Bilingual babbling

So Little O turned two just over a week ago and is now turning into a little boy – he’s definitely no longer a baby, although he’ll always be my baby. I try so hard not to compare what he can do with what other children of his age can but sometimes it is hard not to. The one area where I can help but compare is language. We are raising him bilingually. I speak English to him, Husband speaks Swedish and Husband and I speak English to each other. At the moment, Little O attends a bilingual (English/Swedish) dagis (preschool) but that is likely to change if he gets a place at a Swedish state-run dagis instead.

He has many words that he uses correctly and “passed” the test with the nurse at 18 months of knowing at least ten words. Interestingly, the way he seems to be learning new words has changed as he has grown. Initially, when hearing both the Swedish and the English word for something, he would typically choose the easier of the two to say. Now, however, he seems to use both words and he is beginning to understand that Husband and I use different words for the same thing: he’ll say “train” to me and “tåg” to Husband and bring us books in our own language to read to him. It never ceases to amaze me the extend to which our little people can understand and pick up things around them.

Where I start to get a little concerned though is that he is not yet really saying phrases to us. Other children of the same age that I hear in the playgrounds here (and who are presumably monolingual) are already stringing three or four words together into small sentences. But the nearest that Little O has got to doing this is “No, Mamma” and “Nej, Pappa”.

At first I was not too worried about it as it has always been said that bilingual children will often be a little behind in some area of their language development. But that theory has now been discounted now, with the cognitive benefits now stated as being great. Googling “bilingual toddler speech delay” did help somewhat as most of the cases there were of children not speaking at all, and when he’s on form, Little O is barely quiet for one minute. The problem is that little of what he says is recognizable as proper words in either English or Swedish. He’s still just babbling.

I’m not ready to rush him off for speech therapy just yet (!), but what do you think? Is he just a little behind and likely to catch up? Or is this something that we should be keeping an eye on?

The halfway point

Photo © English Mamma

How far along? 20 weeks and 6 days

Total weight gain/loss: Just weighed myself and have put on about three kilos (eek!) but I do have an excuse: we’ve just returned from two weeks in the UK and that always involves an extra kilo or so!

Stretch marks?: I don’t think there is anything new so far but the problem area is now out of my sight (and therefore out of mind!).

Sleep: Well, I’m firmly into the second trimester now and although I don’t need extra daytime sleep any more (although it would be nice!), I am not feeling as energetic as I did at this stage when I was pregnant with Little O.

Best moment this week: Actually, and sad as this may seem, it was returning home on Sunday and sleeping in our own bed again!

Worst moment this week: Confirmation of the bad news about a family member that we had been anticipating.

Movement: Some movement from time to time, but I am sure that Little O moved far more than this at this stage, but maybe I am wrong… I’m trying to calm myself that this doesn’t mean that anything is wrong, just that this little bean is not as active as Little O (and they could not be more so!).

Belly button in or out?: Still in but getting dangerously close to popping out (bleurgh!).

What I miss: Walking anywhere at any type of speed.

What I am looking forward to: The next few days with Little O. I’m using up my maternity leave these three weeks, so Little O is home from preschool and we’re spending some fun times together. It feels like we’re catching up on the past couple of months when I was so tired from early pregnancy that we could not play properly together.

Milestones: Reaching the halfway point of this pregnancy.

Did you guess?

This is something that I had forgotten that I did every so often during my first pregnancy and so I thought that I would resurrect it (oh, did I mention that I was pregnant…? Well, that is what this post and this post are all about – did you guess?).

How far along? 15 weeks and 5 days

Total weight gain/loss: Gained about a couple of kilos so far, but that can fluctuate to more like three and a half on some days

Stretch marks?: Nothing so far but I have popped out so much that I am beginning to lose sight of my last set!

Sleep: Not really needing the extra two hours of sleep during the day any more (though it would always be nice if I could manage that) but waking most morning feeling like I need more sleep, despite sleeping for around eight hours.

Best moment this week: The great news from Little O’s förskola (preschool)

Worst moment this week: The waiting game as we await news of hospital tests on a close family member

Movement: I felt some little light fluttering movements last week and then yesterday I felt something more, most likely caused by Little O bouncing around on me and bump protesting.

Belly button in or out?: In still but not as much as it was before I was pregnant with Little O

What I miss: A glass of rose at an outdoor cafe in the sunshine

What I am looking forward to: The weekend and possibly checking out Sjöhistoriska Museet (the Maritime Museum), which has a children’s playroom that I want to check out with Little O.

