SINGING WITH LOUISE…

Louise flew in with her parents mid-July with the throngs of tourists. She looked at us and smiled, an uncertain smile, at these two unyoung people that she recognised but couldn’t quite trust. She kept looking around for her parents to make sure they wouldn’t leave her with us. But once we got to the house, she started feeling more comfortable. I wondered how much she remembered of her previous visits, being just a toddler of two and a half years. One of the first things she did was go around the house and collect all the little temperature gauges that Yiannis had propped up on various pieces of furniture, the ones she could reach. She knew exactly where to seek them out, even the ones in hidden corners…SO SHE DID REMEMBER.

Back home in Brussels, Louise spends most of her day at the crèche where she and cots of babies and a tumble of toddlers are supervised and chased around by carers, women in their fifties who instruct them in French. Even at home, it’s mostly French except when Annie speaks to her in English. Little Miss Lou Lou understands English perfectly but her primary means of communication is in a toddler jargon, unmistakably French…a scattering of French words strung up in a babble, in a melodious intonation.

So two and a half Miss Ouise…that’s how she calls herself…with a headful of honey-brown locks, like springs, spoke to us, her grandparents of different descents in this sing-song chatter, punctuated with francophone words that would unlock the secrets of her utterances. But sometimes her passive English vocabulary would break the surface and she would throw a couple of English words in our direction…`fish’ instead of `poisson’ or `catty’ instead of `chat’. She calls her mother `mummy’ like how Annie calls me and one day she sat next to me, tapped my shoulder and said…`mummy’… with an impish smile. I said…` No no no I’m grandma.’ But she kept insisting until I joined the dots and realised that she was just stating that I was also a `mummy’. Once we had established that, she started calling me…`ama’ which then evolved into…`gamma’. It was close enough to `grandma’ and I was as pleased as punch. Grandpa in Greek…`papu’… was easier to utter. She took an immediate liking to him and in fact her point of reference for the day was…`papu la’…( papu here)…when he was around and when he wasn’t…`papu pas la’ ( papu not here).

With me it was always…`gamma viens!’…( gamma come ). There were so many things we had to do together. We hung out clothes together. She would hand me the items one by one and I would peg them on the line. If anything dropped to the ground she would clasp her cheeks in horror and exclaim…`Ah non! ‘…which is the equivalent to…`Oh no!’… I’m certain she picked it up from the ladies at the crèche because her parents don’t possess any such theatrical talents. We also trotted off to the greengrocer’s together. They were thrilled to see her again and wished her…`kali mera’ ( good morning)…and she replied…`ka-i-me-a’…and what a round of applause and laughter she received. Encouraged by all the attention, Miss Ouise in her yellow dress, buzzed around like a little bee and helped me select the carrots and other items and clutched the little bags to her chest and ran along and dropped them in our basket, which was near the till. She entertained the patrons, mostly senior citizens, thoroughly and they even let us skip the queue. When we left, she sent them flying kisses.

Oh yes, I forgot. I was supposed to potty train her because she was leaving the crèche and starting at the maternelle (kindergarten) in the new school year…a potty trained toddler was a requirement. I told Annie that my friend said her mother trained her son by running after his naked bottom with a newspaper and shoving it under him when he showed signs of wanting to do his jobs…` That’s awful!’ said Annie. ` The child could easily suffer from trauma.’ I agreed and resorted to something else when all else failed…COCOMELON. I played cocomelon on my phone and propped it up in various parts of the house and she sat on the potty in front of it. She eagerly sat on the potty so often because I played it so often and then…she began to sing along with it…` winkle winkle li-il sa…’ She was especially delighted when I sang with her. She sang the ABC and babbled off the rest…but it was clearly an English babble. She even said…`one two twee’… and babble babble and then…`fi’…and rounded it off with …`ten’. Then one day when I was making the bed, I heard her singing loudly outside our bedroom…` I lo you you you…..Yes I do do do’…I went out to cheer her on and what did I see? She had opened the shoe cupboard and squeezed out some shoe shine that I didn’t know we possessed and was scrubbing it on the floor with a brush and singing her lungs out with absolute glee. Singing had made her so industrious. But the bottom line was…Was she being potty trained?…Not yet…so I stepped up on the cocomelon and she even sang Happy Birthday to Annie when she saw the cake. We were estatic…she was picking up so much. She had also replaced some of her French with English …`Come on gamma!’…instead of …`Gamma viens!’

By the end of two weeks, when it was time for them to leave, we were going off our rockers to the tunes of cocomelon and Ouise was singing along with lyrics of chopped off beginnings and chopped off endings and animal words…`pig’ and `dog’ and `sheep’… popping out with such clarity…and… the potty was empty. Annie wondered if we should have used the newspaper…she had forgotten about the trauma… Ouise went home in her nappy. But the good news is this…she has started at the maternelle and is miraculously peeing in the pot…must be all that cocomelon and sitting on the potty…but she’s still doing her big jobs in her knickers. Just another dose of cocomelon and  Little Miss Ouise will get there.

As soon as they left we made a quick getaway which I’ll tell you about in the next post.

So take care and see you soon. Cheers!