NotUeberMommy's Momaroo

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?

Christmas recuperation

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:48:00 GMT

So it was a, well, challenging Christmas season, once again....

As usual, we celebrated Christmas with my in-laws in Germany. My husband's parents are divorced; his father is remarried, and his mother's mother (now a great-grandmother to our son!) is still alive. She is 88 years old.

We stayed with my mother-in-law, as we usually do. My father-in-law and his wife have cats, and I'm allergic.. There was drama - FIL felt neglected, because we didn't spend as much time with him as we did with MIL -;
There was awkwardness - MIL doesn't "get" that it's sometimes hard for me to spend a whole week with my in-laws (she thinks she is easy to live with - but she's really, really not. Plus, she moved to a smaller house, which made it difficult to stay with her without getting annoyed with each other);
There was fatigue - we slept in one room with our son, who had a bad cold. My husband did too, so every time he coughed, baby awoke, and every time baby awoke, I did, too. Needless to say: we are still trying to recuperate from the whole thing.

We've thought about staying home for the holidays, but then how would we deal with the divorced in-laws? We live in tight quarters, too, so we can't very well have them sleep here (there is no bed for them, let alone a room to put it in...). Plus, hubby's grandma, who we love dearly, doesn't travel anymore. She likes to sleep in her own bed, and at her age, I think she deserves to do whatever she pleases! So I think we'll be traveling at least until we have a house, and possible until grandma dies (although... her own mother lived to be close to 100 years old, so maybe that's a bit long!) In any case, if I get pregnant again, physical problems will most probably prevent me from traveling, so we'll have to change our plans then.

I suppose we should be grateful to still have hubby's parents and grandma - and we are! - but I'm just not made to be the perfect daughter-in-law for a whole week. I need some room to breathe!

My mother is whole other story. We always stay for one night at her house on our way to and from Germany, and it's a delight. She lives in a huge house, so we have lots of space, and she has more toys than we do, plus a crib and anything else we might need. We don't need to unpack everything there, which is great. Plus, she lets us do our own thing while she plays with our son - awesome! You would think that I just feel that way because she's my mom, but even my husband is more relaxed at her house than he is at his mom's...

So that was Christmas. When we got back, we found our heater was clogged and our kitchen had an inch of water everywhere... welcome home! The clog was fixed in under 30 minutes, which was awesome, but the cabinet that holds the heater needs to be replaced. Just when we were going to put our home on the market! *sigh*

Anyhoodle... everyone have a happy, healthy, relaxing New Year!

Need Help: How Do I Teach Safety?

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:20:21 GMT

Okay, so I need a little help here... Any tips are welcome, thanks!

Yesterday, my 18-month-old son stayed with my sister and her two kids for the day while I did a (rather disastrous, but that's another story) vocal performance. My son is easy enough to take care of; he plays happily on his own or with his cousins and eats pretty much anything (apart from certain vegetables) you put in front of him. So far, so good...

The only problem was, my sister needed to run to the store - well, cycle to the store, actually (we are in Holland after all) - and she needed to take all three kids with her. My niece and nephew may be a little on the boisterous side at home, but they always, always listen when they are out with my sister. They never, say, run into traffic, or refuse to hold her hand.

Not so with my son.... He refused to hold my sister's hand, ran out onto the street while my sister was picking up my nephew, who had tripped, and ran away from her in the store. He does this with my husband and me, too, but since we only have one child, we can usually grab a hold of him/the hood on his winter jacket. In the store I also grab his hand/arm if necessary.

Still, for his safety, I'd like to teach him how to behave outside ASAP. When we are at home and he doesn't behave, we give him a one-minute time-out in the h all, where he can't hurt himself or break things. Before we go out, we try to sit him down and explain (as much as you can with an 18-month-old) how we expect him to behave outside, but as soon as we are outside, he is distract by leaves, cats, cars, and everything else that is so appealing to a toddler. I need help! My sister even suggested putting him in one of those child harnesses with a leash, but since we only have one child right now, I don't see the need for that. I would consider it in situations where I couldn't keep him safe otherwise (like if I had to carry lots of luggage maybe, but then I'd consider putting him in a buggy or something). But what I'd really like to do is teach him the importance of staying close to me when we're out and about.

How did you teach your child how to be safe outside? How did you get them to hold your hand, wait at the curb before crossing, and stay with you in the store?