Milestones: Bump should now respond to light even though his/her eyelids are still fused shut. (I guess I should call this bump gyermek too, as again we won’t be finding out if it’s a boy or a girl until birth.)

Huge relief

Happily, the moment that I blogged about our frustration with timing issues at the private preschool that Little O attends, the problems were resolved. Yes, when I went to collect him this week, I was told that from next Tuesday, the issues are no more. Hooray!

This is a huge relief and now means that we can sit contentedly in the queue for one of our chosen state-run förskola (all of which are located much closer to us) and be much more relaxed about what happens.

What a great week this is proving to be!

Questioning the queuing

Photo from stockholm.se

As I wrote a few months ago, we have applied for five state-run förskola (nurseries) for August. As the end of July drew near, we realised that we were not going to get a place for Little O at any of these. We had been moving up the queue smoothly at one point, but then it slowed right down at the end of June and by the beginning of July, we had come to a complete halt. We have Little O at a private förskola but we have some timing issues here that will make Husband’s working life particularly difficult and so we were keen to get him a place at one of our five choices, all of which are located much closer to home and office for both of us.

Okay, so we could see that we were not going to get a spot for him in August, so what happens now?

We were quite confused as to where this left us, and I had not had much luck with my phone calls to the kommune (local authority) – both people I spoke to there just sucked in air and said (I could almost hear them shaking their heads) that we had no guaranteed spot (as Little O was already signed up for a private förskola). Well, yes, quite. We knew that, but as we ONLY wanted one of those five nurseries and didn’t want to be given a spot somewhere, anywhere in Stockholm. So, Husband was dispatched to call them and see if he had better luck. And yes, he did. So the situation now is that we should stay registered with our chosen förskola and for August 2011. We are highly unlikely to get a place for August but that will keep us in the queue for September, October, November and so on, until we actually get a place. Basically, if three spots were to open up at our no.1 choice for September, for example, and no one was registered in the queue for Sept 2011 or no one in the queue took any of the spots, they would then be offered to the August 2011 queuers. This goes on happening each month until the queue disappears. Quite what happens if we August 2011 queuers are still in the queue when we come around to August 2012 is another question though… We’re just crossing fingers and toes that we don’t find ourselves having to ask that question.

(You can find a little more (in Swedish) about the queuing system in the Stockholm area here.)

Grabbing a few minutes

Well, just checking in quickly here while Baby O (how much longer can I call him that, now he’s 13 months old?) plays with his talking dog.

We completed the “schooling in” process at preschool the week before last and, with the execption of one day when I had to collect him an hour early, he’s been attending from 9am until 3pm each day. The plan for this week was to take it up a notch to 8.30am to 3pm, but that has fallen by the wayside.

Last Thursday, we went to Budapest for a long weekend but on Friday afternoon, he came down with a fever that has lasted (peaking and troughing) until this morning. So no preschool for us at the moment as the doc says he is contagious as long as the fever lasts. Crossing my fingers that the fever holds off all day today and that he can return tomorrow.

Also, on the preschool front, we discovered that we are not as close to getting a place at a state-run preschool as we had thought. We’re still in the queue for August, but it looks as if we’ll have to reapply and cross our fingers that we can get in for October instead.

So, what have I missed while I’ve been AWOL?

Still here!

So, I’ve not been posting much recently and even when I have, it has really only been photos for The Gallery and Silent Sunday. But I am still here! Real life has just been taking over recently.

This week is the one that I have both been dreading and looking forward to, and now it is here and there is an added complication. (Yes, of course, nothing could be better than a little bit of drama to spice things up…)

Baby O is due to start preschool (or förskola, as it is called in Sweden) on Wednesday. On the one hand, I am looking forward to this on his behalf as he seems so keen to play with other littlies when we’re out and about at the park and with friends. But on the other, he still seems so very little (he turns 13 months on Saturday). But then again, he’s now walking, trying to feed himself (somewhat messily) with a spoon and is beginning to communicate so much more – for example, pointing at what he wants.

