Kaya's Clairvoyance about Christmas

Kaya keeps uttering the cutest things, and as awkward as it feels to me to just 'randomly' share them, I think I'm gonna...because, well...this blog is essentially all about her and our life surrounding her cute and crazy ways of being!

First of all, I've been looking at this post-it on my computer screen for, I'm embarrassed to say, nearly 3 months. It's dated 9/18, and it references this experience that Geoff had with Kaya while they were talking about polar bears. Naturally, the details have escaped me, because I only jotted down the quote itself with one extra word as a reminder (good one, Tamara!). But from what I can recall, Geoff and Kaya were reading a book when they came across a polar bear. Kaya used the German term, Eisbaer [polar bear], at which point, Geoff asked Kaya what it's called in English. From there, conversation moved to a point where it became clear to Kaya that Geoff didn't speak German, and couldn't understand many things that she could. It was around this point when Kaya, with excitement, told him, "I wanna teach you German, Dada!" (pronouncing the G as you would in 'good', as she still pronounces it today).

It's clear to me that Kaya has yet to fully process, even today, 3 months later, that Geoff does, in fact, understand a lot of German, and me, everything that's said in English. She still translates for us, from time to time, often letting me know, like she did the other day, what they're singing about in a particular song: "Sie tun einen Hut auf dem Elefant in dem Lied!" [They're putting a hat on the elefant in that song!]

Kaya was much more excited about Santa from afar...!

What I sat down to write about was actually something that Kaya said this morning, in reference to the visit that was going to happen at the German Saturday School where she's been attending since October. I'd just told her, in German, that Nikolaus would be coming to visit them at school, and she naturally grew very excited. For those of you who don't know, Nikolaus is the historical version of Santa Claus. Saint Nikolaus was actually a Greek bishop from the 4th century who was known as the patron saint of sailors, fishermen, students and children. He was known for his generosity, for helping those, in anonymity, that needed assistance. Anyway, in many parts of Europe, Nikolaus Day is it's own holiday, celebrated on December 6 (the feast day of St. Nikolaus), in which children put their boots out for Nikolaus on Dec. 5 and he comes that evening to fill them with delightful treats. Now I'm remembering that I addressed this a little bit the other day in my post...so I'll jump back to the interesting translation that happened this morning before we went to school. Kaya has no idea, by the way, of any of this history of Santa Claus. She does know about Santa, from images and books that she's seen, both this year and last, but she has no idea that there might be any connection between him and the historical Sankt Nikolaus. So, after I tell her that Nikolaus will be coming to visit this morning, she runs to Dada in the other room and says to him, "Daddy....Santa Claus will be visiting our school today!" When I first heard this, I was under the impression that Kaya was simply attempting to make her own sense of this multicultural mish-mash that her Dada and I are creating for her with all of this holiday hub-bub. But in reflecting on the experience, and looking at the photo, it's clear that our child is actually psychic, and knew that, in fact, it wouldn't be Nikolaus, the bishop, who dresses in gold, carries a staff and sports a traditional catholic cap, but instead, our jolly old Santa, dressed from head to toe in red and white, just as Coca-cola created him back in 1931!

The 'true' Nikolaus, last year...

Forget ideas of outdoor programs or German schools--
we need to start researching accredited schools for psychics...