NotUeberMommy's Momaroo

Update

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:21:07 GMT

Not that I've been very active around here lately, but I think I may have to go to "online only" for the general Momaroo blogs. I just don't have time to plow through a full inbox every day!

Updates, quickly:

- I've lost 5,5 kilograms (that's 12 lbs for those of you who are not on the metric system YET... ). I'm finally able to work out a little - under strict supervision of my physiotherapist - and hopefully I'll be able to increase my efforts bit by bit... and increase the weight loss, too, of course. I've hit a bit of a "hump" and I'm trying very hard not to let it discourage me... *sigh*

- Hubby and I have been together for almost 11 years now! We are taking little man to my mom's this weekend, and we're going out to dinner while she takes care of him. Looking forward to that! I will have to do a lot of walking over the weekend to compensate for the excessive calorie intake... we're having dinner at a fancy restaurant, and the wines will be divine, I'm sure... I even bought a dress (one size smaller, woot!) for the occasion.

- K is doing great. He loves his daycare now, and I must say it's growing on us, too. Unfortunately his best friend, a now 4-year-old girl, is starting school (kindergarten) next week, so that might be a bit of an adjustment for him. I always think it's funny how his best friend is more than a year older - but then, he's very verbal, so it works out well for them. Of course emotionally he's just a toddler still...

- I am looking forward to the new gardening season - I've started to clean out our shed/greenhouse. I can't wait for spring to finally get here! There are still a lot of pots to wash, but after I'm done with that, I'm going to start sowing seeds for our (miniature) vegetable garden. We're taking it slow with that, because I don't want to have to spend every free minute working in the garden when I have so many other things to do (work, studying, housework, daycare "PTA", taking care of K...)

- Studying is finally progressing, but not as quickly as I'd like... Working on my last paper now, and then the MA-thesis (eeeek!). Which is why I am not going to be online too much over the next couple of months - I just don't have the time! I will still comment on some of your posts, but I HAVE TO STUDY!

~Hilde

Happy New Year!

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:56:26 GMT

So today is the first day of the rest of my life. Well, really EVERY new day is... but I've been trying to be more "aware" lately, and hopefully it will culminate in a quieter mind and a leaner, stronger body.

I'm journaling more now - nothing you'd want to read, believe me! It is helping me stay aware of my frustrations and deal with them instead of stuffing my feelings down with food. I know it sounds dramatic, but it really isn't: I'm actually very happy with my life right now. But of course, there are always the little issues that drive you CRAZY!! You know... your man's dirty socks on the floor, a child not willing to go to sleep (or waking up five times in the evening, preferably during your favorite tv-show - no, I do not have Tivo...), aches and pains that I was hoping to be rid of, guilt over not having finished things you had planned to finish years ago....

So instead of obsessing over these things all day, I am setting aside time to write down the little worries so I can stop thinking about them the rest of the day, and focus on the things I want to accomplish..

Here's to a truly happy, healthy, inspired new year - and many years to come!

P.S. What are your New Year's resolutions? How are you going about accomplishing your goals?

It's a crazy life...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:36:09 GMT

Random update for those of you who are interested:

We selected a school for K! I am so excited. It's weird for us, because we actually chose a Christian school, and I'm not a Christian, but it just seemed like the best choice. It was nice and quiet, organized, and has a good "output" record (i.e. more kids from this school go on to higher education than from any other school in the area). It's a little white for my liking - I would guesstimate it has only about 30% non-white kids - but I guess that's the price you pay for getting him into a good school. There is one school closer to here that's more 50/50, but I'm afraid K would drown there - there are too many children who are behind in their development, which of course takes away from "average" and above-average students.

I haven't been feeling to well lately - a bit disorganized, which leads to not finding time to study, which in turn leads to huge guilt trips, of course. K has been all about mommy lately, which means I have even less time to myself. I am turning into a mommy and housewife first, employee second, student third, singer fourth, and myself, well... not sure where to fit that in. So that all has to change - somehow. I am starting by organizing my desk. Hubby installed my printer (I got tired of my computer crashing and the installation process giving me "fatal error" warnings) so I can finally get a move on. Phew.

Anyhoodle... guess I'd better get going now! Will post new pictures of our little chatterbox soon. He's grown so much!
H

Toddler guilt

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:16:13 GMT

Monday K came home from daycare tired (that's normal) and upset (not so normal). It took until he was in bed to tell us what was wrong:

Daddy: "What's wrong?"

K -shrug

D: "Did you not enjoy yourself at daycare?"

K "I hit a boy"

D: "Did you say sorry?"

K: "Noooo...." *sniffle

Me: "Who was the boy?"

K: "Yes..."

Me: "Do you remember his name?"

K shakes his head and cries a little.

