Summertime

I think the first Polish word my kids ever learned was lody. That's the word for ice cream.

We came to Poland almost exactly nine years ago this month, so it was July and it was hot. My oldest two were almost 4 and 7 years old, and they weren't used to living in a neighborhood with lots of kids. They wanted so badly to play with all the kids running around the courtyard in the hot sun. There was just the one little obstacle--they couldn't understand a word anyone was saying, and neither could I.

But the neighborhood kids would run to the nearby shops and come back with ice-cream bars, and it wasn't many days before my kids were asking for lody. I had to learn to ask for it, too, at the little stores where everything is served to you from behind a counter. Some things don't change.

It's July again, and it's hot. My 9yo old K., (who was only a few months old when we came to Poland), was begging for lody all morning, so after lunch we walked to the store, taking 2yo C. with us. ( I need to teach C. to walk in the street with me, neither running ahead or cowering in fear when a truck drives by.) We bought our ice cream bars, including treats for the stay-at-home older kids, and walked home.

We gave C. her ice cream (a frozen confection in a paper cone that I thought would drip less than ice cream on a stick) right away, and she had a great time learning to manipulate her cool snack. C. doesn't talk much yet--mostly single words here and there. She doesn't always respond when we try to teach her new words, and she is still shy of the Polish language. There must be something about ice cream, though. I kept repeating the word, "lody, lody", for her, and she finally said it, thus making lody her first word in Polish--just like her brother and sister all those years ago!

Way to go, C.



And wouldn't you know it? K.'s ice cream bar had one of those sticks that said Wygrałeś!, which means "You won!" She can exchange the stick for a free lody, so I guess we'll have to get some more tomorrow.