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.