Later on, I talked to him about it some more. I asked him if he was still sad, and he nodded yes. I told him he could always come to mommy and daddy and talk to us, and we wouldn't get mad at him. I told him it would be okay if he said sorry and shook hands with the boy, and he went to sleep then.

This morning, when he realized he was going to daycare again, he started sobbing. I asked him what was wrong - apparently he was still feeling guilty. I told him I would stay with him in daycare until he felt better. We went to daycare, but he couldn't tell me which boy he had hit - only that it was a boy in his group. I told him if he saw the boy again, he could still say sorry and everything would be okay (this was all in front of the group, because they were sitting down to have crackers and juice, so the boy may very well have been there). It took almost 15 minutes for him to calm down. Poor baby! At one point, the group was very quiet, and out of nowhere the boy sitting next to K goes "K, do you want to be my friend?" Aaahhh... My heart melted. How sweet! K seemed to feel better then, too.

K is quite advanced in his talking, but emotionally, he's only a 2-year-old, so although he has words to express himself, he doesn't yet know how to handle these types of situations. My poor little man was riddled with guilt!

Do your kids come to you when they are feeling guilty about something? How do you help them deal with the situation?

Photo update!

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:17:47 GMT

Finally, updated pictures of Kick:

Go Tiger!

Zoo; Reading to Oma Martha.

Grin!

Zoo in Germany. I love how he can concentrate on one thing and sort zone out... So sweet!

With cousin K (I know, two Ks right? We didn't even realize it until we started accidentally mixing up their names..)

My snotty-nosed little man... He loves that Cars T-shirt, though he's never seen the flick. It's a daycare hit.

Stevie Wonder impression... Loves to accessorize!

Loves apples, Loves his new desk, courtesy of Oma Martha

Cool cowboy

Reading daddy's book

Little Man Big Eyes

Tips for raising bilingual children

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:50:25 GMT

I just read this post on when to start teaching your child a second language, and as an English teacher and mother of a bilingual child I thought I'd put my two cents in... so here goes:

As a "linguist, (I hold a BA in English, and am working on an MA)" I would definitely agree with the "start early" advice - the critical age for learning languages is from birth to around the onset of puberty (10-12 years old). However, the author of the other article said something along the lines of "it's as simple as saying cat, then followed by gato," which is advice that not all second language acquisition scholars (let's call them "linguists" for brevity) tend to agree on.

Most linguists now agree that the best way to grow up bilingual is to have one parent always speak one language, and to have the other parent always speak the second language with the child. It makes for a much less confusing world for a child, and the child will be able to tell apart the languages much sooner. My husband and I are raising a bilingual child (Dutch/German), and at age two he barely ever uses any German with me, and is using more and more German with my husband. (We live in the Netherlands, so he hears more Dutch than German on a daily basis). But it is clear that he can already distinguish between the two: when I do use German, he looks at me funny and says "no, mommy! Don't talk like that!"

Another tip for raising bilingual children: to make sure the child learns the appropriate grammatical patterns, the parents or others teaching the child must have either have very strong language skills or be a native speaker of that language. If your grammar isn't great, your child will be confused - you can teach them a lot of vocab, but he or she will never be a true native speaker of that language.

Also, exposure is key - if you don't have a lot of speakers of the child's second language users in your community, you can use CDs, kids' DVDs, etcetera to expose your child to the second language as much as possible.

All of this I found out because a) I'm an English major and it was part of my requirements and b) I married a German and we are now raising our son to be bilingual (German/Dutch). Since I am an English teacher, I am hoping our son will also learn English from a young age. Kids in the Netherlands have English lessons in school from the age of 6 nowadays, but I do know that most teachers who teach English in primary schools are not trained English teachers - so I'm glad I will be able to help him a bit more. I'm even thinking about volunteering to help brush up the teachers' English skills at his school when he is old enough to go.

Our son is only two now, but his Dutch is actually better than that of most of the kids in his daycare (which is not always the case with bilingual kids - some of them are slow starters as they tend to have trouble separating the languages). He is starting to use more of his German with my husband and my in-laws now. We live in the Netherlands, so he doesn't have as much occasion to use his German, but we have kids' DVDs in German, and we try to Skype his grandparents a couple of times a week. Also, we make sure to visit them, or have them visit us, at least four times a year. Our son understands every word of German spoken to him, but he uses it more when there are more German speakers around, of course.

Unfortunately, there isn't much quantatative research done on bilingualism. In fact, most of the "research" out there is not exactly scientific. But if you are interested, do go online and find books on the subject. Some of the books may be a little technical, so that's why I thought I'd give those who are interested in the subject the short(er) version...

Good luck!
Veel geluk!
Viel Glück!

Baby love

Sat, 30 May 2009 20:23:07 GMT

K is now, as it turns out, old enough to understand the concept "friendship". The other day while we were eating lunch, he grabbed my hand, laid his head on my arm and said:

"Mommy, you are my FRIEND!"

