN. I got level 1’s and 2’s. We will work up to 3’s and 4’s and I’m hoping before long we’ll be reading just Spanish children’s books. Baby steps right?

Regan is going to be thrilled. I’m so excited to show the kiddos the books in a couple of days. 🙂