Singing in the Rain

The movie “singing in the rain” has a lovely scene about voice mimicking in early cinema history. Jonathan is in some ways a mimicking machine. He imitates many things I do (even bad habits) and repeats many words, even if not exactly right. And why am I writing about his? Because he looks sooo cute walking in the rain with an umbrella... almost reminds me of Gene Kelly...

See for yourselves (armed with his bottle – typical Jonathan; captured in mommy's mobile phone – and since then I have a camera in my bag). I only showed him how to use an umbrella once, and yet when push came to shove and he needed to use one (a rare occasion in Israel) he knew at once how to do so. I suspect they learned about umbrellas in kindergarten when the theme of winter and rain was taught (Jonathan still sings “drip drop rain” songs, even though there has been no rain for a while now – except the usual rainy Purim weekend, spoiling all the Israel Carnival celebrations).

When I ask Jonathan “how are you?” he answers “beseder” which means all right.
Every time I give him something he said “toda” in a cheerful staccato (that means thanks you!)
When he especially wants something, he will even say a distorted form of the word please in Hebrew and even a nice “bitte” in German when solicitation his dad. He usually begins with a demand in general, and then he changes his tone to that of a request.

But there is one thing he will always ask for nicely – his bottle of chocolate milk before bedtime. He enters the bed and then says to me ceremoniously “kasha shoko” (it should be “bevakasha shocko”, which means please and chocolate drink). We are working hard now on the concept of requesting things and expressing his needs.

There is also some things that will always be demanded! - anything “I should give him is presented as a demand “dilli!” he says which is a distortion of “tni li” the female imperative of give in Hebrew. Give me! He demands. Ordering me to sit down by him is also a strict order “lashevet!” he says and motions to me with his hand – showing me with short movements up and down that I should sit myself in a particular spot in his vicinity.

We play a card game in which he has to match animals to their young. As he knows the matching by heart now, but still enjoys the game I have moved up the level a notch by asking him to repeat the animal names to only in Hebrew, but also in German. He gets it pretty close by repetition. Some animals like the lion (Loewe in German) he knows all alone. He also does wonderful animal sounds and the theme of animals is a strong topic between us in games (cards and pictures, little plastic animals) and in books and even DVD's. He really loves animals. My mother asked me if he makes cute mistakes, and that I should document them if he does. (We all still remember the distortion my twin sister used for the words tomato as a toddler, my dad used it as a nickname for her for years...). I regret to say that although Jonathan is not speaking perfectly, the mistakes are of the logic kind rather than cute confusion. His mistakes are mostly coming from the fact that some letters and words are truly hard to pronounce.

Another strong subject remains numbers. Jonathan can easily count to ten in Hebrew and by now he counts to five in German as well. It really seems as if he understands the concept of counting, because he puts items on the table, adding one at a time each time he mentions another number. He may sometime skip a number. The kitchen is also a beloved game/topic and Jonathan has taken to imitating the loud “chewing” noises I make when we play “cooking for mommy”.

His mimicking also involves tones of voice. Usually Jonathan is a merry child. If he is refused anything he will test the waters and fake a wail to see if he can get some pity from any nearby adult. When he is angry he shouts! And he mans it. Today, we were visiting a playmate, and the two boys argued about some game cards. Jonathan refused to share the cards and the other boy yelled that he wanted them himself. Jonathan's happy mood changed at once to that of anger and he scolded the buy by shouting his refusal to return the cards (in German by the way...if he is answering a question in the negative, but he is not angry – he will use Hebrew. If he is angry and shouts “no!” he will use German – an interesting division...). The funny thing about the whole scene was that from one moment to the next two happy boys with high pitch squeaky toddler voices suddenly changed their tone into deep growls of argument (Jonathan) and wailing (his counter part). In such moments as these, one believes that every exaggerated cartoon has its origin in the truth.