Back to Blogging

It's time to start blogging again - I am determined I will continue this time! I haven't blogged for about 4 months now and the children are growing up and F is developing linguistically more and more each day. N is also constantly chattering and it sometimes sounds like he is trying to say our names and a few words.

The latest drama to hit the Mini Mendoza's is chicken pox. I should have realised it was coming. Chicken pox has been hanging around F's nusery since before Christmas claiming another victim or two every few weeks. F came down with it on Tuesday last, and N on Thursday. N doesn't seem to have it as badly as F - which could possibly be because he's breastfed and has part of my immunity? Or could possibly be because he's just lucky? Who knows?! Anyway poor F was not happy with her spots and took a while to accustomise herself to them. Apparently they have now been accepted and have become like old friends because she was rather upset when one of the scabs started coming off 2 days ago. She spent the whole afternoon lamenting over her 'broken spot' and tendering to it with Sudocrem but, alas, to no avail.

Other news, N has taken his first unaided step. He has been cruising the furniture for a while and will happily walk while holding onto someone's finger, and finally, that first wobbly (and witnessed) step happened a couple of days ago. He's only attempted this again once or twice, but it'll come. In the meantime he is making full use of F's doll's pram to help him get around the place on two feet.

Well that's it for my first day back on the blog after my mini sabbatical. Time to perhaps go and play in the snow?!

Day of the Dead

Well at the moment we are in Mexico City. We arrived here a few days ago to visit S's family who live here (bit of a last minute decision for various reasons but then that is typical of our family). This is my 3rd trip to Mexico and for the previous 2 trips I have intended to write down my thoughts and experiences but, well, you know what they say about good intentions and all that. This time I am determined. Not least because things which were completely new to me are now starting to become a little familiar and I am not noticing the small things as much. So my posts while here will probably mainly focus on the cultural side rather than the linguistic.

Anyway, better stop waffling. Yesterday here was Day of the Dead. From what I understand, this is when people celebrate the lives of loved ones who have died. This is a huge celebration and everywhere is decorated - mainly with paperchain cutouts of skeletons dressed up in fine clothes. In fact there are skeletons dressed up in fine clothes everywhere, in the form of chocolates, toys, decorations hanging all over the place. It is traditional to go to the cemetary and the graveside of dead relatives / friends and bring food and drink and perhaps gifts but we didn't do this. We did however eat Bread of the Dead which is a very light and fluffy bread with a slight citrus taste and something else that I couldn't put my finger on and topped with sugar. Very yummy. Children may also dress up and go trick or treating a la Halloween but I think this is more of a recent thing. I played my part in as much as I did resemble a zombie for the much of the day (and especially the evening) courtesy of jetlag. Still, F enjoyed seeing the children who came trick or treating to our door dressed up.

Why, if your name just happens to be Lara Croft, you may get a tad disappointed in a Danish church...

So I should have known better really - we learned all about 'false friends' at school when I was having various modern, and not so modern, languages rammed down my throat. You remember those classes where you would attempt to say something in French or German and would essentially string together a clumsy sentence containing approximately 50% English words said with a French or German accent depending, in the hope that somewhere in all that, you'd manage to make a bit of sense? Well, these occasions always called for a quick reminder by the teacher that 'false friends' can be a real Russian roulette when it comes to this method of blagging it. (One of my favourite's being the English couple who suddenly couldn't remember the French word for jam when asked what they would like on their breakfast toast in a French hotel. They decided that the English word 'preserve' sounded pretty French all in all and hedged their bets and Frenchify it by asking for, yup you've guessed it, 'préservatif' much to the amusement of the locals).

Anyway, 'where's all this going?' I hear you cry. Quite, let's get to the point.

So a few days ago, my mother's group all decided to meet up for a sort of sing-a-long session for babies that is organised by the church. I turned up in good time, waited around a bit, until a couple of phone calls and quite a bit later revealed that I was in fact waiting outside the wrong church (oddly enough, the church I was waiting outside also had a similar baby singing session at exactly the same time) so I hurried along to the church where I should have turned up to originally. This is a bit of a funny church in as much as you step into a pretty industrial looking lift from the street and you are then faced with 3 choices: Level 1 - Kirke (Church); Level 0 - Gade (Street) and Level -1 - Krypt (Crypt). So I spent a while wandering around the empty Church level wondering where everyone was before deciding that I had faffed about with this so much that it probably wasn't worth it anymore so I should just head home for some much needed coffee. Having texted one of the mums to say as much (was already out of the door and on my way down the road at this point), I was told not to be so silly and that I would be met outside the church by said mum. Said mum duly met me and proceeded to lead me to the Crypt.

