When Carlo spills something, he says 'Ooo la la!'. When it makes a mess he says, 'Oooo la lala laaaaaa.'

Maria marches into his creche when we pick him up, looking tall, confident and elegant among the little kids. Today Carlo was playing by himself a little apart from the other kids, as he often is. He seems to enjoy creche though.

Maria translates for me. I showed her a cartoon image of a new tramway for Paris and she asked me 'c'est n'exist pas?'

"No it doesn't exist yet. It will soon."

She giggled. "Daddy, you know my French!"

"Not really, just a little bit. You're the best at French in this house."

Big grin.

Each night over dinner we practise together. She will put together a French sentence meaning something like 'I picked up the cup' and I will try to comprehend. This exercise benefits my French more than hers - though she's building confidence in using full sentences.

In English whenever she refers to something in the past tense she carefully enunciates the suffix.

"Carlo catch-ed the ball". "I drop-ped it." "I ate-ed it."

Over dinner we came to discuss Bananas in Pyjamas.

Maria calls them 'banane dans le jamas.'

She tried to teach Carlo the song. "Banane. Dans jamas. Je va en va de l'escalier."

Carlo looks unhappy. "No 'nanas. Chips!".

Today when I picked him up his teacher told me - as part of the comprehensive daily report on what he played with, how long he slept and what he ate -- he ate a lot of kiwi.

That's funny because he IS a kiwi, I told her. She gave me that funny look they give me most days when I'm not quite keeping up with the flow of things.

"Non, MANGER beaucoup de kiwi." Manger = eat. Accompanied by the Universal Knife And Fork Gesture.

"Oui. Kiwi est neo-zelandaise. Carlo est neo-zelandaise!" I smiled.

She gave me that look that says, 'you're a goddam freak'.