Language Developement (by sarah)

Alaric is putting me to shame with Mary and teaching her lojban - Jeany and him have been learning this for a year or so - Jean is a bit erratic with it but evenings often find them both 'cooking' dinner and talking via laptop to the lojban community. With him raising Mary bilingual and him writing poems for WoPoWriMo in the language things are moving streaks ahead.

This does cause me a few problems in that Jean has a tendency to ask me what things are lojban when Daddy's not here which can be interesting but via the internet I have been able to help abit.

I really wanted to give my children the chance of being good at languages incase it was something they either wanted or needed when they grew up. This meant that when Jean was a baby I spent alot of time getting language tapes to play to her - I tried to get non European languages as they tend to be the least similar to English and therefore harder to learn for native English speakers. The first year of a baby's developement is very important as that is when they absorb into their little brains all the sounds of their native language.

There are sounds that adults can not hear in other languages which is why it is one of the reasons it is so hard to learn as an adult. Now I have had arguments with people about doing this - being told it would impede Jean's linguistic development but everything I had read in the research suggested that though being exposed to other languages may result in the child speaking a bit later - they would be capable of a) understanding the syntax and the actual structure of languages better and b) they would do much better in picking up other languages in future.

Not being able to get hold of everything I wanted with Jeany and being told by Al's family that the tapes would not be giving her all the higher sounds and stuff - I used to play music to her - a wide variety of styles - as wide as I could. Musicians tend to be able to hear those sounds in the other languages even if they can not reproduce them, now standard European music on has tones and semi-tones and so is quiet limited for this but stuff like Indian music has micro-tones and covers a wider range of sounds.

I even had a copy of the Koran being sang which my friend sent us.

The result of all of this? Is Jean a fantastic linguist? Well no but she has already suprised us and her teachers by appearing to be not interested in French leasons and then in the middle of supermarkets splurting out chunks of it which in like her first term when she'd only just turned four included counting one to ten in French - she can count the same in Lojban too.

Interestingly one of the things she is very good at is remembering tunes - not perfectly but more than would be expected for a five year old. Now this may well be genetic - I tend to remember a song 'roughly' from one hearing and infact can even sometimes start singing along during the first hearing (this works best with say hymns or pop music - both of which tend to repeat huge chunks of themselves).

She is also picking up guitar stuff faster than I thought she would! She has rhythm which we already knew from her dancing 🙂

(yes I know but I am a gushy proud parent!)

Sadly I lost most of the language tapes and CD's in the flood and the MP3's when my laptop died so I need to start from stratch with Mary - though with Alric and Jean speaking Lojban maybe it's not as needed.

The other thing I did was teach Jeany baby sign - she never learnt more than a few signs but she did understood more and on top of that has remembered them! To be fair I have stopped using 'wait' though it is a mangeled version using one hand as I found I never had two hands free whilst dealing with children and often I am on the phone or eating so can not vocalise a response!

I had wanted to develope it into proper sign language but unfortunatly we didn't have enough money for me to attend the course and the books on it where all quiet expensive - I know a little bit anyway like the alphabet and the names of school subjects. But I do have a slight problem in that baby sign British Sign Language and Mackatain (not sure of the spelling) are all different and I know bits of all of them :/

Again baby sign is very good for linguistic developement - not because it gets your baby talking quicker because it doesn't - but it improves the level at which the child starts to speak - so they are lickely to vocalise later on but they will be talking in sentences!

Baby sign was fantastic for preventing frustrated baby with Jean as well becuase even before she could of physically started speaking she was signing milk! at us. She learnt Milk first followed by poo - later we had more, yummy, wet, thirsty and hurt (followed by pointing to where) - this was also invaluable when it came to potty training 😉 She also made up her own signs like milk! with both hands - this meant she wanted food!

People always comment on how well Jean speaks - plus baby sign helps them develope fine motor movements and hey you have to spend a lot of time with your baby so it's not really like it was much extra effort. Sign languages are good in that though they are the languages that pick up the most dialects or regional variations they are also the languages in which people can all communicate and work out what the other person is saying! They are far more versatile - which is why I personally am sticking to sign language and not learning Lojban with Al and Jean.

I was keen on sign language again due to the issue of my own hearing when I was small - just in case - fortunatly Jean has good hearing (except when you are telling her off!). I think by the end of that first year my friends were sick of being handed a baby Jean and asked to 'speak foreign' 🙂 Oh and we always watch DVD's in the other languages as well as English 🙂

Pictures of Baby Mary from the Hospital (by sarah)

Day One

Day Two

Day Three and Four

For some reason Alaric didn't bring the camera into Stroud Mat - I think he may have taken more photos on his phone though!

Coming Home Sleep Over (by sarah)

Jean is desperate to be involved with the baby which means that on arrival home she worked out how to undo the baby seats straps and was about to lift her out of the seat when spotted by me! I got her to stop for a pick and then had Dad on stand by to supervise her and 'help' her put the baby on the setee for mummy.

