My French nephew

Last week was chaotic in the Khan household. Not only did my small two-bedroom Chicago apartment play host to my parents (visiting from Karachi), but it also tried to valiantly accommodate my sister, her husband, and 18 month old son (all visiting from London). The last time we had all been together was almost three years ago at my sister's wedding, and at the time there were no children in the mix. With new additions to the family for both my sister and I, it was wonderful (and crazy busy) to have everyone in one place last week.

My favorite moments, by far, revolved around interaction with my nephew. First of all, the litte dude is HUGE. Easily in the 99th percentile for his age group, his mother is forced to buy clothing meant for 3 year olds. Second, he is a typical little boy - virtually indestructable. And finally, he's endearingly weird.

While most children are happy giving parents fits about what they will and will not eat, my nephew will voraciously devour anything in sight (which may, now that I think about it, explain his size). While most children start getting sleepier as evening turns into night, my nephew acts as if he's just chugged a 16 oz. can of Red Bull. This is obviously quite the problem for us in my apartment, because there aren't very many clear pathways for a kid to zoom around in. We eventually resolved this by moving as much furniture as we could against the apartment walls, so that by 10:00pm, when my nephew first started to crave the need for speed, he was able to run full tilt from end to end in our apartment without injuring himself (given his size, this was probably a good thing for our furniture too, as I'm not sure what would have borne the brunt of the punishment). When tired from all the running, and in an attempt to catch his breath, my nephew would ocassionally go sit inside the refrigerator to cool off. Once recovered, the breakneck sprinting would resume, until finally about 11pm he would start to run out of gas, and would sputter to an abrupt stop.

My favorite memory of him from this trip, however, will be listening to him try to communicate with us. As would be expected of an 18 month old, he has a limited vocabulary. What would move me to fits of laughter would be his enunciation of this vocabulary, specifically because he would insist on pronouncing his words using a French accent. This imparted a bizarrely haughty demeanor to all his attempts at communicating with us.

"Shoes" became "shuss," "food" became "fewt," and my favorite, "potty" became "pottay." Actually, that last was pronounced as two words "po" and then "tay." Which is a great way to tell someone that you need to use the facilities. "Excusez-moi Monsieur? Ou est le po-ttay?" Gives the message such a sophisticated touch. Especially when we'd be getting ready to leave to see Chicago for the day, and he would cycle through all of his words with us. Even now, several days after my last interaction with him, I find myself pretending that he is speaking to me before I leave home for the day.

"Excuse me," he would say to me. "Are you sure you are ready to leave? Did you have your fewt? We will not be eating until lunchtime. Do you have your shuss on? Because it's going to be terribly inconvenient to walk around barefoot. Oh, and please make sure to void your bladder and bowel by using the po-ttay before we leave - there will be no clean facilities available for quite some time."

Ah, to live in Europe. No wonder kids grow up multi-lingual there.