Tea Room the Twelfth

[RacingSnake]

Come in, come in, to Tea Room the Twelfth! We now inhabit a rambling log cabin, surrounded by mysterious pine forests and mist-covered mountains (but also, strangely) easily accessible by regulars, new-comers and passing bishops, ferried in by Mellors driving the troika. All the usual rules apply and all are welcome!

Mmmm, shortbread. Could force down a piece or seven.

No, MadBad, we are not doing OPOL, even though it is what one is meant to do. The outside world here is (obviously) wholy English, so we are trying to make home as French as possible. I wonder what Tea does.

Lovely lovely weather - 9 degrees and a tiny bit of sum between the grey murk.

Ah, hope some of you are still up!
Shortbread - I have some of my own made with rice and spelt flour with choccy bits in - yum! Here, have some...

Pratchett - I just picked Thud off the shelf to re-read. I love most of them but still have ishoos with the writing style of the first 4, and Jingo which I really wasn't that keen on. Small Gods is one I can miss out quite happily too. I love The Lost Continent though! (or is it Last?)

CMOTD - have you read the Heyer detective novels before? I think they're pretty cool as well apart from Penhallow which is dreadful. In the end you don't care who the murderer was because the characters are all so awful, I had no sympathy with any of them!

MadBAd - no, MrTHumb refused to go into the scouts after cubs. I don't mind sewing on buttons for him, despite thinking he should be able to do it himself - I object to him thinking his mum could do it better! (he probably doesn't think that but it makes me think that he does - he probably just forgot that I am at least as capable with needle and thread as she is ) However, he can bloody well iron his own shirts! I don't do ironing (apart from hankies and napkins - there's something very satisfying about them).

I confess that I am quite enamoured of Top Gear now - it makes me laugh. Plus the Hammster is quite cute

More tea, anyone?

evening all.

Had a surprise visit from a friend who lives up north and was today down south. he popped in for tea.
Snow all gone very fast, on the way to preschool the moor still looked white, by mid afternoon it was brown and green again.

By the power of the tea room I had a very nice morning shopping. I don;t normally like shopping, but in town stuffed full of tea shops I managed it. 2 new jumpers for me, some fish and veg for dinners and a very pleasant hour in a hardware store buying random bits of useful stuff.

Chocolate cake with choc iceing and grated white choc, does look rather like its got desecrated coconut on ... I promise ist choc, not nut. home made jam in the middle , should you need more tempting.

UniS, that chocolate cake makes a delicious breakfast!

I have heard of a trilingual family that had different rooms downstairs for different languagues, so that, on the move, a question could be asked in one language and answered in another.

Now that really would confuse me...! It's all my brain can do to cope with English, bless it.

Shortbread sounds delicious to me...perhaps some after today's Soup Surprise (the surprise being there's no soup, by the look of it - I'll be having strong words with those NMBs and Mellors at this rate )

RS, I don't know if this is particularly relevant or helpful to you but I have a Serbian friend married to another Serbian - their DC only speak Serbian at home, and they only talk to them in Serbian, although if English visitors come round of course the DC hear English being spoken. Friend's logic was similar to what you are saying - they will be surrounded by English everywhere outside the home, so the only place they will learn Serbian is at home - full immersion fashion.

MT - am impressed and slightly horrified at the trilingual family - my brain also goes into meltdown if it has to deal with more than two languages at once. When I au paired in Italy a few years back, I was trying to learn Italian very fast. The cheese shop owner across the road was French but had lived in Italy for years - at first I could vaguely converse in French, no real problem apart from my limited French vocab - but as the weeks went by, it got harder because I was randomly switching between French and Italian and confusing everyone! Meltdown.

Am pleased for you all that it is warming up and the snow is going (although I was kind of hoping it would snow while we are in the UK I don't want it to mess up our travel plans in any way, so probably better that it's gone )

Is Mellors around with the aromatherapy oils? I could really do with a neck rub...