I had promised Jean we would have a baby, Mummy, Jeany sleep over complete with film-athon. Above is a photo of the three of us 'watching' a film. Mary spent most of the time feeding and Jean spent most of the time snuggled - I have a bean bag behind me which she sat on for half the afternoon!

We then settled down for the night - more breast feeding and several stories later and they were both asleep - and before midnight too! Jean had been so excited I wondered if she was ever going to sleep!

The sleep over continued on Sunday with Jeany being a Fairy God Sister and there being more films - unfortunatly she did go out to play and ended up with some nasty grazes so we had to mix some chocolate into the day to help her recoup 😉

This was actually quiet alot of fun - but the main point of it is to help Jean feel involved and happy about the babies arrival and feel less worried about me having been away at hospital and the fact Daddy has 'gone'.

Home (by sarah)

I got home yesterday afternoon - I've busted my phone by dropping it at the hospital so of course have no ones numbers :/ So I'm sorry if anyone turned up to visit today or yesterday!

I'm happy/would love people to visit the house.

I'm not in my own bed as there are like half assembled coats and things in the way but we had a lovely Mary, Jean, Mummy sleep over last night and Jeany says she wants another tonight 🙂

Apart from that - well were to begin!

There is so much I could say, so much I want to say and so much I need to say - but it is all rather over whelming - so prepare yourselves for a lot of blogging and cute pictures - I have probably taken excessive amounts of Jean and Mary and Mary and Alaric and you are all going to be subjected to them!

I have two lovely little girls - both bueatiful and special, similar and different and wonderful!

I am finishing my antibiotics today - there is still a painfull lump just above the wound and the wound is a bit weepy which is being checked out tomorrow. I am sort of hoping I don't have to go on more antibiotics as with Jean it resulted it icky side effects :/

Pelvis is still separated but it is no where near as bad as with Jeany's laabour. I have already seen a physio and have a number to ring to get equipment back so I can shower and stuff on my own - this is very important to me as I need to feel I can do things. I can't start a proper exercise regime for another 5-6 weeks at the moment and I can't have physio until 6 weeks time. But I can just about walk with the crutches and now the iron tablets are taking effect I am not passing out or being shaky I can walk a way - not enough to say go shopping or even get to the end of the drive yet - but I am getting there!

I am much much happier with the medical treatment recieved this time round - both hospitals were fantastic and the after care has been brilliant.

There have been random bouts of tears but I know this time round that this is normal - it's what happens when you've just had a baby!

I am actually feeling pretty good - reguardless of not having had more than 4 hrs un-interrupted sleep for the last week! I am also only 13 stone which considering I started the pregnancy off at coughs 12 stone I think is not bad! I want to get down to a proper weight though but am also planning to try and do this over at least a year and to not overly worry about it.

I have discovered I am nuerotic about the house and had apoplexy when I came home - shouted at everybody and made them clean last night (in the process I have discovered shouting hurts the c-section wound :/ as does; crying, laughing and sneezing).

I am more resolved than ever to write The Glass Pelvis but mainly I am enjoying my two children - lots of cuddles and snuggles and with me and Jeany lots of giggling (don't get me wrong she is still throwing tantrums and being distracted as is to be expected but she is behaving better than we expected! It's more she's upset that people take her baby away from her).

Of course I am missing Alaric more than you can imagine but he will be back on Tuesday.

Lastly I have so many people to thank for messages and cards and flowers and little cardigans and chocolate and help when the pregnancy got really hard. So thankyou all 🙂

Mary progress (by alaric)

Mary's doing well. Her blood sugar was a bit low at first, due to some combination of medication Sarah was on before the birth (Metformin, to control gestational diabetes, which acts to reduce blood sugar levels) and a delay in Sarah's breast milk coming through properly, but she got over that fine and was pronounced fit to discharge. She and Sarah are still in the hospital for now, though, as Sarah's quite anemic and gets short of breath very quickly, and she was showing some signs of infection; but they put her on antibiotics, and the infection symptoms are fading away. She's on iron supplements, and is getting stronger every day.

I've been spending most of every day with them, helping Sarah with looking after herself and Mary, and keeping them company. I get to hold Mary lots, which has been particularly fun as she's started being more awake and alert; she spent a lot of time sleeping for the first couple of days, but now she opens her eyes and looks around, turning her head towards voices. Today she took to lifting her head up, although her neck is still quite weak so she can only do this if you're holding her upright to begin with; she now unsteadily holds her head up so she can look around more. The right thing to do to help her brain develop at this stage is to talk to her, so that's what I've been doing... telling her about the pets at home and that sort of thing. I've also been having a go at talking to her in Lojban, as I'd quite like to raise her as Lojban/English bilingual, in order to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis once and for all. I need to to a bit more research on suitable Lojban baby talk, but so far it's been {ko .iu gleki} ("be happy, darling"), {lo vi mamta be do} ("Mummy's here!"), {mi patfu do .iu} ("It's Daddy!"), {.uu .uinaidai} ("Aw, you're sad"), {.uipei} ("Are you happy?"), {.uidai} ("You're happy!"), {fi'i la meris} ("Welcome, Mary"), and so on.