And the complication? Well, on Wednesday, he’ll start what they call “inskolning” here, so the first day we’ll both be at the preschool for two hours, then four hours together there on Thursday, then five hours on Friday with some time away from me. The following week he’ll have shorter days again but I’ll be leaving him (although I’ll be “on call” in the neighbourhood, should they need me to come back). I love this approach that they take to settling them in at preschool. However, when we applied for this (private) preschool, we stayed in the queue for our five choices of state-run preschools (although there really is no difference in price between them; you pay the same regardless – very hard for me to get my head around). And now we are only a few queue spots away from a place at one of our top three choices of state-run preschools, starting from August. The biggest advantage of these three is that they are on the route between home and the office, whereas the private preschool is a 25-minute walk out of our way and then a 15-minute bus journey to the office.

I feel quite guilty that we will probably only complete part of the “inskolning” process now in June at the private preschool and then swap to a state-run preschool and restart the process in August. However, I don’t want to turn down the private preschool just yet in case we don’t actually get that place at one of the state-run preschools, as then we would really be in trouble. I am sure that this happens all the time. Everyone I know here who has accepted a place at a private pre-school has remained on the state-run queue “just in case”, but I still feel guilty. And then there is guilt that I feel for potentially putting Baby O through this process twice.

I just hope we find out whether we have a place or not soon!

Form an orderly queue…

Photo © English Mamma

Last week, we visited the förskola/nursery (also called dagis here) that Baby O will start in early June. We have applied for the five state-run schools that we could through the local authority but have not been holding out much hope of getting him in one of these (2010 saw the peak of Stockholm’s baby boom) and so have applied for a handful of private nurseries too. We’d not heard anything from any of them, when I got a message from a friend about a new bilingual English/Swedish nursery opening up not so far from us. We applied straight away – this time for June, rather than August as for the others, and again heard nothing.

Then rumours started coming through about friends getting their little ones into this nursery. So I put on my pushy parent hat and called them up and asked why Baby O had not got a place when a friend had a place for her little one and had applied after us (you can imagine how I cringed yesterday on being introduced to the very lovely man I had spoken to on the phone…). However, being pushy did pay off in this instance, as we got the papers through later that day and Baby O was registered with a place at the nursery.

So, last Wednesday we got to take a look around and see the beginnings of how the nursery will look – it’s only half finished at present and does not open for another month. We’ve been to see some of the state-run nurseries that we were interested in, but suddenly it felt real yesterday. But Baby O seemed to love the place, hurrying off with some of his friends to explore each nook and half-constructed cranny. One of the best aspects about this nursery, in my opinion, is the head teacher’s ideas about play. Baby O will spend most of his time inside in something called The Little Lab, where he’ll be encouraged to explore and investigate and experiment. And he certainly made a start on that yesterday, unfortunately favouring the workmen’s tools rather than the toys provided…

The application system here in Stockholm for nursery schools can seem a little bewildering. We found that one of the best places to start was the local authority website for Stockholm, where you can see and compare all the nursery schools by area.Our plan of attack was to print out the details for all of the nurseries in our area and then narrow down the candidates by location initially. We went through the list again and agin until we had about 20 that we liked the look of – both state-run and private.

In Stockholm, you can apply for five nurseries through the local authority. And this was where it became a little confusing as you also have to apply for some private schools through here too and these are included in your choice of five. Luckily, you apply to the majority of private nurseries directly and are in addition to the five. (Are you following so far? There will be a quiz later…)

Our next step was to contact all the nurseries we were interested in and find out when they had an open day for visiting. That done and the visits made, we were able to narrow our choice down to five state-run nurseries and about six private ones (we were lucky in that we could apply directly to all of the private ones we were interested in).

Applications to private nurseries can be submitted from the time that your child is born, whereas the application for the five state-run nurseries can only be done once your child reaches six months old.

Once you’ve made your application to the local authority, you can log into a page on the website and see where your little one is in the queue for each of the schools. Initially, I would have been happy to log in on a daily basis to monitor the situation, but I soon realised that the queue does not move so fast – we’ve moved up about 6-7 places each month, but we’re still a long way off getting a place for Baby O at any of our five choices for our chosen starting month of August.

The local authority does offer a guaranteed place to all those who apply. However, and this is a BIG however, it doesn’t have to be at one of your chosen five nurseries, nor does it have to be in the vicinity of where you live. In fact, it just guarantees you a nursery place “in Stockholm”, so you could be facing a journey of up to an hour each direction each day.

This was the main reason why we were beginning to get a little panicky about getting Baby O in somewhere close to us. However, now we can take it a little easier and not have to worry as, come June 8, we will be starting him at the new bilingual nursery. One of the biggest bonuses about this new nursery is that two of his friends have places as well, and two more are on the waiting list.