*sigh* My heart turned, as M would describe it "into a juicy steak" (or, as I would say, into goo). How sweet, right?

Then today, I said "is Mommy your friend?" and he goes "No, Mommy is my Mommy!" Heeee... I guess our friendship wasn't meant to last... But that's okay. "Mommy" is an honorary title to me, and I'm proud to be his mommy. Lately, he has been quite emphatic about that - he tells people "this is MY mommy!"

I can't wait for him to understand the concept "love." I think I might faint the first time he says he loves me... wow. Sometimes mommyhood is especially good.

K is scratching his chicken pox bumps now, poor thing. I hope he sleeps through the night... Better get some sleep while he's still sleeping!

What was the first time your child told you (maybe not in so many words) that he or she loved you?

Painting...

Thu, 28 May 2009 20:20:56 GMT

Just wanted to let those of you who read this know that we're still in the process of painting our new place...

It turns out there are lots of other little details (or not-so-little details) to sort out, too... It took us three days to strip a couple of of walls of wallpaper (eeek!), but now we're in the process of painting. By Sunday, we're hoping to have finished painting and wallpapering (is that a verb? Well, it is now) the four main rooms of the house: living/dining room, our bedroom, K's bedroom, and my study (possible future baby room... no, I'm not pregnant! Stop asking, will ya?). On Monday, my brother-in-law is coming to help us put down new laminate flooring in the living/dining room , so that room will have to be finished by then.

Apart from the painting in those rooms, there are many other things to sort out: the bathroom, toilet, hall, stairways, stairs (argh!), and Maik's studio/the attic will all need a fresh coat of paint. Also, we've bought two new radiators but haven't found anyone who could possible help us install those - looks like we'll have to pay a plumber to come and do that for us. And we're planning to change the sink in the bathroom into a square one that takes cabinets underneath (serious lack of storage in there). I'm not quite panicky yet, although I'm close... *sigh*

Anyhoodle... Lots of work to be done, and we're tired already. Less than two weeks till the move-in date. To make planning more difficult (this ties in with the "mom blog" element) is that we found red bumps on K today - chicken pox! It's all over daycare, so it was just a matter of time of course, but it's such bad timing! Thank goodness for my mom - she is "trying out retirement" as she calls it, and she is coming to take care of K tomorrow so we can do some work. No daycare for at least a week, though... He's not very itchy yet (we did buy a natural remedy for the itching), so I hope his soft skin doesn't look all horrible by next week... Poor baby.

So.. gotta go get some sleep while I still can! Anyone up for some painting?

Hilde

We bought a house!

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:17:34 GMT

First, my apologies for not keeping this blog updated. My excuse is: we were busy househunting!

So we bought a house - a semi-detached, very modern (steel on the outside!) house with a nice big garden. It has a playground literally a stone's throw away from our garden, three storeys (four bedrooms), and oh... a greenhouse! I can't wait to start growing our own tomatoes! (We'll start small...)

I'm super-exited, I can't wait to get in there and paint. It's 8 years old and in pretty good condition, but we are repainting the walls and changing the wallpaper in some places. We're putting in new flooring in the living room and I'd like to repaint the staircase if we have time. We only have three weeks from the time we get the key until the time we have to move out of our apartment.

We get the key on May 22nd!! Time if flying by at the moment - we're looking at floors, curtains, wallpaper. We've pretty much got the finances settled (mortgage and home owners insurance, and everything else, too. I've set up a spreadsheet to track our finances. We will be on a very strict budget until I graduate and find a job, but that's ok.. we can eat our home-grown tomatoes until then .

Did I tell you I'm excited? I'm EXCITED! Yay!

~ Hilde

To Buy or Not to Buy...

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:44:31 GMT

.. a house, that is.

Actually, we have already decided we're going to buy a house. But when, we don't know. Our apartment sold in three weeks (that must be some kind of a record in this economy) but unfortunately the buyer pulled out. Luckily, we hadn't made an offer on a house yet, but we had already found our dream house... Which we now cannot make an offer on.

We're trying very hard to fight the disappointment - there are worse things in the world, right? At least we still have a roof over our heads - but I had so hoped to be in our new house by the summer! Ah, to have a garden... *sigh*

We're in the process of getting ready for another day of viewings on Friday. We want everything to look just so (which is what we did last time, and it worked - initially anyway). But pulling off a look like that involves catching up on piles on laundry (okay, it's not that bad, but you know what I mean), hiding our little and big messes in overstuffed closets (why do you think we want to move out?) and cleaning every inch of this place in a more than thorough fashion.

And I'm sick of it.

I guess I'm just writing this to find the courage to go through this process all over again... *sigh*

Have you sold a house lately? What did you do to make it look/smell/sound appealing to potential buyers?