Each morning the boys are sorely in need of lotion, which Malina dutiful applies as they’re getting their clothes on.  She first dabs the lotion onto them, with a little saying in German.  It’s something like “punkt, punkt, Komma, strace…” and it keeps going, but I can’t follow it.  It’s punctuation marks, “period, period, comma, something…”, and she traces each shape with the lotion before rubbing it in, and the boys tell us about how she does this all the time.

They also tell us we’re doing it wrong because we don’t say that, but if we try to we get yelled at.  Today I asked Nicky to teach me, and started saying it to him, and he interrupted me:  ”No Daddy, you don’t say that, because you’re not German.  And Mommy’s not German, so she can’t say that either.  Dexter’s German, and Malina’s Germany, and I’m German, so we can say it.  But I’m not from Germany.  I’m from, from, from – umm, Daddy, what’s that city we live in?  Everett?  I’m from Everett.”