Now, I don't know about you - but a crypt to me does not immediately scream out 'cosy place for singing songs with babies'. In fact, as far as I am concerned, crypts are dark, gloomy places. They are full of dust and dead people and you don't wander around one unless you are Lara Croft or in a Dan Brown novel. As I consider myself neither, it hadn't occurred to me to go down into the crypt on my hunt for the apparently mythical baby singing group. Further investigation with a couple of native Danish speakers revealed that the word 'Krypt' in Danish simply means a room under the ground level and under a church. I didn't see a single tomb, in fact it was all rather light and, yes, cosy.

So there you go, false friends and all that. Still, part of me wonders how many confused Danish tourists are currently wandering around British crypts thinking that British ecclesiastical interior design could perhaps do with a bit of perking up.

The Attack of the S's

Yup, we are under attack here and seem to have an extreme overflow of S's. They are absolutely everywhere, littering F's English like I don't know what. S and I are no longer called Mama and Papa; for a while now we have been renamed Mamas and Papas (which always starts S humming). I'm not quite sure why this has come about. I have a feeling it may have crept in during the whole 'realisation that not everything in the world belongs to me' stage of F's development, when she became very interested in who owns what and felt the need to point things out continuously for the benefit of those of us who may be in doubt. 'Papa's shoes', 'Mama's bag', you get the picture. Still, it is hard not to to smile when a pint-size person wanders up to you with a cheery 'Mornings Mamas'. Besides than the s's, we only seem to have one other superfluous consonant which is an extra 'n' added on the end of the word 'loo' for good measure, often resulting in a somewhat desperate: 'Mamas, loon!'

As for the wee man, well he's not so wee as it turns out. In fact there's only about 1.5kg difference between N and F. He's really becoming quite adept at eating and I have even managed to take him out a couple of times and sit him in a high chair at the table with something or other (potato wedges from the previous night, rye bread or toast with pâté etc) while I get on with my own lunch. So it would seem that I have saved myself a couple of month's of faffing about with purees at least. It has to be said, that he does still make a fair mess but it is getting significantly less. N is also crawling properly now and getting into everything.

And I have to finish off by mentioning a monumental milestone for me. I actually went out last Sunday without children. Yup, I left a bottle of milk in the fridge and met up with another friend for a cinema trip to watch Mamma Mia! Fab film, absolutely loved it. Not the world's best storyline but that really doesn't matter because let's face it, anyone going to watch Mamma Mia! isn't in it for the story. And yes, I may as well admit right here and now that I did actually know all the words to all the songs. Well, what can I say, I was brought up on Abba.

Why do babies need pockets on their clothes?

And, perhaps more to the point, why do I feel the need to check them when doing the laundry? I mean, what on earth am I expecting to find that N has put in there? But I must admit, I have a bit of a gripe when it comes to children's clothes. F's wardrobe is awash with pink and I don't mind a bit of pink, but it is almost impossible sometimes to buy girl's clothes that aren't all cutesy and girly and it can get a bit tiring when everything is all frilly and pretty. I've taken to buying some of the more neutral boy's clothes for her (and that way they can also be used for N - woohoo, two birds and all that) to try and dilute the frills a bit.

Anyway, we recently had Mormor and Grandpa to visit for a week which was lovely. They were suitably impressed by N's BLW, although we all agreed that it is a bit of a naff name. So upon observing N demolish a potato wedge, Grandpa swiftly renamed it 'Full On Food' which seems much more fitting.

N has come on leaps and bounds on the food front. He's on a good 3 meals a day (as well as milk of course). We inadvertently introduced a bit of spoon food at the weekend though. Went to the 3rd birthday party of the son of some friends of ours. They served up a fab cottage pie for supper (I love cottage pie - firm favourite in this household). Put some on a plate for N and then wondered how to get it in him seeing as we're doing this big chunks, self-feeding thing. So I loaded a teaspoon and let him take it, while hovering my hand nearby in case of steadying (so spoon feeding but with N taking the lead). He wolfed it down - blimmin well went and ate the entire plateful. I'm telling you, that boy is a stomach on legs. He also managed the spoon pretty well considering. Of course there was a bit of mess, but not too much (and easily cleaned up).

The friends that we visited at the weekend are also a bi-lingual family (English, Danish). Was nice to hear some proper English English on a native, mother-tongue sort of level. I was very impressed by their 3 year old - he is coming out with full on sentences in both English and Danish. It's nice to see little success stories like this now and then because it gives you the confidence to keep at it with your own children (F is a little bit behind her friends at nursery linguistically speaking, although I am proud of her and think she is doing marvellously juggling with 3 languages).

And finally, I have decided to have a bash at learning Spanish. It is my ambition to learn both Spanish and Russian, and I have been working on the Russian alphabet and have picked up a fair amount of words from listening to S and F. However, in honour of our intended trip to visit Abuelo and Babushka in Mexico next year, I am very keen to have at least a smattering of Spanish. If only to be able to ask my Mexican family-in-law to pass the tortillas during dinner. Spanish lessons once a week also has the added bonus of giving S time alone with the children (father bonding, or rather 'see how hard it is, you better appreciate what I do every day') as well as giving me time away from the children. Much as I love them and being with them, it will be nice to use my brain for something other than singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' over and over again in different voices.