Shortbread would be lovely please. Lots of it....

Happy stuff first:
Terry P. I love his books, although my faves are those that feature Sam Vimes or the witches.

Bilingualism. Mr. H doesn't speak much English and we have always spoken Spanish to each other. At home I speak English with the children. In general Kittenito understands English, but is more advanced in speaking in Spanish (can do present and past tenses/make simple sentences etc). In English he is still at the one or two words at time phase. I am quite relaxed about it, tbh. He'll end up going to a bilingual school, so he'll use his English on a daily basis outside the home too. I only hope he conserves his accent and doesn't end up sounding like an AMerican (nothing wrong with that, per se; but he'll never "fit in" in the same way in the UK if he doesn't sound British.

Bad news:

1. Kittenito's op is on Friday. +
2. I have a horrid chest infection. I may have to suspend bfing if I make no improvement in the next couple of days. Drs. want to inject me with goodness knows what; also he was darkly mumbling about hospitalisation..... (bloody diabetes, makes me so vunerable).

Still nasty here. Although we are having a sunny day today. That at least feels nice.

Oh, Catita, how awful for you. Remember, though, it is having you that is important to Gatita, not what kind of milk she gets.

Sympathy for the chest infection Catita - bloomin miserable things

My only experience of multilingual families were welsh speaking, and my friend who is french speaking canadian, daughter was born in germany, now back in Quebec. She says it's a bit of pressure being a lone parent to a trilingual daughter

DS and I had a lovely day together. DH must have been out till at least 3am as one of the guys he is with posted on Facebook then. He'll be suffering today !

eek at trilingual with different rooms per language. sounds rather Chalet school ...
I have friends in Belguim who want their daughter to be Tri-L, mum is english speaker, dad french and she goes to a flemish nursery. I think they are OPOL or maybe english at home. We didn;t commit fully to boy being bi-L in BSL and english, just used BSL signs when he was small. I'm VERY rusty and its not 1st language for either of us.

Choc cake rather yummy, not much left now. DH and boy have made some cheese and rosemary oatcakes, I've bought some over to try, good with stilton, but you may prefer other cheeses, do tell what went well.

Have spent part of this evening playing a card game with DH ! unusual but quite fun. practising for when we see the rest of his family... I thought we could play said game with standard playing cards rather than the special deck his sister has, and indeed you can.

DO you think 3/ 4 yr olds get growing pains? Boy went all weary on us late afternoon and complained his legs hurt and didn;t work ( tho they did work just fine when he wanted something from across room. The other night he woke in early hours complaining his legs hurt. wonder if hes growing again. he looks longer legged every time he has a bath.

here is a pic of teh sledge we built. its not me on board tho. Lots of people tried it out. this one has me in. I'm in red. DH in blue. Husband of the lady on our sledge in the middle.

You`re right RS; that's what the Dr. said to me too. However, since she really does not ,ike the bottle (and we've been giving her expressed milk since she was born) and can scream for Mexico when angry (ie when she doesn't want a bottle) we decided to try the bf friendly tablets first, seeing as this way I get to rest. A screaming baby is not the way to achieve r and r ... we shall see on Tuesday if I have made sufficent progress.

UniS - mistlechick complains of his legs hurting on and off, normally when he is eating like a horse and I put it down to growing.

He had breakfast (porridge oats and a weetabix) followed by a banana, followed by a 2 slice jam sandwich, lunch was minestrone (2nd helpings) and two sausage sandwiches (2 slices all together) 2 biscuits and a sweetie lolly (he had been good, and got it at a party about 3 wks ago!) for tea, then potato rosti with bacon and red cabbage (the vinegary one baked in the oven) followed by peach yoghurt and another weetabix.........

Don't know how many languagues my nieces will end up speaking. My BiL is English and talks to them in English. SiL is Sweedish/Greek, but mainly converses with BiL in German (I think) and they live in the Swiss speaking bit of Switzerland....

