It’s 6:37 in the morning.
That’s about how well my eyes focus when I get up.
What time do you get up?
I was recently at a YouTube conference where someone did a presentation on My Morning Routine.
Different people across the world just taking their camera through their morning,
showing people what their life is like and I thought: This is fascinating!
I loved seeing other cultures, seeing what people did, how they lived just a normal day.
So I decided today, I'm going to do the same. I'm going to show you my morning routine.
What is my morning like? And of course, we'll turn it into an English lesson along the way.
I have a baby. What do you think the first thing I do every morning is?
The first thing is always nurse Sawyer.
He's a little too distracted by the camera to nurse right now.
Nurse – this word has several different meanings.
You can nurse a baby, you can nurse a sick person, you can nurse a cold, and you can even nurse a beer.
We’ll go over these meanings.
First, I want to say the verb ‘breastfeed’ can be used interchangeably with this term,
and it doesn’t mean anything else, so that can be another option.
The first thing I do every morning is breastfeed my baby.
Notice that I’m not saying the T here – that’s common.
When the T comes between two consonants, we often drop it.
Breastfeed.
Straight from the S sound in to the F sound.
Breastfeed.
Now, let’s talk about all those different meanings.
If we use this word as a noun, it’s somebody who's been trained as a nurse, to care for the sick, it’s an occupation.
My aunt is a surgical nurse.
As a verb, like I used it, it can mean to breastfeed, to feed a baby.
It can also be used to describe caring for someone who is sick: she nursed him back to health.
It can be used to describe taking care of an ailment: I’ve been nursing a cold for two weeks.
That means I’m taking throat lozenges for it, drinking lots of tea, trying to get better.
We also use it to talk about a drink, usually an alcoholic one, that we’re drinking very slowly.
Just taking a sip every once in a while.
Rachel, can I get you a drink?
No thanks, I’m still nursing this beer.
This is something new. This is different from our routine.
Looking at a camera.
One of the first things I try to do everyday is make the bed which I used to never do.
But it's one tiny thing that I can do to create a little bit
of organization in a life that is otherwise very chaotic right now.
Chaotic, chaos.
Here the CH makes a hard K sound.
Kk-- It’s also common to make a CH sound, like in ‘chest’, ch-- or an SH sound, like in Chicago, sh--.
CH makes a K in choir, echo, Chemistry, anchor, stomach, orchestra, and many others.
You can’t tell how a CH should be pronounced just by looking at it, you have to know word by word.
This is why spelling and pronunciation is so tricky in English.
Then I head downstairs to have breakfast with Stoney and David.
I don't feel like cereal so I'm going to make an egg. Does anybody want an egg?
I don't.
>> No? >> Okay.
I used the phrase ‘feel like’.
You can use this interchangeably with ‘want’, except the form of the verb will change.
I feel like going to bed, I want to go to bed.
So with ‘feel like’ we follow it with the ING form of a verb, feel like going.
With ‘want’, the next verb is in the infinitive, want to go, wanna go.
But the meaning of the two sentences is the same.
This applies to the negative as well. I don’t feel like having cereal, I don’t want to have cereal.
But when I said it, I followed it by a noun. I don't feel like cereal so I'm going to make an egg.
I don't feel like cereal.
So nothing else changes
I don’t feel like cereal, I don’t want cereal.
Hey Stoney, your mouth is totally full.
So we can't understand you. So take your time, chew, swallow, and then say what you were trying to say.
Good, daddy. It's good.
It's good? The toast?
Yes.
Looks like it's really good.
The most common breakfast in the US is probably cereal with milk. That’s what David and Stoney had.
What do you usually have for breakfast?
Post it to Instagram, tag me, @RachelsEnglish, I love to see this kind of thing,
what people eat in different cultures.
Let’s have breakfast together.
Mommy, I want some milk.
Okay. Well, how would you ask me to get you some milk?
Milk, please?
Sure.
What time are you guys getting together?
Here, David's talking about getting together with a friend and his kids.
This is a phrasal verb that means to meet, to spend time together.
You could also use it as a noun: we’re having a get-together at our house this weekend.
Why don’t you come?
If you use it with ‘it’, the meaning is different.
'Get it together' means to get organized or get stabilized after chaos.
For example, if Stoney is having a tantrum, we could say, ‘get it together, Stoney’.
Or, at a busy time in my life lately, I missed a meeting because I totally forgot.
I apologized and said, “I’m so sorry I forgot.
I just can’t get it together these days.”
Get together is to meet.
Get it together is to recover from a period of chaos.
Mommy, where is the flashing part?
Oh, I put it over there.
There?
The flashing part – here, Stoney is talking about a camera that had a blinking light.
Did you notice that Stoney can’t say ‘there’ yet?
There.
He can’t make a TH.
I’ve worked with him on it several times and he just can’t coordinate putting the tongue tip through the teeth.
I know this is a huge challenge for my non-native students, so I just wanted you to know it takes time!
Stoney has been speaking English for over two years now, and he still doesn’t have that sound.
There.
I’m interested to see when he picks it up.
And breakfast just continues with random loud noises.
The rest of the morning continues with cleaning up the kids.
Okay, let's get you cleaned up.
How was 'get you' pronounced?
Have you noticed that it’s really common to hear a CH in this phrase?
Let's get you cleaned up.
When a word that ends in T is followed by ‘you’ or ‘your’, that T often turns into a CH.
Chuu. Chuu. Ge-chuu.
There's no rule about doing this or not.
It's just a habit the happens and many Americans do it a lot of the time.
If you don't do it, you can do a stop T.
Get you, get you.
Let's get you cleaned up.
Stoney, you want these waffle pretzels for your snack, right?
Do you want one right now?
Yes.
Special treat.
Snack.
We all need a good snack every once in a while.
This is not a full meal, but a little bit of food that we eat between meals.
Snack.
At our house, we get up anywhere between 6 and 6:45.
Stoney doesn’t leave for school until after 9, so we have a lot of time to fill up.
Sometimes we go out for a walk, but often we just play at home.
I've already got it all ready for you.
Did you hear the ‘you’ reduction?
Yuh, yuh.
I've already got it all ready for you.
Hey, hey. We're not skipping teeth. Stand up. Stoney.
We’re not skipping teeth.
I’m sure many parents can relate to this.
When you skip something, you don’t do something that is part of a regular sequence.
In this case, brushing teeth in the morning is definitely part of our morning routine.
Stand up.
Mercy.
This is an exclamation of exasperation, surprise, anger, or frustration.
I was feeling all of those things!
Luckily, he did decide to brush his teeth.
And now, we brush teeth. It's just part of getting ready for school.
My camera died, after that, we got Stoney dressed and David took him to school,
then he came home and took Sawyer while I went to work. And that is our morning routine.
I hope you liked this video. I hope you learned a little something.
Please subscribe. I make new videos every Tuesday.
Did you see anything that surprised you or learned anything new?
Put it in the comments below, I love to hear what you're learning with the videos.
That's it and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.