Waiting for family

My sister, her husband, mother-in-law, 11 year old biological son and the two newly adopted Ethiopian orphaned brothers, ages 10 and 7, were just here for an hour or so before heading over the Cascade Mountains to Troy and Moscow Idaho. Baruk and Dawit are gorgeous, and full of life, and looked to me to be bonding nicely with their new parents and sibling. The younger one doesn't speak or understand much English, but is a keen mimic, and has his older brother as an interpreter. That brings up a funny phenomenon: For a while here, until they acquire more English and/or my sister understands more Amharic, their first language, they have this little secret code thing going on. Besides the League of Justice lunch boxes that my sister requested that I get them, I also picked up a couple of My First Dictionaries, one of them a Disney cartoon character themed one, over which they pored and giggled. We would ask them what things were in Amharic - i.e, a cricket is called a "zitzit", and a wasp is "neb." I've already forgotten how to say hello and thank you, or what each finger of the hand is called - surprisingly complicated sounding names. So the little dudes will be having a sort of grace period here in which one can only hope that what they tell people to say in Amharic is the word for food, for example, and not camel dung.
So they had two instant grandmas who sat together on a couch, smiling and making quiet remarks to one another; they sat on the other couch with their new big brother, a quiet, brilliant child whose life has been drastically enlivened, wiggling all over and dissing one another in their native tongue. You don't have to be multilingual to pick up that sibling vibe!