Well...

... apparently the world didn't end yesterday, so I think that's as good an excuse to start blogging again as any.

We had some friends over briefly yesterday. Another multi-lingual family with the mother speaking Bulgarian, the father speaking Danish and S, their daughter who is 5 months older than F, also watches Cbeebies on BBC Prime every morning (like in our house - well it's for linguistic development so therefore educational and thus 'approved' ;-) so that she can perhaps pick up a bit of English too.

S, like F, has her language default setting firmly stuck on Danish. Having said that, S understands Bulgarian and also came out with a bit of Bulgarian. Her mum takes a similar approach to me in as much as she continuously speaks to her daughter in Bulgarian (well, obviously I don't continuously speak to my children in Bulgarian because then I'd be, well, silent. Maybe instead I should write 'mother tongue'). And when she catches herself speaking Danish (as invariably happens) then she translates what she has just said into Bulgarian.

It's apparently a common problem, this trying to squeeze one's mother tongue into one's children in a foreign country. Invariably the community language holds a dominant position, because let's face it, you're not going to get much of a response if you go round asking for ice-creams using Russian when you're in Denmark.

S and her mother are off to Bulgaria next week for a week. And this, I hear from others more experienced than myself in these matters, is the trick. Regular trips and complete linguistic and cultural submersion in order to give a context. Helps to put a bit more substance behind it all so it's not simply a case of humouring Mummy and Papa when they're talking a bit funny. I need to plan a trip to the UK and S (my husband, not my daughter's 2 year old friend) needs to plan a trip to Russia.

As for N, he may not speaking but he has just started eating. It's all exciting stuff here. As he's turned 6 months, we've started giving this BLW thing a bash. All seems to be going well so far and I must admit, it's great to finally have an excuse for his bathtime.

(BLW by the way is essentially just skipping the whole spoon-fed phase of weaning and going straight to finger foods. Very easily googled for those wanting to know more.)

Since last week, he has had potato wedges (loved), roasted carrot (loved), roasted parsnip (loved), banana (messy and very much loved), avocado (couldn't pick up, didn't really get any in), avocado spread onto bread (much better, sucked all the avocado off), chicken drumstick (sucked a bit), a tortellini filled with cheese (not intended for him, swiped off my plate before I could say anything and he went and flipping well swallowed the bulk of it. Note to self, sit 2 feet away from the table if son is on lap during supper and you don't feel like sharing), cucumber (loved, think it felt very mice on his gums), porridge pancake (need to work on how to make these, I apparently must have made them too sloppy as he had trouble picking it up, but did manage to smear his fist in gooey porridge and suck some off. Nice). And, er, that's it I think? But not bad for a first week of weaning!

Oh yes, and one more thing; N has an eensy weensy little jagged edge of a first tooth peeking through his bottom gums. Like I said, it's all exciting stuff here.

Banana Sandwich...

... is my snack tonight as I attempt my second post on this blog.

I ought to make F's packed lunch soon (ie, before bed) as she is going on a trip with her nursery tomorrow, but I can just see that I'll end up rolling into bed and then there'll be a mad rush in the morning as I attempt to get 3 people ready (me, a stubborn toddler who is allergic to clothes and a 4 month-old who carefully times his nappy explosions for the minute after I have locked the front door) and then throw her packed lunch together at the last minute. There have been quite a few trips with nursery recently. On Monday they went to a park to see a children's jazz concert. F loved it - she adores music and a party atmosphere. All the children were given a (sponsored!) bottle of water with their packed lunches and a cuddly toy elephant. F, true to character, discarded the elephant and just played with the bottle of water when she got home. My daughter and her love of bottles (she babies them and frequently can be found settling the fabric conditioner to sleep. I promise you we have bought her a proper doll to play with, but she still remains loyal to those bottles).

This evening S started teaching me the Russian alphabet. We both had very different ideas as to how this should be done. And as we are both as stubborn as a grass stain on a pair of white football shorts, it ended up that he insisted on teaching me using his method and I insisted on learning using my method. A few weeks ago, we tried to see how many words I now know in Russian and we came to the conclusion it was about 50. Not bad for completely passive learning. It was also an interesting exercise because these words are probably a good indication of F's Russian vocabulary (they were all words which either she says all the time, plus a few that S constantly says to her). It was comforting to realise that her Russian isn't as far behind her English and Danish as I had thought.


Right, time for a quick footbath and then bed. I am happily pretending that I don't need to make any packed lunches, although I am sure that tomorrow morning I will be kicking myself for not being organised the previous evening.