Word mystery: solved

For as long as I can remember, Elena has been using the word "foochi." We thought, for the longest time, that this was just little-kid-nonsense word that she'd made up, and remained enamored of.

But then something clicked: I noticed that she always used the word in the same context: when she woke up, she'd cover her head with the sheet, as if she were a ghost, and say, "this is my foochi sheet," or "I'm a little foochi baby." So maybe... maybe she's remembering something amusing or important from her time in Kotlas, and "foochi" is Russian for "sheet" or "ghost" or "baby" or something. It sounds Russian, right?

Except it's apparently not Russian. I looked it up, using Google translate, and there's no Russian word close to "foochi."

So there it stood for a while, until this weekend, when I had an epiphany: there may be no Russian word quite like "foochi," but neither are there English words quite like "somefink" or "muffroom," both words which Elena also uses quite a bit. One shouldn't, in other words, put too much stock in the pronunciation of a five-year-old, especially one using a two-year-old's memories. So maybe "foochi" is really "thoochi" or "shoochi" or something.

And, lo and behold, шучу (pronounced "shuchu") is indeed a Russian word. It means "joking" or "kidding;" in the sense of "silly," I assume. As in, "I'm a little joking baby," or "I'm a silly little baby."

Google Translate has a "listen" feature, where you can hear a word's pronunciation. I turned it on and called Elena into the room. "Elena, what's this?" asked, and played "shuchu" back.

Her face lit up. "Foochi!" she said.

I added a word to the translation - малышка ("malyshka"), meaning "baby" to make "shuchu malyshka," or "joking baby." "Who's this?" I asked, and played it back to her.

"Me!"

That's about as close as you can get to a confirmation that "foochi" = "shuchu" = "joking/silly." And it gives us a bit of an insight into something Elena must have done when she was little: hiding under a sheet or blanket and making the orphanage nurses laugh. "Shuchu malyshka," they called her...and she never forgot it.

Memory

A few days ago, Elena was standing at the bathroom sink pretending to make tea.  She had her little plastic teapot, and used the bathroom sink glass as a tea cup.  And then she did something a little surprising - she quite naturally sat the "tea cup" into an upturned cap from a vitamin jar.  She called it the "tea holder."

Tea time for Elena - note the "tea holder"
 under the glass

We drink tea on occasion, but it's usually steeped in a coffee mug, not in a teapot - and we never use "tea holders."  But guess where they do use tea holders?  Russia, of course, where they call them "podstakanniks" (which means, literally, "the thing under the glass").

Podstakanniks, with their tea glasses.

The natural use of a "tea holder" is an interesting window into her early memories from the orphanage. The day we met Elena, the care-givers at the baby house gave us a sample menu and her daily schedule, and we found out she often had tea in the morning. (They gave us this info so we could try to keep as much similar as possible when she transitioned to her life with us ).  We assumed tea was served in the same glazed metal cups we saw in use at snack time.  But she must have had tea in a tea glass holder on some memorable occasion!

Elena's getting old enough that her memories of the orphanage are fast fading.  We'll ask her questions about her time in Kotlas, and often she won't remember, or will mix up more recent memories with those fading memories of Russia.  Every once in a while, though, a true memory will peek through - and it gives us another little glimpse of a part of Elena's life that we'll never know much about.