Parenting by charades

This experience is wonderful, difficult, frustrating, joyful, and exhausting all at once. I think one thing among many things that I have learned is that I greatly underestimated how hard it would be to "parent" a child (even short term) who does not speak my language. I end up in comic twists as I act out what I want to get across and piecing together the sparse few Russian words I know with the slight variety of English ones that she knows. I do have to say that as far as learning goes she has got me beat. She has certainly picked up more words and my russkie, well not soo good.

The one thing this adventure has made me accept is that silence is not a bad thing. More than just okay, sometimes its quite nice. There is no way to fill up the sound all the time because of the language barrier so we often sit in silence and co-exist. At first it was a bit disconcerting. I'm used to jumping into silence with anything to inject some sound because not doing so feels awkward. My hubby is even worse. He literally feels compelled to constantly talk. He talks to everyone, all the time. I cant leave him outside a public bathroom for 2 minutes before he is in full conversation with anyone walking by. Its funny because I have sometimes come upon him in mid-conversation with some girl outside the store while I am shopping only to receive a shocked look from her.I know she thought he was hitting on her and thats why he started talking to her but I just laugh because I know he talks the same whether its an 80 yr old women or a 22 yr old. He just loves to gab and is friendly to a fault almost. But anyway, the infusion of silence has really brought more attention to non-verbal communication and thats been kind of neat. There are more smiles, more signals, more waves, more questioning looks. I really have paid more attention to the way I hold my body and to what it conveys. Its a good type of intuition to gain.