Catita - hope you're feeling better soon.

Catita - sounds grim! I hope the chest infection thingy goes quickly. Can you get some acerola berries/juice to help? Amazing source of Vit C and other antioxidants - read here about it and some of the research that has been done on it.

UniS - I can only say that I used to experience a fair bit of leg pain when I was growing - even up to the age of 10 - so it could well be that. So long as it goes off quickly I can't see it's a problem - it's just the muscles/tendons having to catch up with the bones as they grow quickly.

Trilingual? Eek! I once met a trilingual toddler who hadn't yet reached the understanding that he was speaking three different languages (if you see what I mean) so spoke a blend of English, German and Arabic which only his parents could decipher. Now, though, I expect he's chief banana at the World Bank or something similar!

Sympathy to Catita for all the health and medical woes. Looking at UniS's pictures I now have sledge envy. When we have a bigger shed ...!

I have laid out a small buffet of hot chocolate, tea, coffee, fresh juices including acerola (which, this being the tea room, I found growing just outside the back door), home made preserves, shortbread, muffins, scones and cinnamon danish pastries. Tuck in!

Just in case anyone else (like me) hadn't seen, Justabout's father died - there's another thread that TW and I have found, not sure if there is anyone else that has done/wants too....

Madbad - could just do with some of all of that... Put my back out yesterday (I stood after sitting down for 10mins at a party I was attending with mistlechick) and not at all comfortable.

Party was in that the entertainer had got them completely under control as soon as she started. Even got the measure of mistlechick... "Remember mistlechick, only those sitting on the carpet have a chance of helping by holding my magic wand"... She did party games with them (no one was out in the first few, then she did 'corners' which meant that they were out in groups so it didn't matter so much) and then there was 'magic' afterwards. She had them in the palm of her hand for that.... and the adults all in that she had so many 5 - 7 in happy silence.... people were commenting that they could do with her coming to do home visits....

Oh, thank you for the pointer, Mistle. I've just posted there (and see quite a few tea room names on the roll call).

I'm sorry about your back but it sounds like a marvellous party!

Can I serve you something from the buffet as you recline on the chaise longue with a heat pad? As it's lunchtime we also have some of Amber's Surprise Soup and some lewd rolls.

Sounds ideal Madbad. Luckily osteopath's had a free slot so going later - hope that sorts it!

The entertainer was really amazing - we were all in awe!

Hope the osteopath works their magic on your back.

DH did party duty yesterday - lurked in the corner with the other unpopular parents apparently, while DS ran around madly.

Lovely pastries MadBad

At home with thumping headache, wondering whether to pull out of Governor meeting later on due to have no working brain cells. Hmm. Yes please to pastries and anything else going.

Cat, hoping and praying for improvements in chest situation. MT, I think you need Mellors with his patent back rub...

Thank you, Cmot. I know we all appreciate a nice bun.

MAdbad, there is bi-L child at boys preschool who mixes her languages, VERY hard to follow her line of thinking as she flits from english to arabic and back.

Sympathy to Justa, if she needs teh priest hole at any point, we will shove teh NMBs out to the shed with their disco.

Good suprise soup! I'm suprised
Now for a cuppa and a

I borrowed lecture notes from someone that did a joint music and german - the year after her year in Germany/Holland. Her notes were actually not very useful as, everytime you got to a slightly complex idea/word/bit there was an extremely long german word...

|have an Indian friend who was brought up in Belgium and England so she and her brother are trilingual - when they get together it is a mix of English, Bengali and French with the occasional drop of Flemish! Very bizarre to listen to.

MT, that entertainer sounds amazing - wonder if she was a primary teacher in a previous incarnation?

Amber - don't do it (the Govs mtg) - stay at home with a cold compress instead (oh, I'm too late - you probably already went, didn't you - gosh that's shocking English )