Boy, Howdy!

First, I want to thank all of you who read our last blog entry & prayed for me. I don't know if it's because of your prayers, or because of the fact that my staff & their student leaders successfully moved into the new residence hall over the weekend, or because I finally got some down time in the past couple of days to start regrouping (or a combination of all 3!)...but whatever it is, I've felt more peace over the past 36 hours than I have in the past two months. So, THANK YOU! We are so very thankful to have such a broad community around the world supporting & praying for us doing our times of need.

Now, a fun little story about our bilingual daughter. As most of you know, we have a wonderful Lithuanian nanny who spends the days with Ieva. Aurelija is a complete blessing in our lives for many reasons: 1) she's wonderful, 2) she's a committed Christian, 3) she adores Ieva, and 4) Ieva adores her! She also speaks to Ieva only in Lithuanian, which we love. And now as Ieva's vocabulary is increasing exponentially every day, she's coming up with some new phrases that at times, take some translation, regardless of the language she's trying to speak.

Over the past week, there have been certain times when Ieva has consistently said a phrase that sounds kind of like "boys howie" & we, for the life of us, have not been able to figure out what it is she is saying. At one point I wondered if Andrew taught her the old expletive "Boy, Howdy!" just for fun. But when he heard it, he didn't know what she was saying either. When she said it at our friend's house, they asked if it could be something in Lithuanian. "No - " I said wisely, "it doesn't sound like anything Lithuanian" (and I would know because my language skills are SO advanced!!! as if...)

So I came home from work tonight & as Aurelija & I were talking, Ieva said it again. I interrupted our conversation to ask if Aurelija had any idea what Ieva was saying. "Oh, yes - " she said matter-of-factly. "būs owie." Ahhh....it was starting to make sense to me now...
"Būs" is the Lithuanian word for "will have" and "owie" is our American slang for what can hurt our precious kid. Since Ieva (& us) refer to her getting hurt in terms of owies, Aurelija has fit that into her Ieva-language system, and would warn Ieva anytime she was doing something that had the potential for getting her hurt "būs owie, Ieva!" (you'll get hurt, Ieva!) It makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

So, now the mystery is solved, and we were reminded once again of how much more difficult it will continue to be for us (and others) to understand our daughter as she learns two languages while she's learning to talk. But, oh well...it's fun to keep guessing! And ultimately, we'd never trade away her gift of growing up bilingual for anything!