December 2011: Smiles and giggles and coffee and truffles.....

[aethelfleda]

Voila, a new positive thinking thread for us!

Onward and upward, ladies. Do come on and post if you're a lurker or want to join our merry band, all welcome!!

Oi Unless I find something to do as done all my housework already

Moan alert!
Had a crap night , holly slept beautifully from 9 - 2 but I just tossed and turned and couldn't sleep . Since 2 we've both slept restlessly with lots of feeds and I've a headache now.

But the worst part is that we've had no running water since sunday morning , so no heating and it was freezing last night , Holly's hands felt like ice .

DSM I'm with you on having a chilled day today

Re the chat about languages my friend lives here but is married to a Dutch man , their lo is just 2 and for some wierd reason he refuses to speak to her in Dutch . All his family don't speak any English so she wont be able to chat to her grandparents or aunts/uncle . My friend tries to encourage him but he just won't go there. She doesn't speak Dutch but she is trying to teach her a few basic words that she knows . I just think that it's such a shame as she could learn the language so easily at this stage .

Thanks for all the support. Unfortunately pluto I can't Skype, text, phone as he's in Afghanistan. He gets 20mins of phone calls a week. I'll be writing lots of letters and sending parcels. We've been apart for long periods before but this is this is the first time since having the boys, so will be hard for both of us.

DSM you're chilled out days are as productive as my busy days!

There's nothing better than being naturally bilingual. My previous LTR was Finnish, and he and both brothers were fluent, spoke Finnish at home at English everywhere else.
It apparently develops certain areas of the brain and acts as an all-round brain polisher!

And is dead cool.

< radiates jealously >

Glad you're having a chilled one DSM, just hope you enjoy it and repeat the experience.

You'll probably find you get into a nice little routine scooby, only for your DP to come back and spoil it! Best of luck, and the three months will fly by. Although it will be tough for you all, I'm sure you'll cope magnificently and I hope your DCs don't find it too hard.

Ah- you have a hardcore atheist in the making then tyel?! Glad Pirran behaved so well, and it's always cheering when you can take a DC along to these things, and not only do they behave but people are really positive.
So sorry to hear about the piles though, and definitely get yourself down to the Doc's.

I'm there today for my smear, oh yay.

Will also top dress and feed the plants in ericaceous soil, and do a bit more pottering in the back yard. Oh, and washing. And watch the other half of the Poirot I started. The excitement and glamour of it all .

Scooby He will be back before you know it :)

I'm going to nip to the shop at some point today - need some bread & milk etc. other than that nowt to do.....bored.com

You can send those blue letter things (blueys?) for free can't you scooby? One of my closest friends was away, and I sent him regular letters, and I know how much they enjoy getting them. However I don't think you can include inserts, so it's parcels- are they at a reduced rate?
Be nice for your DCs to put together little boxes to send to Daddy.

Today I shall mostly be being domestic. Bleugh:/

Right. Pegging out as it is glorious. Anybody seen my dustpan? Some idiot has been throwing glass bottles in my garden and I need to clear up the mess:(

Have a good day folks:)

LMF Have fun being a domestic goddess

Oh, that is away, scooby. Does he have anyone elsehe'll be writing to, with whom you can swap stories about him, just so you all don't miss him so much?

determined, with regard to scheduling the time for yourself, what about something like mum and baby yoga? It strengthen's the body's core muscles (so defensible on health grounds), yoga is meant to lower blood pressure ('nuff said), and babies are involved, too. I'm doing a class on Thursdays, and DD laughs at all the windmilling arms and ladies standing on one leg! I have also bought a DVD to do with DS - more bonding there (and Darcie has got to be more co-ordinated than my poor DS, who takes after me!). Your chilled day is all vry well, but it's the only such day we've heard of so far!

northern, how's the sick chinchilla? Is it able to spend any time outside enjoying the weather?

rice, that is a shame about the half-Dutch family. Some people do get funny about that kind of thing. I had a friend whose father was Hungarian (got out in '56) and never really taught his children the language, possible because of the trauma of leaving, and not wanting them to experience the same homesickness (?); however, that absolutely does not apply to a Dutch person! Could she make contact with someone in her ILs' home town (a lot of Dutch do speak brilliant English - TV is subtitled rather than dubbed) who could help her make contact with the ILs, e.g. speaking through skype to the child? One last thing which might be inhibiting him is the idea that Dutch is not one of the "grand" European languages (e.g. French, German, Spanish, English): that, too, is insufficient excuse because, as Northern points out, it does develop the brain. Apparently, the knowledge that there is more than one word for something is the first door to abstract thought in a child! My DC aren't even going to be properly bilingual, as their "mother tongue" is the one spoken all around them, so there will always be an imbalance between the two languages. Still, DS is really improving a lot at the moment, and it makes me really warm to hear him speaking with his father and grandparents in their language. He hates me speaking it, though.

