Erin, on the transracial adoption blog has a category of Wednesday Funnies. I love her stories, so I decided that I would start one called Friday Funnies. It's the end of the week, we're all tired, and I thought readers would enjoy something light on Fridays.

We are starting the phase where Caleb is now trying to speak English, but with his accent, I am not sure whether it is Chinese or English. He has a tendency to add "ah" to the end of all of his words and so for example, our dog Toby's name becomes "To-bee-ah". No one criticized him in his hometown so I'm not sure if it is a dialect thing or not. My friend from Taiwan says it is just a sloppy way of speaking Chinese.

Anyway, yesterday Caleb was pointing toward something in the family room and said what sounded like "Dee-wa-dee-ah". He was insistent as he pointed and I was racking my brain to figure out if it was indeed a Chinese word that I know. He finally walked over to the DVD player and said "DEE-WA-DEE-AH" very slowly. Oh, he wanted to watch a DVD! I LOVE this kid's accent!


Readers get a bonus of a second "Friday funny" today. Caleb is starved right now for more books in Mandarin since he only bought two in China even though I argued with him that once we arrived home, books in Chinese would be hard to come by. I ordered Harry Potter in Chinese last week for him online and when he was complaining yesterday about nothing to read I told him Harry Potter should be arriving anyday. He saw me order the book and was excited, so I assumed he would know what I was talking about.

I said, "Harry Potter", while signing "book". He knows the sign for book. I got a blank look. I marked my forehead with a lightning bolt with my finger and said "Harry Potter" again. Still a blank look. I went over to the computer and showed him. He laughed. "No, Mama, no 'Heh-lee--Pot-ah'....'Ha Li Po-tah'", he said, with Li, and the Ah rising. Sure enough, I googled it and found it in Pinyin on one website as Ha Li Po Ta. Who knew Harry Potter was tonal?