"Oh! You want an orange!!!" Elementary, my dear Watson!

So, we had an interesting experience at our local favorite Chinese restaurant.... We were there for our friend Gabe's 5th birthday. We had an enjoyable dinner. One of the restaurant's employees son's came out to eat his supper at a table near ours. He had a plate of chicken and oranges. I didn't make the connection right away, but Maja had been watching him quite intently. Soon after, she began crying something that sounds like "juice", but she made it clear it was not juice she wanted. Those of you who have had conversations with Maja know that she's about 50% understandable and the rest you just get from context. So she was really upset and crying and kept saying "Ju, Ju, Ju!" It kind of sounded like it had a bit of a "p" on the end, so I thought maybe it was "poop", but she didn't want to do that either. I was at my wit's end! She kept looking at the boy as she was crying. So finally I asked her if she wanted an orange. Immediately she quite crying. I said, "You should have just said you wanted an orange!" Again, she said "Ju" and happily ate her orange. So I came home and looked up "orange" in my Chinese/English dictionary and lo & behold, one of the two variations of "orange" in Chinese is "Ju"! She's been home 2 1/2 years and hasn't spoken a lick of Chinese in about 2 1/4 years and there came "Ju" out of the blue! Isn't it amazing what these kiddos retain?

Then last night Tony got home from work about midnight and when he went in to kiss the kids, Daniel was speaking Chinese in his sleep. He hasn't used any Chinese since he's been home either! Too funny!