Counting

Linnea is really into counting lately.  She counts all the time: when she’s jumping around, when she’s in her stroller, and when she’s actually counting things.  She counts up to 13, and then says “sixteen, fourteen, ‘mumble’teen, ‘mumble’teen.  She sometimes skips the number eight, for some reason.  She usually counts in English, but the other day I heard her count “un, deux, trois, quatre” while jumping in the living room.  When her dad is counting with her (when she asks him to count with her that is) she counts in German.

This week end we were in Vermont, near Burlington.  We stayed at a bed and breakfast.  In the dining room there was a vase with different colors of flowers.  She decided to count the yellow flowers, then the red flowers, then again the yellow flowers, etc. for about fifteen minutes.

In Montreal, and pregnant

I’m pregnant, and have been feeling nauseous from morning till night for about two weeks now. It’s been especially bad the last two days. I’m hoping it settles down soon. It’s been raining and kind of cold for about two days too, probably why I have noticed the nausea more.

Montreal (we moved here at the beginning of July) has great parks. There is a huge one just near our house (Parc Jeanne-Mance), with playgrounds and a free supervised wading pool. When the weather was nice we’d spend the entire day there, alternating between the wading pool, the playground and pushing Linnea around the park with the stroller.

Linnea in the wading pool - we're not technically allowed to take pictures there, but Tobias managed to convince them to let us just this once.

I bought a stroller 3 weeks ago, when I was starting to feel too tired to carry Linnea in a sling or on my back all the time. It turns out she loooooves it (it’s like a new toy) and she can’t get enough of it, so it works out well. I’m still not a huge fan of these things, and I bought the cheapest, most compact and portable one I could find on Ebay. It is green and blue with a checkered pattern, and has a very convenient storage area at the bottom. It’s nice not having to carry bags around anymore. But I miss having Linnea close to me (and I don’t like the stroller-pushing-mommy look.)

I have been a lot more nostalgic of Belgium than I thought I’d be. Well no, that’s not exactly true. I knew I would miss some aspects of Belgium and Europe. I miss some aspects of our apartment too, like the fact that our bedroom and kitchen opened out onto a very large garden below (we didn’t have access to the garden, but it was great being able to look out there, and it was *quiet*.) We’re in a furnished apartment until the end of this month, and while I like the apartment, it’s *not* quiet, and hearing cars all the time bothers me more than I would have thought.

We’ve found an apartment for rent on the Plateau, not very far from the one we’re in currently. It’s on the ground floor and we have access to a smallish shared backyard. I think the apartment will be nice to live in, and it’s definitely quieter than this one, although I’m afraid it might not have enough light in the winter. I’m also really craving a *house* right now. A house somewhere quiet, near a wood and maybe some water… Dare I write a house in the *gasp* suburbs? I feel bad wanting to move to a house when we haven’t even settled in our next apartment yet… I guess we could always move to a house by the end of next year if I really can’t stand living in the city anymore. I’m having all sorts of mixed feelings about that: if we move out we’ll have to buy a car, or maybe two. Tobias will have to commute on the train (or drive to work?) We’ll have to drive or take the train to homeschoolers activities and gatherings… I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but a part of me really wants to have a car and be able to drive places. Going everywhere by public transportation with a small child is exhausting and takes forever… My preferred means of transportation would be by bike… but in the winter here I think it would be pretty hard. We’ll have to see.

I like Montreal, and I’m happy I’m back in North America. It does feel strange not being in Europe anymore though. It feels strange not being able to drive to France or Germany. Also, part of the reason I moved here was because I wanted more space and more nature, but I’ve been stuck in the city for a month now, and I’m *craving* the countryside (even though Montreal is a very green city.) I can’t wait to go to the Live and Learn Conference in the mountains of North Carolina in less than a month. And the week end after that we’ll go camping with Montreal homeschoolers near the Mont Tremblant. Here’s dreaming of green pastures…

My mom is awsome

My mom is here for a few days before we leave.  Today I left her with Linnea to go have lunch with a friend.  Linnea was tired when I left, and at first didn’t want to let me go.  Finally we decided that she and my mom would go to the park while I went to lunch.  I asked my mom twice if she wanted me to cancel, but she said no, so off I went.  I was a bit afraid that things were going to be difficult for her and that she wouldn’t know how to handle Linnea.  But no. When I came back Linnea was asleep on the potty with her head on my mom, and no tears had been shed.

They stayed at the playground for a while and then my mom told her they had to go back, because the cleaning lady was still in the house and somebody needed to be there when she left.  Linnea said she didn’t want to go, so my mom said ok, you stay here and I go.  Linnea said ok.  ;-)  So my mom figured she had to be creative.  She thought of telling her they could go home and play with Agatha (the cleaning lady.  Earlier she had been cleaning the windows and Linnea had been climbing on the stool with her and having a great time.)  Linnea thought that was a great idea and went home happily.

Thoughts on language and unschooling

Lately I have been thinking a lot about multilingualism, and if it is possible for kids to grow up multilingual in an unschooling context.

I have read many times that kids will only use languages that are useful to them, and promptly forget languages they have no use for. I don’t know how that will apply to us as we move to Montreal. Will Linnea find it useful to learn French? (She understands some, but not much.) What about German? Will she go on using German with Tobias?