I can't believe I wrote "strengthen's". Ugh! Shall I report my post to MN?!

Plu I think its great that your teaching your DC to be bilingual - I only speak English. the basic french & spanish words (which Darcie knows too).

Their are no baby yoga classes around here I don't think...will search the t'interweb now.

Already decided to go shopping today :)

Pluto, there is a whole academic field around bilingualism and what constitutes 'proper' bilingualism as you say. As nearly all bilingual speakers use their languages for different purposes (e.g.one in the home, one at school or work and so on), their competence in the two will always differ. At first bilingual studies always tended to measure the bilingual from the point of view of a monolingual speaker and often judged their competence inferior but later studies gave taken into account the fact that bilingual speakers use their langs for different purposes and actually gave equal or greater competence than a monolingual speaker but spread over the two lands. Ugh not explaining very well but it is a fascinating field!

Well, I'm not teaching DS; I'm just leaving him to interact normally with DH and his family, and treating that as natural.

Off to the bank to open an account for DD! Better late than never...

Oops, and DD has just fallen asleep on her baby gym. Poor thing was up crying in the night, with the poo-pains. The dam on the "Yellow River" (one for you, tyel) broke this morning, so she's contented and comfortable again.

Thanks, mopsy! I haven't any studies of this, but a girl I knew who knew both French and German (both learned at school, so not native speaker) described learning to translate between the two: she had effectively to lay down neural pathways between the word/meaning sites within the "non-native language" bit of her brain, as opposed to more classic native-nonnative-native translation.

Ok, how am I going to get my little one into the car without her squawking?

It is a fascinating area for study mopsy, and I had lots of interesting conversations on this with my Mum when she was studying linguistics.
This really makes me feel for my Mum y'know- she is excellent at languages (French, Italian), and was very good at dance (ballet) and music (flute, piano), and she of course hoped I'd be the same...

Two left feet, uncoordinated as hell and tone deaf sadly! Thankfully I showed some competence for drama and sport otherwise she'd be convinced she adopted me without noticing...

Just goes to show that you really can't predict how your children will turn out !

Don't worry plu (but do check you're not running a fever or something) we all do it- my favourite one to embarrass myself with it their/they're/there. I hear one in my head and my hands type another . How was the poo-splosion?

Milk time according to the octopus. I hope think he's gearing up for a nap. Hope so, as I am in a 'throwing shit away' mood and I have an entire roll of binliners to play with:o

Gah! Snuffly baby led to a busier night than I'd have liked, and now DD has been sent home from nursery with a temperature and unspecified poorliness

Had my follow-up appointment about the prolapse this morning and still virtually no strength in my pelvic floor despite doing my exercises. They have recommended a different machine to the kegel one that kri5ty mentioned. It costs £295 even with a VAT exemption

Phew! Just looked more closely at the leaflet and the thing I need is actually only £66.50

We've been back down to the drs as f wouldn't feed this morning. He seemed to he in pain but couldn't figure out what from. They couldn't see anything up but now he is really sleepy. I'm panicing about him having something more serious up and can't shake the feeling that we'll end up in hospital again. Someone pass me a haddock. Need to give myself a tickle with it.

Kate is it an electrical exerciser or a manual one they recommended? I'm quite pleased as although its not feeling completely normal yet, I've been doing the exercises (which I never did properly before my extreme panic) and after about 7 weeks DTD is no longer agonising and I no longer fear it so DH and I are arguing a lot less.

Hawthers will he take a bottle of expressed milk instead? Maybe he is too tired to suck?

Re bilingualism, I understand why some parents don't pass it to their children - my grandfather was from Poland and didn't teach his children Polish as he wanted them to properly 'fit in', and my Uncle-IL hasn't taught his son Berber as he wants him to be perfect in English because of the ways people treat him like an idiot . I think DD1 gets a fairly equal amount of language as DH only speaks to her in Berber, and I speak to her in English but acknowledge and correct her Berber (the little I know) if I can, and she doesn't go to nursery, just play group where there is minimal chat. I just thought if she didn't know Berber, it would be incredibly sad that her own father couldn't speak to her properly and freely iykwim, although as a language its not particularly useful (only 5m fluent speakers I think).

Didn't want to ignore hawthers & NC; I'm here just lurking as I've been feeling a bit low lately & cba to post sorry He is going to Goa at the end of the month for 6 days

Hey chicken sorry to hear you are low - didn't mean to hound you - come back when you're ready. We'll all still be here:)

Lurk away honey, we're thinking of you. Sorry to hear you're feeling low, do get help in real life if it continues (((hug))) and good luck for later in the month, you know where we are if venting helps.