One thing that is clear to me, is that I shouldn’t let my fears take over. I have to be okay with Linnea never wanting to learn French. I have to be okay with Linnea never properly learning German (but without French or German, I don’t think Linnea and Tobias could have a strong relationship… that worries me a bit. Maybe that will be a motivation for her though.) And I have to be okay with her choosing to speak French instead of English.

Otherwise I’ll end up putting her in school, or forcing language lessons on her.

Little Pirate

This photo was taken on April 27th:

Linnea has been wearing this same outfit (the clothes underneath change on occasion) pretty much every day since then. She sleeps in it, paints in it, draws in it… As a result, now it looks more like this:

I have washed it several times (usually not all at once, that way she gets to wear at least either the shirt or the skirt) but the marker stains won’t go away.

The outfit is too big (I think it’s for 5 year olds) so every time she runs her skirt falls down and she is constantly pulling it back up. I find it hilarious.

Living life with no regrets

I was reading Pam Genant’s blog and this post reminded me I had pondered about life, death and regrets not too long ago…

Recently I was in the South of France with my dad, and we went to my grandfather’s tomb. One of the plaques on his grave reads “REGRETS”, and I noticed that was a recurrent word all over the cemetery. I know the word “regret” can be used in the sense of “grieving”, or “mourning”, but still, I’m wondering if this choice of word means that the person who bought the inscription has some regrets about their relationship with the deceased person. It always makes me so sad, to think that people have to wait for their loved ones to be dead to wish they had done things differently.

Party hats

Yesterday when I came back from a walk, I found Tobias and Linnea watching Pinky Dinky Doo with envelopes on their heads.  This morning, Linnea wanted to wear the “pointy hats” (or is she saying “party hats”?) and watch Pinky Doo again… This time I took a picture:

Language acquisition

Linnea is 2 years and 8 months old, and in the last few weeks, her language skills have taken off. She is now speaking in full sentences (in English. In German, she usually uses English sentences with German nouns thrown in. She still doesn’t speak any French.)

A friend of mine, whose daughter is also bilingual, pointed out to me that her daughter’s language improved when she entered pre-school at the age of two and a half (implying that her language skills picked up thanks to being with children a bit older than her, who spoke better than her, etc.)  Linnea doesn’t have many opportunities to talk to English-speaking kids her age, and her exposure to English is mostly limited to me speaking and reading to her, and watching videos. And yet, I am happy to report, she is learning at almost exactly the same pace as her pre-schooled, “socialized” friend.

My conclusion: it has nothing to do with school! My friend’s daughter’s language development coincided with her starting pre-school, but probably wasn’t a direct effect of it.

It’s the journey that counts

Living in the present moment is so difficult for me… and I’m not alone. A while ago I came across this great animation of one of Alan Watts‘ talks: Life and Music, and it was one of those epiphany moments. Yes! Exactly!

But so now what? Just listen to the music and dance? I’m trying. So hard. Every day. To reprogram myself so that I don’t continually live with the end in mind. It’s so painful at times, and at times so easy. Sometimes I get lost in the moment, smelling Linnea’s hair, or feeling the wind on my face while I’m pushing her on the swing. And sometimes I just want to know what will happen. I want to know that I’ll be okay, that we’ll be okay, that I’ll have more children, that they’ll be normal, that they’ll live long and happy lives…

There are no guarantees, and part of this journey called life is to welcome the lessons that come with the hardships and the disappointments, and be able to live without holding your breath because you’re fearful of what might happen. Tammy Takahashi has a great post on fearlessness, and I think I’d better get my hands on some of the books she suggests…

Musings on feminism

A while back I was reading the Life and Arts section of the Sunday Financial Times. An article caught my eye because the headline said “domesticity is back”, or something equally eye-catching. It was a review of books that glamorize “domestic pastimes”, and the author of the review pointed out how it was okay for women to go back to more feminine hobbies now because, thanks to our foremothers who fought for our rights to get out of the kitchen, we can contemplate letting our daughters relax a bit in school and pick more domestic electives like sewing and knitting, without compromising their future.

The books reviewed in the article I mention above didn’t sound at all like my cup of tea (they’re all about how to keep a spotless home and host impeccable dinner parties), but it made me think about the old debate raging between women: whether staying at home to raise our kids is a step back from feminism. (As for *letting* our daughters relax in school, well, you probably already know what I think about that…)

So this is what I think: I think what feminists did in the past is a great thing for all of us, and I am in no way trying to get back to the old days. I think anyway, it’s impossible to go back to the past because what is done is done. I choose to stay at home not out of self-sacrifice, but out of a desire to move forward and invent my own version of feminism, not one based on a man vs woman dichotomy.

In my opinion, the overwhelming majority of the women who write for the FT are women that think in the paradigm: being equal means being exactly like a man. It reminds me of the French (think Simone de Beauvoir) version of feminism, where being pregnant and having children is equated to being enslaved, where the only way to win in society is to become a man. And that’s what I see the women like the author of the above-mentioned article as: men. I’m sure they have all the physical attributes of women, but they have fought so hard to be be like men that they have become caricatures of them. The worst of them is a woman who writes a short column in the sunday paper, and who refers to her children as Cost Center number 1 and Cost Center number 2 (CC#1 and CC#2 for short)… I know it’s meant to be humorous, but it still makes me cringe.

I’m sure I was going somewhere with this, but I don’t remember now, and this post has been sitting in my drafts for too long, so I’m going to publish it as is…